Life as a physicist

Apologies for totally neglecting this blog for the last week...my computer decided to explode on Sunday. And by explode I mean just totally stop working. Windows 7 no longer boots on my computer, and the second operating system I installed for all of my work stuff doesn't work either. Ahh yes, how I love computers...sometimes I wonder why I'm going into a field that primarily uses computers, but then I remember that it's about the physics, not the computers. Most of my problems seem to stem from my complete frustration with everything about Windows - I'm not the most tech-savvy person out there, and Windows is just too finnicky for me apparently. Perhaps the Mac I'll be getting in a few short weeks will serve me better. I have a feeling those are more incompetant-user friendly (not that I'm incompetant, but you know what I mean).

So the bulk of the last three days has been trying to figure out what to do with my computer, with a little bit of work squeezed in here and there. It's actually been quite a busy three days. I met with a guy named Ali today, who did some diagnosis of my poor sick laptop, and it was pronounced dead. Sort of. I can't boot anything up because apparently something is wrong with my harddrive, but I'm really not quite sure how that happened. But there's a chance we might be able to get my files from it (hence the "sort of" dead diagnosis) - we will try doing that tomorrow. Fingers crossed! For now though, I am able to use a spare laptop from one of my REU coordinators that exists specifically for the purpose of in case one of our laptops dies. How convenient! So at least I have a laptop to use.

I realized the other day that I have not once talked about what I am doing for my work. I guess I am here to travel AND work, right? So here goes. Be warned, I don't even understand some of this stuff, so I will try to explain it as best as I can.

I am working with data from the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector here at CERN. When two protons collide in the accelerator, there is a whole bunch of stuff that comes out. There are millions of these collisions every SECOND, so you can imagine the immense amount of data that gets produced. The detectors that are placed around the accelerator are able to measure and record everything about all of this "stuff" that comes out of a collision (when, where, etc), but there is WAY too much to store. However, a lot of these collisions aren't very interesting at all, so there is a type of weeding system that happens, reducing the number of collisions, or "events", recorded down to a couple hundred per second. Much more manageable.

Each detector at CERN (and around the world for that matter) is made of multiple components, each designed for a very specific purpose. I work with data collected from the ATLAS detector, and specifically from the component known as the Tile Calorimeter (or TileCal for short). This component is responsible for stopping and measuring all the particles made up of what are called "quarks" - i.e. protons, neutrons, mesons, baryons...(Note: electrons are NOT made up of quarks, so they are actually measured and stopped by the electromagnetic calorimeter, which is located inside TileCal). The data I work with specifically is the corrupted data that is taken with TileCal. Data can be corrupted for known reasons (part of the detector wasn't working correctly at the time, known errors and uncertainties, etc.) or for unknown reasons. My job this summer is to examine different variables that are known about the data and try to figure out at least some of the unknown reasons the data is corrupted. It's definitely much different than any other physics research I've done - I'm not actually analyzing anything, I'm working with the detector itself.

I hope you enjoyed that brief physics lesson, and hopefully you understood at least a little of it! That has been my life as a physicist for the last month and a half. Now to the fun stuff.

On Saturday, I went to the Geneva Lake Parade, but unfortunately I forgot my camera so there are no pictures of it to share...I'm actually sort of mad I forgot it because this was quite an event, let me tell you. I've never seen a parade like this in my life. Curious yet?

The Geneva Lake Parade is the day of the year when all the clubs of Geneva get together floats and drive them down the streets. VERY slowly I might add. The whole train might move 20 feet down the street and then stay put, blasting their dance music for the next five minutes, move 20 feet, sit still for 5 minutes...definitely the slowest parade I've ever seen. I got to the parade around 4pm with my group, which was when it started, and it took about an hour and a half for all ~20 floats to pass us. We walked to the front of the parade, passed it, and decided to chill under a tree for a while. I went with a few other to see the Jet d'Eau up close - there's a pier that goes right out to it. So I got to run through the mist of the Jet. This was actually another reason I was mad I forgot my camera that day, because seeing it up close and personal was pretty awesome. My depth perception got really messed up, and even though I knew the water was shooting well over 400ft in the air, it looked like only 50ft. We headed back to the rest of the group after not too long, and headed to find dinner. I ended up eating at a kebob place (basically shaved meat with some lettuce, tomato, and a white sauce on a delicious roll).

After dinner, we decided to find the after-party of the parade. After walking along Lake Geneva for about half an hour, we finally found it. All of those 20 or so floats had parked in the street and there were crowds of people dancing in front of each one. It was insanely crowded and we kept losing people, so most of the time I was there was spent trying to find our comrades. I decided shortly that I was done for the night and wanted to head back to CERN, and a couple others joined me. That wasn't really my thing anyway. I enjoy hanging out with much smaller groups of people. But it was definitely an interesting experience. Just not one I'd really want to have again.

Sunday was spent relaxing and watching movies, up until about 9pm, when my computer exploded as explained above. But besides for that small situation, this weekend was relatively enjoyable! Just the break I needed before two big weekends of travel! Keep checking back for updates!

Barcelona!

Well, I'm sure you are all eagerly awaiting an update from my eventful weekend! Well, maybe not, but I'm going to tell you all about it anyway.

Friday began with the (now) usual Summer Student Lectures at CERN. These consist of three hours of lectures every morning (usually three different subjects) followed by a Q&A session at the end. So far they've been pretty interesting - over the course of the next month we'll be learning about the Standard Model of physics, accelerator physics, statistics, astrophysics, cosmology, and many many more cool subjects. But unfortunately I had to leave early to catch my flight to beautiful Barcelona, Spain!

I was very excited to get another stamp in my passport, proof I had visited more than three countries in my life. However, when we got there, we were able to simply exit the airport - no customs or anything. We found this a bit strange, but came to the conclusion that maybe it was because the airline we had used only flew to certain places around Europe so maybe it was different...I honestly have no idea. What if someone had gotten a visa for another European country but had malicious intentions against Spain? They would be able to simply fly into the country on this airline? That's a little disconcerting. In any case, I was a little disappointed I wouldn't get a stamp. We boarded the train and began our hour-long journey to our hostel, using the fantastic Metro system of Barcelona. We ended up taking the Metro almost everywhere during the course of the weekend, and walking wherever the Metro didn't go. The good news was there weren't many places it didn't go. We took turns buying ten-stamp tickets over the course of the three days we were there.

After getting all settled in at the hostel, we took a walk to explore around. The first thing I noticed was how many fruit/food markets there were everywhere. There was at least one, sometimes two, on every block! It was definitely my kind of place - fresh fruit for much cheaper than in Geneva, and it was good too! Our next stop was to see La Sagrada Familia lit up at night, but we didn't hang around too long. (More about this impressive cathedral later)

Eventually we decided to take the Metro closer to downtown to find somewhere to eat. We came above ground right at Las Ramblas, the biggest tourist trap street in Barcelona. There are performers, vendors, restaurants, people walking around advertising their stores...pretty much anything you could think of. At this point it was around 10:30 or so at night and the street was still full of people. All the shops were still open too - very different from Switzerland and France where everything is closed after 8pm. I sort of miss being able to go to the store after 8pm...when I get back to America, I might just go to the store at 11pm simply because I can.

One of our goals for the trip was to eat tapas somewhere. If you don't know, tapas are little snack-sized dishes that you can find for 1+ euros if you look hard enough. I had a kabob, a few desserts, and something else that I can't remember...another must-do in Spain was drink sangria, so we made sure this tapas place had sangria before we sat down. Everything was delicious, but the waiter was particularly rude to us, especially around closing time. By the way, closing time was 2am (!!!). Or so it appeared. We think he was just kicking us out because we were tourists/American - I looked back after we left and no one else was being forced to leave. But whatever, we brushed it off and decided that rude people were not worth our time. We wandered until around 3am, and we were probably some of the first to get off the streets. Everything in Barcelona is shifted by at least 3 hours - stores don't open until 10:30-11am and people fill the streets until who-knows-when. All I know is that people were still up and moving at 3am. Very odd, especially after becoming accustomed to Geneva culture. But it was my kind of place! Those hours are my ideal day!

Saturday began with a visit to the Barcelona soccer stadium, where we spent an hour poking around the gift shop. One of our group members has a friend from Barcelona, so we met up with him and he took us to a non-touristy restaurant for lunch. We had more tapas, and I could have eaten the potato dish all day. They were just potato pieces with a garlicky sauce (I think) but they were SO good! The whole meal cost about 6 euros per person (it's kind of depressing that that is extremely cheap for a meal...another thing I miss about America - dollar menus!). Then it was back to La Sagrada Familia for a tour of the inside of this magnificent feat of human engineering.

Here are some facts about La Sagrada Familia: it is a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic church that was designed by Antonio Gaudi and has been under construction for the last 130 years. And (according to models placed in locations around the basilica) it's only half done. However, its anticipated completion date is 2026 - I might have to make a point to go back to Barcelona if they really do finish it within my lifetime. It is a monster of a building, taking up an entire city block (I have not been able to find the square footage of this behemoth). Being the slightly paranoid person I am, I vaguely wondered how the thing would stay upright when it had hollowed-out Metro tunnels running directly beneath it. I just found out that this is a real concern. Well then. I really hope there's not some sort of disaster. I would love to see it when it's completed. Since its construction depends entirely on private donations, we will just have to wait and see if it really is completed by 2026. It is impossible to describe how breathtakingly, beautifully intricate and detailed this basilica was, so please, enjoy these pictures and see it for yourself.

The darker brown is what has been completed.

A close-up of the intricate carvings that cover the front

I know pictures hardly capture anything, but I had to try...it blew any cathedral I had ever seen out of the water and possibly to the moon. I really hope I get a chance to go back.

After La Sagrada Familia, we found dinner at a restaurant that was reasonably close to the basilica and wasn't out of our price range. The portions were a bit small, but everything was delicious and well worth the cost. And the waiter was nice to us! At least it wasn't everyone in Barcelona that hated tourists, just that one rude waiter...We decided to take the Metro to the beach, and we found an outdoor bar that turned out to be extremely expensive, so we just walked away. I took my first steps into the Mediterranean Sea, and was pleasantly surprised at how warm it was. It's warmer than the Great Lakes are at this time of year. We spent a fair amount of time at the beach, just enjoying the long-awaited (for me, at least) feeling of sand between our toes. As a Michigander, I'm used to beaches at least a few times a year, and I'd been deprived of the peace and enjoyment beaches give me. It was very nice to see endless water again. We began the long walk back to the Metro, and once we arrived back at our hostel, a few of our group got ready to experience the nightlife of Barcelona (I didn't really have an interest in that, so I stayed at the hostel and relaxed).

Sunday began with a trip to Park Guell, a pleasant ten-minute or so walk from our hostel. This park reminded me of a mix between a desert and Florida and was exactly what my original expectations of Spain were. There were cacti alongside palm trees, with green grass and beautiful flowers throughout the park. We climbed to the highest point in the park and looked out across the massive sprawl that is Barcelona:

It was quite beautiful. We walked on to see the viaducts (or aquaducts, as they are more commonly called), and the main entrance. We were sucked into a tourist trap that advertised paella for only 8 euros - we didn't think it would get cheaper than that! But unfortunately, it wasn't very good paella...oh well, live and learn.

Our next stop was the Barcenoleta beach, the dirtiest and most crowed of all Barcelona beaches, although we picked a spot that wasn't too dirty. It was most definitely crowded though! We spent two hours taking shifts watching all the bags and swimming in the waves before heading to the Barcelona Olympic stadium and the Montjuic Castle. Both were very cool and well worth the out-of-the-way trip it took to get there. We walked around both for a few hours, and the view the castle offered from the top of its own mountain/hill thing was better than that of Park Guell. We were closer to the sea now, so there was more water visible, but we still had the same beautiful view of the city. Since my camera doesn't have a panorama setting, I've begun simply taking a short movie of the view. It's better than trying to figure out the view from several successive pictures. Look for all my "panoramas" on my picture page!

Anyway, once we had taken in our fill of all the beautiful views, we headed back to the Barcenoleta beach area to find some dinner and to watch the sunset. However, we forgot that we had been well above the rest of the city, so once we had gotten back to sea level the sun had already set behind the mountains that surround Barcelona. So much for that idea! We found a restaurant that offered a first course, second course, drink, and dessert all for 15.90 euros, a great deal anywhere in Europe! (Of course, all you guys in the States could just go to Applebee's and get the 2 for $20 meal...it would probably be more food at the same price. My sense of expense has been totally shot here!) We enjoyed a European-style meal, meaning they made us wait for some time before bringing out the next course, which was fine by me. By the time we finished, it was approaching midnight and since we had to get up not-so-bright and early at 4:30am sharp to catch our flight back to Geneva we decided to skip our planned walk on the beach and head straight back to the hostel.

All in all, this was a fantastic trip. The only thing I regret about it is not planning it out more, because that resulted in a lot of waiting around and excessive traveling. I think we could have optimized our time there much better and seen much more of the city. But this was just my first trip outside of Switzerland, so I've learned something that I will definitely use for my next trip - plan, plan, plan!! Looking back, we actually saw a lot more than it seemed like, so it all works out in the end. Stay tuned for pictures and panorama videos - coming soon!

Discovery!

Well, I'm sure most of you have seen the latest news to come out of CERN - a discovery has been made! We're not sure if the discovery is actually the Higgs boson, the last missing piece of the Standard Model, or if it's something new (I hope it's something new...that would be so much more exciting!). I was very happy to see that the top story on Google news was the results stated in the July 4th seminar, the kick-off to the International Conference for High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Melbourne. But let me start from the beginning...

My day started at 2am, when I got up to get in the queue for the main auditorium at CERN, where the real deal would be happening (as in, if I actually got a seat in the auditorium, I'd be watching the real thing, not a webcast!). I knew there would already be people there, because some grad students actually got there at 11:30pm to camp out. But I did not expect there to be 70 or so people there already. Most of them were summer students (I doubt the older physicists would want to get up at 2 to get in line). The catch was that half of the auditorium was already reserved for the important people, leaving only 150 or so seats for those of us in line. Good thing I got there early!

I attempted to sleep, to no avail, so I watched a movie on my laptop, played cards, did whatever it took to keep myself occupied for 5 hours. Security had actually worried that people would attempt to sleep in the auditorium, so it was locked from Tuesday night until 7:30am Wednesday. The seminar itself started at 9am. So, there we all were, wrapped under blankets, listening to music, playing cards...It was very strange when it started getting light outside - I felt like I had been pulling an all-nighter, even though I had gotten around 2.5 hours of sleep. There had been a wave of people that arrived around 4-5am, and by 6:30am, the line snaked up and down the hallway, down the stairs, and a considerable distance past the stairs (I just read in an article that they estimate that 1,000 people were waiting in this line by the end of it). I was really glad I got there at 2! If I had stuck to my original plan, getting there around 5, I would not have gotten a seat in the auditorium.

Around 7:00am, everyone suddenly stood up and surged toward the auditorium, which I really didn't understand since there was still half an hour to go. But FINALLY, at long last, they opened the doors! We had a bit of a scare when security halted the line about five people ahead of us, but thankfully they were just waiting for the people already in to find seats. The line started moving again, I made eye contact with the security guard as he counted me, went up a flight of stairs...then I was in! I could hardly believe it! It was surreal to be sitting in the place where they would be announcing the biggest results in decades of High Energy Physics research. I found myself asking, "Is this actually happening?!" Unfortunately, there was still an hour and a half to wait...but it flew by. Peter Higgs himself was one of the last people to enter the auditorium, and he got a standing ovation from the whole crowd.

The first speaker was the spokesperson for the CMS experiment here at CERN (CMS is one of the two general experiments that look for answers to existing physics and also look for new stuff outside our current theory of the universe. The other is the experiment I work on, ATLAS). There was a lot of introductory stuff, blah blah blah, but as soon as the spokesperson said something to the extent of "And now for the results," the entire auditorium sat up a little straighter, alert now and paying attention. The anticipation in the air was overwhelming.

Here's a little background on the basic statistics used in physics analysis: data is taken using the gigantic detectors, which is then compared to theoretical simulations. Fluctuations occur when the data doesn't quite match up with those simulations, but usually these fluctuations go away with more data. Fluctuations are measured by how far they deviate from the expected prediction, using a "sigma" system. 1 sigma is equivalent to a 1 in 3 chance that the fluctuation happened by chance, 2 sigma means a 1 in 22 chance, 3 sigma means a 1 in 370 chance (also the threshold for claiming "evidence" of something), 4 sigma means a 1 in 15,787 chance, and 5 sigma means a 1 in 1.7 million chance. 5 sigma is the threshold for claiming a "discovery." Now that you know some of the basic terms, let me continue.

While all the physicists were tuned in, Dr. Tonelli went on to describe the results of a break-neck paced analysis that had taken place over the course of only two weeks, a feat almost unheard of. And this was where we had our first 5 sigma result! The auditorium broke out in cheers and applause. More results, more talking...and this was the final CMS result:

Exciting right?! Next it was ATLAS's turn. More blah blah, and again, everyone perked up when Fabiola got to the results section. And guess what? More 5 sigma results!! A new particle had finally been discovered!

There was cheering and applause for a long while - the infamous Higgs boson MIGHT have been discovered!! I say might because there are hints that this may not be exactly what we were looking for. This is not a failure in the eyes of physics. Instead, it only opens new doors and makes us question whether our theory is actually correct. In my opinion, yeah, it would be awesome to find the Higgs, but it would be infinitely more exciting if we're wrong about something. We would have to rethink the Standard Model and come up with something new that explains what we are seeing. But regardless, as of this morning, a new boson has been discovered, the heaviest yet measured. Whether or not it was what we were looking for remains to be seen.

Beer with the bears in Bern

Yay alliterations! And yes, all parts of the title are true - I had beer with the bears in Bern. Confused? So was I.

The day started at 6:30am, when I woke up to meet the rest of the group at 7am to make our 7:45 train. I was running off of less than five hours of sleep, so naturally I got coffee at the train station. After which point I realized I had a two hour train ride to Bern that I could have been sleeping on but no longer would be able to...oops, my bad. But hey, I got to see some awesome scenery. Switzerland is probably the most beautiful place I've been so far in my life.

We got off the train and tried to orient ourselves in the city. We were now in the German part of Switzerland (just when I had gotten used to French speakers...I am loving how cultural it is here and how short a distance you need to go to reach somewhere so culturally different!), so we were trying to read the signs. We were obviously unsuccessful because we immediately went off in the wrong direction. It was fortunate that we figured this out only after 20 minutes of walking. But it turned out ok, because we ended up wandering through a university's campus that looked out over the city. B-e-a-utiful!

Our original plan had been to follow a walking, self-guided tour type thing that Kevin had found, and we followed it for a few of the stops, pausing to take pictures of all the fountains that were right in the middle of the street. Definitely strange. Also, the buses don't exactly stop for people standing in the streets, which I almost found out the hard way while admiring one of the fountains. Luckily one of my friends had my back. We continued along the tour, weaving through markets set up along various streets and in large open squares. I had never been to a farmer's market or anything of the sort in the States, but I imagine it was something like the portion we passed through in a large square. The thing was that we went down one street filled with carts selling everything from cheese to pastries to flowers, turned the corner to find an enormous square filled with seemingly endless carts of more food, and crossed the street to the large square in front of the Parliament building to find that also filled with carts of food. I had never seen anything like it in my life. The area was teeming with people buying produce, meat, and cheese. And of course bread. You can't forget the bread.

We wandered to the Parliament building and noticed that there were free tours happening that day (I'm not sure if there were free tours only that day or every weekend or every day). We discovered that there was a tour at 11:30 that we could join. There was one caveat - it was going to be in German. But we got pamphlets that explained everything (in much less detail of course) that we were going to see in English. So we decided to do it. Let me tell you, that building was beautiful. Unfortunately, there are no records or pictures of this experience because we weren't allowed to bring anything in with us, but take me on my word. It was impressive. We saw the Domed Hall and both Chamber rooms, and they all were beautifully decorated with stained glass, statues, ornate carvings, or intricate murals. It was well worth our time, even though we couldn't understand what our guide was saying. But luckily, she explained some things in English, knowing we English-speakers were present.

We continued down the cobbled streets, and passed some cafe called the "Einstein Haus." We knew Einstein's house was located in Bern and thought this cafe was a funny play on that. But then we noticed a sign saying something like "Closed due to water damage." Something rung a bell in our heads...someone had told us that tours of Einstein's house weren't going on because it was closed due to water damage...Wait a second. This WAS Einstein's house! We checked the address number...yup, 49. We were standing in front of (and almost completely passed by) Albert Einstein's old house! I'm sure the people peacefully eating lunch were thrilled when our group of eight physicists started fervidly taking pictures of everything around the house: the number, all the signs, the house itself...yeah, they were definitely staring at us. Did we care? Not one bit. I mean, it was EINSTEIN'S HOUSE!!

We continued on, heading towards Bern's most popular attraction, the bear pit. At one point, we crossed the river the makes a peninsula out of the city of Bern, and I couldn't believe what a striking blue-green color it was. I had never seen a river that color before! And it was FAST. I don't know how fast rivers usually go, but take the speed of a typical one and multiply it by two or three. There were people in rafts and tubes floating not-so-leisurely down it (because how can it be leisurely going that fast?!), along with people simply swimming down it. We noticed people lining the river a little way up and decided to go there to relax for a bit.

It turned out that where the people were lining was where the bear pit was. We started down the stairs that led to the river bank and noticed two bears playfully fighting down below. Fenced off of course (thankfully the bears don't roam the town...that would be quite unnerving). We stopped to take some pictures before sticking our feet in the achingly cold river water. Yup, my numb feet could confirm that it was most definitely a river of snowmelt. We tried to figure out how to get a raft to float down the river to no avail. So instead we headed back to the restaurant that overlooked the bear pit. We had been told previously that the restaurant was also a microbrewery, so of course we had to check it out. Let me tell you, beer with the bears in Bern was pretty good. 

Afterward we climbed 100m or so to a beautiful rose garden that overlooked all of Bern. It was probably the best view of the city you could get. In the near distance, we noticed a castle-looking structure and decided that would be our next stop. To our eventual dismay, it turned out to be the history museum of Bern, which also happened to house the Einstein museum...well darn. Being physicists, we were extremely disappointed that it had already closed for the day. 


Our last stop was a late dinner in one of the squares in front of the Parliament building, which had been completely cleared of all food carts and now had children running through fountains. We wearily made our way back to the train station and crashed hard on the way back to CERN. I even fell asleep on the train. That never happens! What a long, eventful, and fun day!

Where it all begins...

WARNING: Physics nerd coming through. If you have any aversion to extreme nerdiness, I advise you to navigate away from this page now.

This week has been dubbed "CMS Week" at CERN, which means that it's all things CMS, with a delicious BBQ thrown in. (By the way, CMS, or Compact Muon Solenoid, is one of four major experiments located along the ring of the LHC) My collaboration, ATLAS, had their week a couple weeks ago, "ALICE Week" was last week, you get the idea. But since I'm not a part of CMS, I couldn't get a ticket to the BBQ myself, and so someone else in CMS had to purchase my ticket for me.

There were two shuttle buses, one at 6:15 and one at 6:30, that took you 5.5 miles across the ring of the LHC (literally the extreme other side of it), so you can imagine it was even farther since there is no road that cuts directly across the LHC. After a 40 minute ride and a few wrong turns, we noticed some CERN-looking buildings. When we arrived, there was someone speaking at a microphone, but it was nearly impossible to understand him because we were inside the equivalent of a gigantic warehouse with noise all around. So we moved on, got in a couple collaboration photos, and went to the site of the main attraction.

I'm not sure how much you know about the detectors of the LHC, but here are some numbers for you. The ATLAS detector is 45m (148 ft) long by 25m (92 ft) high and weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower (7,000 tons). It is a behemoth of a machine. The CMS detector is more compact (hence the "C" in CMS...) at 21m (70 ft) long and is cylindrical with a 15m (50 ft) diameter. It weighs 12,500 tons. To a physics nerd, it would be incredible to be able to see such amazing products of humankind. They are the most advanced machines man has ever made (ok, I may be slightly biased here...this is where the nerdiness comes in). We can't usually go down the 300 feet of elevator shaft and through a maze of tunnels to the detectors because when the LHC is powered up and running, the amount of radiation coming from the beam would be enough to kill you in a very short period of time. But if the LHC is off and it's been a few days or so, the radiation levels have died down enough for humans to safely be near the detector.

Have you guessed what the main attraction was yet? I'll just tell you. I GOT TO SEE THE CMS DETECTOR!! Nerd alert, nerd alert, nerd alert. But really, I got to go down those 300 feet and through that maze of tunnels, hard hat and all, and see one of the most amazing machines of the decade. I can't describe how awesome it was. To see where it all begins, with two hydrogen atoms (essentially) colliding in fantastic fashion...it was beyond words. Well worth the 20 francs I paid for that ticket, and I'm not even counting the food. I would have paid 50 (NERD - how many of you would have paid anything to see a big mass of electronics?). Life = complete. Done. I'm not sure if I will ever get to see anything like that again.

Breathe in...breathe out...nerd rant complete.

                                      

"The hills are aliiiive, with the sound of muuuusiiiic"

Unfortunately, I was not actually serenaded by Julie Andrews this weekend....although that would have been a sight to behold, wouldn't it?

If you haven't guessed yet, my latest excursion was to the site of one of the scenes in the famous musical, The Sound of Music (what a fantastic musical...). We didn't only get to see the Matterhorn (although that was definitely the main attraction), we saw the beautiful village of Zermatt, waterfalls coming from melted snow streams, and the glaciers from the summit of Gornergrat. Let me start from the beginning:

On Friday, I ended up taking a half day off work with a couple others to explore downtown Geneva while all the shops were still open. I was hoping to find some cool souvenirs for friends and family back home, but didn't exactly feel like spending 1000 francs on a Swiss watch for each person...sorry everyone. So we mostly just wandered, taking in the sights and eating raspberry sorbet on the edge of the lake, watching the Jet d'Eau turn to mist in the wind. At around 5:20, we met the rest of our fellow travelers at the train station to begin our four hour trek to Zermatt, Switzerland. The ride was the most beautiful ride of my life. On my right was Lake Geneva with Mt. Blanc towering over the rest of the mountains (an impressive feat considering it is about 100 miles away), and on my left were endless vineyards covering the mountainsides. The view continued this way for the entire 40 mile length of Lake Geneva, broken by the occasional castle sticking out into the lake or sitting atop a hillside, and then the vineyards continued for at least another 40 miles past the lake. It was surreal. I found myself wondering just how many bottles of wine these vineyards produced, and then I realized I was seeing only a fraction of a fraction of all the vineyards in Europe. Mind officially blown.

We arrived in Zermatt around 9:30 pm, and it was about the point that everyone turned to each other asking where our hostel was that we all realized no one knew where it was. Smart, right? Yeah, I thought physicists were supposed to be smart too...but luckily someone had the phone number, so we called and they gave us directions. Along the way was our first sighting of the impressive Matterhorn. Actually, impressive just doesn't cover it. There are no words to describe this beast. I had seen pictures of it and I had seen "The Sound of Music," but nothing prepared me for the real deal. I can't even begin to imagine how a mountain could be carved in such a fantastic shape.

The first sighting

Yes, I realize that this is just another picture of the Matterhorn, and pictures can't capture the true beauty of it, but I can try to describe it. Actually, I'm pretty sure that at least a third of the pictures I took on this trip contained the Matterhorn just because of its sheer beauty.

The hostel had been nice enough to hold dinner for us (especially since the cost of breakfast and dinner was included in the cost of the hostel), and we scarfed it down like there was no tomorrow. Literally. There was not a scrap of food left on that table. We all retired early in anticipation of an early start and a busy day on Saturday.

Saturday began at precisely 6:45am, when pretty much everyone's alarms went off within 30 seconds of each other. What a wake up call. We groggily rolled out of bed and went to breakfast, slowly waking up with each bite. At least, that's how I felt. I'm not actually sure about the others. We set out around 8:30 and spent half an hour trying to find the trail head. We eventually found it, and almost immediately we split into groups of the more and less experienced hikers. The more experienced hikers just went on ahead, and said maybe they'd meet us at the Swarzee lake on the map, but probably they'd just continue on to the Hornlihutte. The rest of us were undecided on whether we would hike that whole trail. Hornilhutte also happens to be base camp for those intending to climb the entirety of the Matterhorn, a feat I'm not sure I could ever pull off.

There is not too much to say about the hike up the mountain, except that the views are unmatched by any that I've ever seen. There were bare, rocky mountains with a very low tree line, and there were mountains with villages that looked like they could have been in the clouds. The most beautiful, however, were the mountains that stuck out higher than all the others, covered in a perpetual snowy blanket. That is, until we crested one of the many "hills" we had to climb and there was the Matterhorn in all its glory:

Partially covered in clouds, I was not sure I had seen a more beautiful sight. The hike in the Jura paled in comparison. Our group spent a full ten minutes just taking pictures of the beast, taking turns posing in front of it. The views only got better as we ascended higher.

You know when you Google search the Matterhorn and you see some pictures of it towering over a beautiful lake with a clear blue sky? Well, for how well known the Swarzee lake is, we figured for sure that had to be the lake in the pictures. We finally arrived at the Swarzee hotel and restaurant, where there was a small pond and a deep valley. Definitely no large, beautiful lake. We actually had to ask some random guy we passed on the trail where the Swarzee Lake was. At which point he pointed to that tiny pond. Swarzee Lake? The beautiful lake of the pictures? Wrong. So we continued on after a brief stop for lunch. A short time later, we came across one of the members of the "more experienced" group just chillin' in the shade of a hut once used for the cable car lines. He told us to go up ahead to the trail to the Hornilhutte - apparently it was a must-see. Let me tell you, it definitely was a must-see but definitely NOT a must-do. I thought that the scary-looking metal staircase we encountered was bad, but it was nothing compared to what came after. An even scarier looking metal grating walkway continued on a ways away, turning to half a metal grating walkway after a short time because every other grate was missing. That's right, you could step over open air, look down and see only the mountain far beneath your feet. Terrifying.

Oh but it got worse. I wasn't brave enough to go, but a short distance up ahead, the walkway continued like this without a railing. Now there's open air to the left AND beneath you. That's about the point we all decided to turn back and give props to the two members of our group who were able to continue on. We continued our hike along the "Glacier Trail," which was a rocky mountainside marked only by stripes of paint on the rocks. We were always searching for the next marker of the trail. It wasn't long before we had to begin crossing snow. Luckily, someone had been there before us so we stepped in the fresh footprints. There was only one mishap, with one of our members attempting to walk on the unbroken snow and sinking in to his thigh. I guess that's why you never travel alone, because two of our members had to dig him out. But all was good and we continued on. We began to see the light at the end of the tunnel about about two hours, when we noticed cable car lines running up the mountain. The goal was in sight! However, the light was swiftly turned off when we encountered an impassable frozen lake surrounded by snow that disappeared over the edge of the mountain. We might have tried to cross the narrower parts had our trusted footprints continued and had we not heard the swift river of water running under the melting snow. Reluctantly, we decided to retrace over two hours of hiking and meet the cable cars at the Swarzee stop.

But there was another surprise in store for us. When we finally arrived at Swarzee, the cable cars had stopped running for the day. At this point, I swear we were the only ones left on the mountain. It was an eerily peaceful quiet. We (even more reluctantly) began the two hike back to Zermatt, stopping once for water and a break. We returned for dinner after 12 hours on the trails and crashed hard for the night.

On Sunday, we walked around the village of Zermatt, eventually deciding to take the train up to the top of Gornergrat, 3100m high (10,168 feet). The view was similar to the views the day before, with much more snow and some real, not-melted glaciers. We spent two hours on the summit before heading down for lunch at a burger pub (yeah yeah yeah, American food in Switzerland, how lame...). We caught the 4:13 train back to Geneva after a long, fulfilling weekend.

As I sit at my desk...

So my supervisor has been in the control room for ATLAS for the last few days, meaning she has been very hard to get a hold of. It also means that work has been VERY slow for the last few days, hence why I've been slacking a little on the whole blogging front...my apologies.

The biggest thing that I've done this last week is install a whole new operating system on my laptop, which actually happened just this morning. For those who don't know, Windows is nearly impossible to do any kind of research with, which is why half of physicists own Mac computers and the other half do what is known as "dual-booting," i.e. install another operating system alongside Windows. The most popular choice for dual-booting is known as Ubuntu, a version of Linux. Linux is what all physics research I have ever done has used because it is very intuitive and easy to work with (unlike Windows). It is very very very hard to install the Mac operating system on a Windows computer (the people at Apple did that on purpose), but I believe there have been a couple people who have done it successfully. But again, Linux is the operating system of choice for many researchers.

Now to recap the week...on Monday, most of my REU group and I took a walking trip to St. Genis, about a half-hour walk, just to explore and check out a really cheap kabob place we had been told about. 5 Euros is REALLY cheap for a meal here, and I've found myself being a little stingy with my food expenses. I will usually pick the cheapest thing in the cafeteria and I bring my lunch every day instead of buying. But it is all to save up for my traveling expenses. Traveling around Europe is more expensive than I thought, and I thought it was expensive to begin with! But anyway, we found the kabob place, and it was very very good. I definitely want to go back there at some point.

Tuesday was the day we decided on our travel plans for this weekend (which starts today actually). You all will get to read all about my trip to Zermatt on Monday :) Wednesday was extremely slow for work. I think my supervisor was even busier in the control room than she was on Tuesday, so I really didn't have much to work on. I was relieved when 5:30 came around and I could leave to go for a run with a fellow intern. We took a 4 mile loop (well, we think it was 4 miles...) into France and St. Genis, and ran along the river that goes through town. It was a very pleasant and beautiful run. I am so used to having water everywhere, being from Michigan, and it was nice to be reminded that there are bodies of water here too.

Yesterday, I got to see my supervisor at Michigan State, who will be staying at CERN for the next month. It was nice to catch up with him. After work, a group of us went to the train station to get tickets for this weekend, only to find out that they were no longer taking people for the kind of pass they wanted. It's known as the Eurail pass, and is a great option for anyone looking to travel in Europe. I purchased one prior to coming here, but recently decided not to use it because I will be going more places that are farther away and don't make sense to take a train to. But if you are traveling primarily by train, it is an excellent option! We decided just to head back to CERN and try again the next day. We ate dinner with our usual group, which has now somehow expanded to at least 25 people. We take up six whole tables! Half of us are the U of M REU group, but half are Europeans or people from other countries that we've managed to meet and make friends with. It's turning out to be a pretty fun group!

Well, I have to go prepare for an amazing weekend. Keep checking back for a blog update after the weekend!