eLearning Collaborative

References

When we arrived in Geneva, we unpacked our stuff into our hostel and immediately we went on a tour of the CMS. CMS stands for compact muon solenoid. It is considered 'compact' becuase it is the smaller of all of the detectors at CERN, however; CMS is the heaviest of the detectors (to make up for the small-ness). It was assembled in rings above ground, once the eleven rings were made and tested, they were lowered down into the ground through a giant hole almost 96 meters below the surface with a huge crane. The last piece was lowered approxiamately two months ago. Within CMS, there are many different subdetectors. These subdetectors include silicon pixels and silicon strips which work as a tracking detector and getting x and y coordinates, the trajectory, and a particle's momentum. Another detector surrounding that is the electromagnetic calorimeter, which measures the energy of electrons, positrons, and photons. Another subdetector is the hadronic calorimeter which measures the energy of protons, neutrons, pions (members of the particle family-hadron). Also, there are muon detectors all around these detectors. Muons are 'fat' electrons (pretty much the same as an electron, only heavier) and can be indicative of something interesting happening! The return yoke is the main structure of the CMS, it contains 5 'rings' of iron and two endcap disks. This is necessary for the solenoid magnets.

Now that I've talked about all the specific things, I'll talk about all the really neat things I've learned today. The magnet they use in these detectors are supermagnets, they are super
conducting. Superconductivity refers to the ability to conduct electricity without energry loss, and usually takes place at a very, very low temperature. CMS is kept at about 2-3 degrees Kelvin (thats pretty cold!), the detectors are temperature sensitive (as are the crystals within electromagnetic calorimeter)...it constantly needs to be kept this cold when running. The CMS is kept this cold with liquid helium, kept in big yellow tanks outside of the CMS. This is difficult since the electricity running through all the cords is causing temperatures to rise. This is where the 'thermal screens' come into play. Water is cooled by the liquid helium and absorbs heat from the cables to prevent anything from overheating.

Another really interesting fact is that when the magnet is turned on, it is so powerful that it could crush the detectors surrounding it, so the are Aluminum spacers seperating the magnets from the other parts, and also there are jacks placed on the floor for extra support. Also, since the magnet is so powerful that once they have been 'normalized' or loose their superconducting phase, then the experiment will most probably cease.

The operation at CMS will start sometime this summer and will no longer accept visitors, due to radiation and safety precautions. Parts os CMS have been given from countries all over the world.

References

This afternoon, the high school students got to go to another part of CERN and go inside of the actual tunnel! It was awesome. The LHC is 27 km in circumference and about 100 meters underground. We got to walk about 100 meters length down the tunnel. Instrumentation on the pipes that surround the beam of protons that will be going through the tunnel is to measure the quality of the beam. There are 6000 amps of current running through the superconducting magnet at the particular area we were in. The purpose of the magnets is to steer the beam through the tunnel. Another section that we got to see was the "dump" section where the beam is distributed safely in the case of a security sensor being set off. A person going down into the tunnel cannot be near the magnets, there is radiation and a possible problem would be a leak in the healium lines (cooling). The proton beam is moving at close to the speed of light and if there were a safety breech, then the collision would have the energy of a 747 going at high speed, so the dump spreads energy of the beam so it can be released through a series of absorbers. The beam would drill a hole through these absorbers if it were not spread out in the case of an accident.

This link shows the area that we were in... (section 2): http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000570

The following pictures are of the OPAL experiment, a detector that was in the LEP multipurpose collider, which started in 1989 and ended in 2000. It measured the results of interations between electrons and positrons that collided at the center of the detector. The electrons and positrons approached eachother from opposite directions along the beam pipe.

References

Another clip... couldn't attach all at once.

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After a short jump from Rochester to Philadelphia, an interesting adventure around the Phili
airport, and the long flight from there to Zurich. We were FINALLY in Europe!
We arrived at about 8 AM this morning for Swiss time, and about 2 in the morning
for Rochester (just for future reference, we are 6 hours ahead of you), so we
were pretty tired, and this wasn't helped by the fact that none of us really
got a very good nights sleep.

When we got to the Zurich airport, we waited
in the front for our colleagues that we planned on traveling to Geneva with by train. This group is the group
from Utah,
and are even more ahead of time than we are (I think they are 8 or 9 hours
ahead!!). They were all really nice, and we boarded the train and all slept for
most of the 3 hour ride, which occasionally gave us a view of the nearby mountains,
and villages if we were awake.

Now comes time for the actual goal of the trip! As soon as we got there we
had to check into the CERN hostel, and quickly settle into our rooms before we
had to make a meeting in which we would talk about the trip we would soon make
to CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), which is one of the major projects in this
ordeal along with ATLAS, which will do a similar job, just in a different way
(we will tell you more about this project when we actually get to visit). After
the meeting, we boarded the bus and headed towards the Swiss-France border on
which the other side lies the huge cavern holding the CMS experiment. When we
got there we were given a quick overview on the construction and uses of the
CMS, then we were given our hard hats, which were featured in several group
photos, and then finally the beginning of the tour.

We learned many things on the trip, mainly involving the machines uses, and
how it was made.

Firstly, I will attempt to explain to you what its uses can be and what
secrets it may reveal in the near future. The only use I really grasp at this
moment is the Higgs Boson. A question that has baffled physicists for years is
"what is mass?" and "why do some things have it and some things don’t?"
The Higgs Boson is an attempt to answer these questions, and if it does exist,
CMS should bring us closer to the answer, if not actually detect it. What the
Higgs is, is basically a VERY massive particle that cannot exist long enough
for us to see it unless it is influenced by a very high energy source (in this
case it is two protons colliding head on with a combined speed of almost 2x the
speed of light). If we find that this particle in fact does exist, it will
bring us another step closer to unifying all of physics into one idea! Our
group is doing several interviews with CERN scientists tomorrow. My group has
multiple questions to ask them on this subject, and also will ask them any
questions you have for them that we cannot answer. So feel free to ask any
questions that you may have!

Now, I will give you a quick run-through of how the CMS was made. It was basically
a collaborative effort among an obscene amount of Universities from about 35
different countries around the world. Each University had its own part of the
solenoid that they had to construct and send in for the final construction of
it. Each section had to be lowered into the cavern through an immense hole in
the ground, with a corresponding pair of immense cranes. Once in the holding
facility, they hooked it up to the power, and then they lined up each section
and slid them together like a giant puzzle. Now the construction is pretty much
over, and now they just need to slide a few more sections together before they
are done. Right now I'm having trouble adding pictures to the blog, but I'll
try later. It's 10:50 here and we have been awake for a LONG time, so I need to
sleep!

References

When you read about the exciting science discoveries and ideas that make it to the headline news the names are not ones you recognize, and certainly no one you know. As we've been working here interviewing scientists, and catching news bits online about the LHC, we've been seeing names in the news that not only do we recognize, but have met and interviewed ourselves!!!

Interviewing experimental physicist Robert Clare.: Nick is off camera on the left, with LeighAnn and then Meghan to the right.

Interview with Alessandra Ciocio (recently interviewed by Newsweek.): LeighAnn, Meghan and Nick on the right. The other students you see are from Utah.

References

Today was open house at CERN where the general public was invited to come into the facilities and see what was up. There were tours of different buildings as well as the ATLAS detector. Our goal today was to interview people who aren't affiliated with CERN in hopes of getting their opinion about different topics. Attached is a sound clip (mp3) that you can listen to of a couple that Leighann and I interviewed for a bit. It is a bit hard to hear since there was alot of people around, but check it out.

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CMS: central muon solenoid and my favorite picture of the whole day! : the center green part is actually where the particles will fly out of to smash into another

outside of CMS and its crowd pleasing color of yellow (that supposedly the locals are trying to get them to change)

Us in the necessary hard hats

the hole: Pieces of CMS were put through this 96 m deep hole

Retina Scanner: When the magnet is turned on, a person must scan their retina to enter

Crane: Used to lower the pieces down the 96 m drop

Poster of CMS: showing the different subdetectors

Computers and fancy stuff

Physicists at work!

More Computers

Mini replica of the CMS or giant-sized legos

Liquid Helium Tanks : keeping the CMS to two-three degrees above absolute zero where it needs to be

CMS

!

particles collide!

From the side

From below

Working

CMS plugged into the wall

Radiation is bad.

Birds' Eye View

Engineers working

More engineers

We weren't allowed back there

Lots of cool stuff

I hope you guys enjoyed these pictures! It's so insane to think that this is actually the smallest of all the detectors at CERN. And I actually took all of these pictures myself :]

References

We visited the LHC today, the large hadron collider. For those of you that may not be physic junkies, hadrons are a family of particles that includes protons and neutrons. It includes all the different experiments, such as ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb, and many others. The LHC is a system of tunnels that covers an area from Switzerland and into France. It is 27 km long, just around 17 miles. (We obviously only toured the first 100 meters). It is about 100 meters below the ground and has two long pipes running through the entire distance. These pipes will have a beam of protons running through it, and the particles collide where the experiments are. Each of the different experiments are attempting to use the same collision to find different information. One of the beams has protons running in one direction, and the other beam is running protons the other way. The superconducting magnets steer the protons through the pipes, to make sure the protons curve to the shape of the beam. If the superconducting magnets where not present, the protons could run right out of the pipes and even through the walls.

If for some reason, there is a security issue inside the LHC, the beam of protons is spread out, the magnets help  guide the beams to spread  out. Because if a person were to get near the LHC while it was running, they could get huge amount of radiation.

Outside of LHC

Helium Tanks: used to cool the LHC; it needs to be kept very cold

Family Day at CERN: playing with liquid helium to entertain the children

Right after you walk in LHC: the blue thing is a replica of a superconducting magnet

Meghan & I: in our very attractive hard hats

A bunch of pipes: in the LHC

Two proton beams: each sends proton in different directions

Keep going & going

You shouldn't touch that

High voltage

A lot of cables

This thing goes on forever: almost

OPAL, an old detector: look at how small it is compared to the new ones (this detected interactions between electrons and positrons)

ENJOY MY PICTURES :]  

References

    Kathy Copic works as a postdoc here at CERN, she has been working here for about a year with Colombia University. She helps graduate students with their work, and helped build ATLAS. She literally was sitting next to ATLAS, with a wrench and a few other people. Copic has become a specialist in one small part of ATLAS. When the LHC begins to run and something odd is occuring, she will be able to tell if it is her part that broke and she will be the one to help fix it. By studying her part, she knows what it will look like when it is working incorrectly. There are millions and billions of parts within ATLAS; people specialize in specific parts in case a piece breaks they will be more likely to identify the problem and fix it quickly.

    Although the LHC is one of the most complex, if not THE MOST COMPLEX, thing humans have ever developed...they are attempting to  answer the most basic science questions. Such as, whats everything made of? It's important for students, and people, to realize that science is not all memorization of facts and scientists that lived hundreds of years ago. Science is still happening and most importantly, questions are still being answered. As long as we still have questions left to ask, there will still be science left to do. 

    Copic personally would like to see an improvement in our standard model. She believes that particles are much like the periodic table of elements, in that they can all compare to one another having both similarities and differences, trends, and patterns. She hopes that they will find a pattern between all the particles, why some have mass and others don't. 

References

References

Our first day (or should I say first two days) was very busy, so lets start from the beginning. The group went to the airport at 3pm in Rochester. After an hour long flight, we arrived in Philly to catch our connecting flight. <<Eight hours later>> we landed in Zurich. On the train to Geneva, we all got to view the surrounding countryside as well as the mountains, which looked like something you would see on TV. At this point, we lost six or seven hours and had to catch sleep whenever possible, since after a crazy cabby navigating through busy traffic and getting to CERN, we were to tour CMS with the other students.

CMS [aka Compact Muon Solenoid] is one of the major experiments at CERN. It is a detector that serves to collect data from collisions that will occur between protons once the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins running. Around two thousand people designed CMS from over thirty different countries, and more people were involved in the assembly. Basically, CMS is shaped like a washer with a few different layers like an onion. The first layer is a silicon tracker that is made of silicon pixels and silicon strips. This tracker gives you a trajectory of each particle coming out of a collision in order to calculate the momentum of that particular particle. The next layers are called the electromagnetic calorimeter and hadronic calorimeter which basically measures energy of particles. Following those is the muon detector. CMS was given the name because of its awesome muon detection system as well as measurement system. This detector is huge and we all had to take an elevator about 100 meters underground. These following pictures show CMS. There is a central doughnut looking thing, and on both sides are the rest of the detector. They will be put together when the LHC is ready to run.

This huge piece of machinery when running will be producing A TON of data. There are lots of computers on site at CERN in the CMS building (which are cooled by the fans in one of the following pictures). Once online, there will potentially millions of collisions per second, which converts to plenty of terrabytes of information per second constantly. Most of the data will be sent to universtities worldwide for analysis.

In the previous paragraph, I mentioned cooling. I noticed when i walked into the building that they had liquid helium on hand which is used to cool machinery. Then I noticed that CMS has pipes that bring water through the electronics on the detector to keep it cool when it runs. If computers need to be kept cool by fans, it takes alot more to cool a huge machine such as CMS. Below is an attempt to photograph some of these pipes to show an example... (kind of dark but use your imagination)

Aside from all that complicated physics stuff here are some more pictures that show the complicated wiring (zillions of wires) as well as more perspectives of the detector.

Before signing off, this last picture is the power source for the electromagnets. Check it out... not your normal household voltage and current. Touch this and you will be barbecued.

More posted tomorrow.

References

After lunch we got a tour ATLAS which is another detector at CERN which happens to be 82 meters underground. The ambition of this project is to describe all forces as one force. Similar to CMS, it has the same basic layers, but the difference is the superconducting magnets in the muon detectors. The central magnet weighs 240 tons will be moved inside ATLAS, but currently, like CMS it is not put together. The magnets with the red tape are part of the outer muon detection system. Everything that can be seen in the pictures is part of the muon system, all the other parts are inside of ATLAS ready to go.

 There will be 30 million proton bunch crossings per second when the LHC is running and a million proton-proton collisions per second, of which 200 interesting ones are selected with superfast electronics and stored for further analysis. (Extra fact: 7TeV per beam) Inside of ATLAS electronics change the data that is collected into electrical signals and convert them into digital. Most of the cameras are ready and taking data... not actual data from collisions, but from cosmic rays. [Cosmic rays=stuff from outer space]. Underground there are still enough cosmic rays to get data and one of the things cosmic ray showers produce is muons, which is what much of the instrumentation on ATLAS is set to check out.

References

We met an amazing scientist on Sunday (OK, we met lots of great scientists), but this one really stands out in my mind.   Her name is Katherine Copic and she's on the ATLAS team.  She lives there in Geneva, which is simply one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and she embodies exactly what science is to me...It's not just having a knowledge of how things work and a set of skills to help you apply those skills.  She can also explain it very well, isn't afraid to admit she doesn't know something, and loves to get her hands in there and get dirty.  I sometimes tell my students that science is a sport...it's something you do, not watch.  Some of my own students probably wonder why I have so many projects going on and this is why.  I love pushing my own knowledge beyond what I know and forcing myself to learn, and I love to get my hands dirty. (Look for her interview on LeighAnn's and Meghan's blogs.)

 Imagine that you like to work on cars, or cooking, or  taking stuff apart.  ATLAS, this amazingly large and complex machine is no different.  You grab a wrench, or something like that, and get in there and do it...it's no different.  Well, one small detail, you have 2000 BFF's (the other scientists on the team) to work with...

ATLAS: It's difficult to understand this picture since ATLAS is closed up, but we are looking at the end of the detector. If nothing else, you can see there is a lot going on there...Imagine millions and millions of wires...

References

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Physicsts have given up years of their lives, to help build and maintain the world's largest science experiment. A lot of money, time, and patience has gone into the projects at CERN. And this is the final stage before the firing up of CERN, data is supposed to start being collected in August. To the people have worked on this project for ten (maybe longer) years, this is the final surge before the experiment really begins. Robert Clare, an experimentalist on CMS working with University of California (who has been working at CMS since 2000, which he describes as a short time compared to other colleagues), illustrates the firing up of CERN as exciting, but stressful at the same time. There are still many problems that need to be fixed and a lot of work that needs to be done before any data is recieved. The scientists we have interviewed were all extremely excited for the firing up of the different projects, it is the moment they have been working towards for many years. Some scientists are even emotional towards the firing up of CERN, such as Alessandra Ciocio (an Italian born researcher at Berkley National Lab who has been working on ATLAS since 1993). She has so much passion about the projects she has been helping to develop, build, and analyze; "Achieving this level of work and results, it takes passion (above all else)." The passion of these scientists has lead to the creation of machines that could potentially tell us everything we could have ever dreamt of knowing about the Universe. The final moment, to see it finally fired it, is the climax of the physicists' life work.

One very important discussion we had with the scientists is why all of this matter, what is this going to do, why should a high school student care? And I could see where somebody would think that this is completely useless to them; I mean why would a teenager care about the creation of the Universe, hardly seems to affect them. The applications of the discoveries could be endless-the scientists don't know what will come from this experiment. In the past, CERN has created not only medical applications for helping diagnose and treat tumors, but they also invented the internet. Our minds couldn't even begin to imagine what impact on our lives this could lead to. I mean a couple years ago, nobody would have thought the internet could have the effect it does in today's society. Also, it is not only the applications that people should care about, but just the level of knowledge we could reach with these experiments. Each person has a sense of innate curiosity; every person is born curious. Every baby gets into things around the house, explore all over, touching and searching everything, because we are so curious to understand the things around us. The experiments at CERN are attempting to explain the things that are so basic we don't even tend to ponder the questions for long. Such as, "how did everything get here?" "what is everything made up of?" and "what's next?". Ciocio when asked what she would say to high school students wondering why they should care about this said, "Don't loose your curiosity, this is what counts, this (curiosity) is what makes us human beings." It is most exciting, because anything could come from this, the scientist just don't know where this experiment will take our society (scientifically, culturally, technologically). As Clare states, "The text books have not been written yet, and this what we're doing-writing future text books...If we already knew, the textbooks would already be written." Malcolm Fairbairn, a dark matter theorist at CERN, described most people as curious about why things are the way they are, and CERN is the perfect project to accomplish this, but if a person doesn't care...there isn't much motivation to care, but there are always the applications.

Now to discuss what every common person is wondering....is CERN going to produce black holes or strangelets that devore the entire Earth?

I put that in massive font because I hear the question asked a lot back home. A lot of people are very concerned about what CERN could potentially produce, becuase the answer is we aren't really sure what the outcomes of this project are going to be. This worries people...even the scientists don't know exactly what knowledge we will unlock with the opening of CERN, so its only normal for a person to be scared of what they may not understand all too well. The answer is no, CERN will not produce black holes that will envelope the entire earth. Claire says "he's not too worried about black holes, he compares worrying about the black hole is like worrying about vaporizing while shaving because there is just as much of a probability of you shaving and vaporizing into another dimension as there is a black hole producing to envelope the Earth. He explains that even if CERN could produce black holes, it would not be a threat, because in order for a black hole to live, it must be stable. The black holes that would be produced here would be so unstable that they would decay into quarks almost instanteously. Ciocio, when questioned, started off immediately with saying "we are not going to create a blackhole." People have feared that there is so much energry, in order to replicate the big bang, but what they don't realize is that this is happening on such a small scale (with protons). Also, the energy produced is not heat, it is radiation. This is the only possible danger of CERN, but it is far enough underground to not matter. As long as no person is standing by it while it is on, we will be okay. Fairbairn says it is the responsible thing to do: worrying about what they are doing. But the production of a black hole idea "is a bit silly." They are cosmic rays (FAR more powerful than protons smashing) hitting Earth hundreds of times in one second, this energy is far stronger than anything they can produce at LHC. If the LHC produced black holes that could destroy the Earth, cosmic rays would have already destroyed the Earth. Hopefully, this rumor will be proven false with the lawsuit coming up.

Don't worry about the black holes, but be aware of what is going on at CERN. This could affect the rest of your future than you could possibly realize now.

References

Today was almost completely booked! This morning we
started off the day by heading to one of the sites along the acceleration part
of the LHC. This is basically an extremely long tunnel that holds the pathway
along which the particles will travel, and the magnets that will steer them.
The section that we visited did not have any magnets installed, so we could
still see the two beam pipes running down the tunnel which was really neat!

    After we got back from the LHC, we had lunch, worked on
our video (which is turning out to be way more of a pain than we originally
expected...), and went to this museum at the CERN visitor center, which was
pretty amusing for a bit. Then we all gathered at the front of this visitor
center building to go tour ATLAS!

    The ATLAS can be explained simply as immense. It was by
far the biggest piece of machinery I have ever seen in my life, and would even
go as far as saying that there is no machine in the world as large and compact
as this! We only got a limited tour of the facility since it was the middle of
'Open Day' and they were running people in and out as fast as they could, but
we still at least got to see it in all its majesty and wonder at its size and
complexity.

    ATLAS basically has the same purpose as CMS, but they are
constructed differently, and both were planned to find the data in a different
way. There are several reasons for this. One is just for the science! They know
that if you have two different detectors that both have data that comes to the
same conclusion, the probability that they are right is much better than if
there was just one detector. Another reason was that they wanted a little bit
of competition between projects, so as to motivate the scientists to make the
'better' collider, and in turn come up with two phenomenal detectors!

    Tomorrow is the 'Open Day' for ALL of the public to come
and see, so we are going to have one more interview with another scientist, and
also interview some of the people on the outside that come for an inside look
at this project. Unfortunately tomorrow is the last day of our excursion, so we
have to head back to Zurich
tomorrow evening, and catch our airplane early the next morning. =[ 

    Oh! And tonight we worked a lot on our video, and are
moving along fairly well with it. We just need to get ourselves taped, and add
the interviews we are doing tomorrow to it...so that’s basically it for
tonight.

    Bonne Nuit! 

References

Well, it’s over unfortunately, and right now we’re here on
the long plane ride from Munich, Germany to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. There’s not much to
do, so I’m going to write pretty much a generalization of how amazing the trip
was. Obviously there is no internet service on the plane, so I am just writing
it now to pass time and put in the blog later.

Well first
there is the obvious reason as to why Meghan, Leighann, and I enjoyed this trip
so much, and that is basically going to Switzerland, and visiting the most
advanced physics experiment the world has ever seen. The things we saw, and
experiences we had both inside, and outside the experiment were unforgettable!
Seeing this experiment, and talking to the physicists involved with it in
person was truly a great way to learn about this project so that we could bring
it back home to all of you. There really isn’t any better way to do that, than
to do it yourself. Also, on the ‘Open Day’ we had the chance to talk to several
people from around the world about what they thought about this experiment, and
why there were there to experience it themselves. The consensus was pretty much
that they were very excited for this project to start in the summer, and
couldn’t wait to hear results from the data received.

Secondly,
there was the cultural aspect of this trip. I had never been to Europe before this trip, and neither had Leighann or
Meghan, so this was very new to us. To be able to visit another country, where
they don’t normally speak the same language as you (though most of them did
actually speak English), the food is different, and a lot of the values are
similar, but also very different, is very cool! It helps you to expand your
mind, and see things in a different sort of way.

One of my
favorite parts of this trip though, is the fact that we made so many new
friends who are all interested in close to the same thing as us. The teams from
Utah, Minnesota,
Florida, and Texas were all great people to be around,
and we were all very helpful to each other in working on the very frustrating
video projects we had to do for the people at FermiLab.

Finally, I
would like to mention the importance of pursuing the things that you enjoy
most. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Paradis presented his class with the opportunity
of joining his independent study group (ARG), and at first I was hesitant,
because I was afraid it would be too complicated, and I might not be able to
keep up, or stay interested. Yet, I decided that I would try it anyways, and
look where it has gotten me! I’ve discovered a huge interest in particle
physics, started an internship at the University of Rochester,
and just spent the last 4 days having the experience of a life time! So if you
are given the chance to do something that you enjoy, take it! Chances are it
will do things for you that you couldn’t have imagined. Also, if you find out
that maybe you don’t like it, then you now know that it’s not for you, and can
start pursuing new things. So whenever you can, just go for it!

Also a huge thank-you to Mr. Paradis
for this chance! I really can’t thank him enough! 

References

References

Today has been much more relaxed, and not as heavy on the schedule. Basically
what we have done so far is receive some very nice and high tech video cameras
and interview local scientists with them. This is basically for a video that we
will have finished by the end of the weekend that we need to hand into the CERN
people just for some more public relations material.

    We have interviewed three scientists. Two of them being
Experimental Physicists (Robert Clare and Sandra Ciocio), and the other one, a
Theorist (Malcolm Fairbairn). The difference between Experimental Physicists
and Theorists is that the Experimentalists work on building the machine so that
it actually gives us accurate data, which they also collect, while the Theorists
examine the data and try to explain what it could mean. Their job as of the
past few years and now, is to try and predict some of the possible outcomes of
this.

    Well right now (4:20 Swiss time) the whole group of
students and quarknet people are headed out to Geneva for dinner and other stuff, so I have
to split (haha like a proton...). The video we are working on will not be done
for a few days, but should be up on YouTube soon afterwards...I think.

References

    During our interview with Malcolm Fairbairn a favorite
subject of mine came up, known as 'Dark Matter'. Leighann did a great job of
explaining this on one of her earlier posts, but what she did not get into was
the related topic of 'Dark Energy', so I am going to indulge you on my own
personal understanding of it.

     An assumption all scientists make, is that dark
matter has pretty much the exact same properties as regular matter, just
missing the ability to reflect or emit light energy. So how I am going to
explain this is in relation to a high pressure system in weather (or a change
in pressure between two rooms).

    When you have a high pressure system, there is obviously
a larger density of oxygen molecules per inch than in a low pressure system.
Now what these compacted molecules will want to do is find as much space as
they can, and move away from the high pressure system. This is what causes
wind. (You also notice this when you move between two rooms with a different temperature,
and there is a draft moving through the door. One room on either side of the
door has a higher pressure than the other causing molecules to try and move
from the high to low pressure) Well this is pretty much the same thing that is
happening to the universe. At the big bang, there was an infinitely large
amount of 'stuff' packed into an infinitely small space, so the 'stuff' that
was there very badly wanted to move away from all the other 'stuff' (I’m using
the word 'stuff' because we don’t know exactly what existed at the big bang).
This caused a very fast expansion! So as these particles expand, the density of
the universe will get smaller and smaller as all the matter is moving into more
and more space. So what we used to think to be true was that eventually gravity
will overpower this need for the matter to expand, and will slow down the
expansion to a stop and begin pulling it all back together. Yet from
observations made by several generations of scientists, the expansion is not
slowing down, but it is speeding up. So the idea of Dark Energy is supposed to
explain this.

    It explains it by saying that 4% of matter is visible,
20%-35% is dark matter, and 60%-75% of the universe is a sort of field that is
dark energy. So, since dark energy is more of a field than matter, it does not
become less dense as the universe expands. It stays the same density throughout
all of space, and throughout all of time. So what happens because of this is
the universe will never stop accelerating outwards, because the unchanging
field of dark energy will make the rest of matter continue to want to expand
outwards away from each other.

     Now, I really hope I didn't lose you during that,
because I'm not going to lie, I got myself lost several times throughout that.
So, please! If you have any questions on this, do not hesitate to send me an
email or post a reply!

    Thanks for reading! 

References

Our group has been back home for almost two whole days now. We arrived back in Rochester on Monday night. I am sad that we only really got to spend five days at CERN. Enough was packed into that time, but there is still alot that we could learn from the people there. The most amazing part for me was definately learning from the physicists at CERN who were willing to share their knowledge with us. Hopefully in the future, we will stay in contact with some who may become involved with our research group. It's exciting how much it has grown in just this past year.

References

We will be leaving for Switzerland tomorrow afternoon, and I havn't even finished packing! This is something that we have been talking about for weeks, but it finally seems real that we will be at CERN in just a few short days. Mr. Paradis must be panicking about getting everwhere on time as we have only recently found out that our schedule for transportation will be tight.

This is a picture of the LHC. It is 27 km in circumference and is buried over 50 m underground.

References

We just got back from Geneva, and are working like fiends on the videos and other stuff. Geneva was really cool! We went to a bunch of shops and walked around the old part of town, which had some very cool buildings and streets. Our dinner was at this hotel sort of place, and it was kind of meager and VERY expensive (luckily we didn't have to pay for it!). Tomorrow is almost completely booked, but I will be on tomorrow night to update you all with most likely a very large post!

References

Here is a short clip of one of our interviews with physicists...Alessandra Ciocio.

References

            We have been back in Rochester since Monday night; and I want to go back already. I miss waking up and seeing the beautiful mountains, having interesting discussions with the scientists, the town of Geneva, and of course, seeing all the science behind the scenes. Through this short five-day trip, I learned a lot about myself. I made a promise to myself that one day I will come back to CERN. This time I won’t be interviewing the physicists, I will be the physicists.

            I have found the trip to be absolutely amazing, and inspirational. I have always been unsure about what I should do with my life. I have always known that I loved science, but I never knew what to do with my passion for science. Now it is so clear to me, I don’t see how I could want to do anything else but physics. I want to be involved in the projects at CERN. To think that I could potentially have my hands in helping to solve the riddles that have puzzled the human race since existence, is mind blowing. I want to dedicate my life to appeasing the curiosity of humans.

            I especially found this trip so motivating because I am a girl. Talking to my future physics professors, I found out that next year there will be two girls in the physics department (and one of them is, of course, yours truly). Within science, especially physics or engineering, girls are the minority. We are the underdogs. Being at CERN, I could see that there are girls who have already accomplished the goals I want to. It gives me an extra push to go for the things I want and not worry about stereotypes or anything of that matter.

References

So today is my last full day to get anything done while were still home, so it was a bit crammed at school today! Other than that I'm pretty excited and really can't wait to leave tomorrow! I'm a little nervous, and it really is very hard to grasp the fact that we REALLY are going to the particle collider at CERN. We should be writing things in here at least daily I'm expecting, if not more. So read up! and I hope its as interesting to you as it is to us!! haha

-Nick

References

    Today we interviewed three scientists today. At first, I was nervous that I wouldn't know what to ask, but the scientists were friendly and explained things in terms we (as high school students) could understand-it was actually pretty easy.

      Robert Clare was the first scientist we interviewed. He is an experimentalist at the CMS and works with the University of California. He has been working on CMS since 2000, which he jokingly calls a 'short amount of time.' He was raised throughout the United States, and now does research and teaches (undergraduate and graduate students). He has been working on the control system for the "M cap muon chambers." So pretty much, he helps to make sure that the muon detectors are working properly. Once everything starts running, Clare will work with analyzing the data found by the detectors and also doing 'shift work,' just monitoring to make sure everything is working properly. Of all the things CERN is looking for, Clare is most looking forward to the potential discovery of the higgs boson. The higgs boson is a theoretical particle, that gives things mass. We currently believe that the higgs is attracted towards certain particles giving them more mass; whereas, particles that attract the higgs less, have a lower mass. Muons are the signature of the higgs boson, they can signify that a higgs may have been there. As Clare describes about the CMS, "MUON IS OUR MIDDLE NAME!" When asked about working with scientists from all over the world, he described it as slightly difficult, but mostly it is "neat" being exposed to all the different cultures. People tend to have fears about cultures that they don't understand, but working with different sorts of people opens your eyes. He has seen people from countries that are at war with another, work together for science. Before the Iron Curtain came down, there were people from the USSR working with people from the US; and Pakistans working with Isrealites. And I truly think that this is amazing...how people can put aside their cultural differences for a common goal of science. 

 Higgs Boson

The second scientist we interviewed was Alessandra Ciocio, as research physicist from Berkley National Lab in California. She was born and raised in Italy. She has been working at ATLAS (another experiment within CERN-which we are visiting tomorrow!) since 1993, she has helped build the inner detector and before that, she was helping to improve prototypes and designs. When ATLAS begins it run, she will be involved in operation and "hopefully have time to be apart of data analysis." She believes that this experiment has been developed through teamwork and passion. The passion of the physicsts and engineers has been remarkable to keep everything going, despite how complex it is. Also, every single part of the experiment is a collaboration (international, at that). Every single group working on one part is connected to another group working on a different part. All of this couldn't have happened without everybody working together and their desire to make it happen. Ciocio describes the language barrier as making the work difficult, but almost everybody now speaks English. However, Ciocio finds it interesting to work with people from so many different backgrounds and cultures. She is currently working on a youtube piece for the highlights of the work she has done on ATLAS, once it has been posted I will edit to add the link :]

The ATLAS detector: the one Ciocio helped build

The other ATLAS: Greek mythology-he holds the entire world on his shoulders

 The last scientist we interviewed was Malcolm Fairbairn, a theorist specializing in dark matter. He (originally) lives in Manchester, England. Now you may wonder what a theorist does; he describes the work he does as "complimenting the work of the experimentalists." He hopes to compare the results from CERN to astronomical observations (something along the lines of "oh look this does this here...so it must do it there too"). Now what dark matter is literally, matter we can not see. Baryonic matter (meaning the matter made of protons and neutrons...like us!) only makes up about 4% of the entire mass of the Universe. Now the question is .... what about the other 96% of the mass in the universe...what is that? Well, the answer (we believe) may be dark matter, which is matter that has mass, but does not emit any light. We know that dark matter has mass because we can see in space its effects on objects around it. Possible candidates for dark matter are particles called neutrinos (which are [practically] massless particles that emit no light).  CERN maybe able to detect signs of dark matter by finding the mass of the particles colliding, and then after the collision, finding the sum mass of all the new particles. If there is any mass missing, it could be a sign of dark matter. Now you may wonder why dark matter, well matters. In Fairbairn's words, "it matters, because it's there." There is also something Fairbairn is studying called dark energy, but it is a bit complicated, maybe I'll update in the future about it when I understand more.

Dark Matter & Energry: Pie chart of mass distribution of the Universe

References

ATLAS is one of the largest, and probably most famous of all the detectors in CERN along the LHC chain. It is very similiar to the CMS; it is set up almost identically to it, and are basically trying to accomplish similiar goals. Chances are one of the detectors will find something 'interesting' before the other does, and then the other detector could look for it, this would make their arguments and evidence stronger. CMS and ATLAS are set up in almost identical ways. In both, the center is made of silicon to get x and y coordinates and measure the momentum of particles, then followed by a layer of electromagnetic calorimeter (to measure energry of electrons, positrons, and photons), hadronic calorimeter (measure energry of protons, neutrons), and then the outer layer is a system of muon detectors. The main difference in the two is the muon detectors. ATLAS has superconducting magnets within the muon detectors, while CMS does not. These magnets will curve the path of the muons within ATLAS. Also, ATLAS has lighter magnets that, they believe, will allow particles to travel easier. Whereas, CMS is heavier, and may restrict some movement of particles. Both are aiming towards the same goal, and in a way are competitors. In the end; however, they are working together towards the same goals.

ATLAS: the visitor center

Mountains: The view from outside of ATLAS

Low Oxygen: sign within ATLAS

ATLAS

Birds' Eye View: of the ATLAS detector

Machine: a part of ATLAS

Construction: is still taking place within ATLAS

So Complex: its amazing to think about how this is so intricate

Looking up

ATLAS again: most of the parts of ATLAS are 'tucked in' or hidden

Looking up: towards ATLAS again

Tunnel going into ATLAS: this hall made me feel like I was in Angels and Demons :]

A control Panel

FORBIDDEN: we weren't allowed to get past this

Pipes and Cables

They label their chairs: I felt privileged to sit on that

Not allowed back there either

Computer and a control room: through a very dirty window

References

    Okay, so you have probably heard about the video that all of the student journalism teams had to prepare while we were abroad. Though you are probably wondering what it is, and what went into making it.

    Well, all it really is, is pretty much another short video made about some aspect of CERN that we decided to delve into. Though it doesn't get very deep into the science, it focuses very much on the scientists, and their opinions. As you know, we conducted some interviews with several of the scientists there, and we are using footage from these (among other things), as the basis of our film. The topics include the scientist's attitude towards things like the law suit against CERN for its "potential" to make a black hole, what the discoveries could mean to the future of our planet, and how much dedication went into the construction of the LHC.

    Making the video, I have to say, was an adventure, to say the least. It wasn't very difficult, but it definitely tested everyone on the team's patience. Yet, despite its challenges, we continued working on it, and came out with a decent rough draft of a video, that I believe all of us will be very proud of in the end. I plan on working with it until its perfect, and will hopefully have it ready to present at our multiple public presentations in the near future (it will also probably be up on YouTube eventually).

References