CERN and the collider through the eyes of a tourist

Recently, our book for children "Simple Science" was published, about which I already spoke about earlier. After a couple of weeks, the second comes out, then the third and fourth. In all of them, simple experiments are presented for children 5-12 years old. But now I’m thinking about a more adult audience - middle and high school students. Of course, they can also do experiments from the published book, but youthful maximalism will make itself felt, and we will get the answer: “What are these children's experiences ?! Where are the serious things ?! Where are the experiments with elementary particles, radiation, the speed of light, DNA, liquid nitrogen, and so on? Where is the instruction “how to make a pocket collider?”

And damn it, they are right! I did not find a single book on sale where there were “serious” experiments that could be repeated independently and at home. It is necessary to fill this gap, begin to search for material and its structuring. And, of course, first of all I went to ... CERN. I understand that my approach will seem delusional to many, but it seems reasonable and logical to me :) After all, in order to do something interesting, you must first dive into this “interesting” thing yourself and, having figured it out, try to pass on your impressions to others.

CERN

But first, a little about CERN, which Wikipedia describes as the European Center for Nuclear Research. The name contains the word "nuclear" and now it can confuse the viewer and lead him to the side of nuclear plants or, worse, nuclear bombs. I did not see any bombs or even a hint of them. But one can object: they hide them and plot the terrible. Maybe. But I have another argument: if they are such insidious villains, then they must be a very secretive and secret organization. In fact, I saw only positive faces of employees, full openness in the stories about their research and readiness for cooperation. Yes, and the very fact that I got there and within two days studied one object, then another, speaks in favor of my argument.

And my study of CERN began with a simple correspondence. Anatoly sent the first letter there on October 2, he received the answer rather quickly, but standardly - "we will consider such an opportunity." After several more letters, Marina Savino, who represents the office for relations with non-CERN countries (this is such an interesting post), was in the copy. She speaks Russian and, as I found out later, used to live in Moscow. Three weeks later, we already determined the route, dates and time of the visit, discussed the number of visitors from our side, exchanged contacts and so on. Everything about everything took 27 letters. But it was worth it!

It so happened that I had planned a trip to Austria just at that time and I had to go by car. And when you drive 2000 km., Why not slip another 600? So I got to CERN on January 7, 2014.

In today's story, I will not touch on anything scientific or anything technical. Such information is very much on the interesting site Elements.ru . I just wanted to describe the visit to CERN through the eyes of a tourist.

Reception

First, I arrived at the parking lot with a barrier, which itself opened in just 10 seconds. It turns out that it does not automatically open, there is a camera there, the guard looks at the number of the car and passes it. Anyone can drive, but only once. The next day, most likely, the barrier will not rise. Well, they told me so later.



He went to the reception, where at the indicated time Marina was waiting for me.



It must be said that all excursions at CERN are conducted only in English or French. And I do not really know either one or the other. And here is such a gift - a Russian person. She announced the plan of our excursion voyage and we immediately started to work.



And the excursion began with a short lecture about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider with watching a video. I must say that Marina is a skilled storyteller. I forgot to say that I came there not alone, but with my family. It so happened that with me, for various reasons, everyone who I suggested refused to go. I tried to understand these people who refused such an opportunity to visit the heart of the world of experimental science, but could not. And my colleagues on the trip turned out to be a wife and a son. So, the story of Marina made such an impression on his wife that she changed her skepticism to wild interest and for the next six hours, she and I rushed from one object to another. At first, the son was shy and was clearly not at ease, but when we went down to the detector, all this was completely removed.

"The globe"

After the lecture, we went to the Globe. This is such a round building that is often shown on TV when talking about CERN. This building from the outside looks rusty such a contraption, but in reality it is wooden. And in the evening she also glows great.

On the ground floor is the CERN Museum, in which I met a couple of interesting exhibits: the first particle accelerator, which can fit in your pocket.



And three sheets of paper with the first article of Peter Higgs (2013 Nobel Laureate), in which he sets out his idea about the now open “Higgs boson”. But in general, this is such an ordinary place in the style of all museums of science and technology.



What is at the top of this “globe” I forgot to ask.

Public catering

Since we were not in the museum for so long, we had the opportunity to visit the local dining room and eat. This is a place where only employees dine, and access to it is closed from the outside. However, it is still very crowded, but positive and tasty. And also, it seemed to me, not cheap. In general, Switzerland is becoming more expensive compared to, say, Germany or Austria. Dinner cost me 800r. But most likely, they have some special offers there that I did not know about. And one more oddity - they do not accept cards for payment there. Cash only.

Administrative buildings

After lunch, we walked along the corridors of several buildings. At the same time, in order to move from one building to another, you need to go through the third and its second floor. Get lost there once spit.







We looked into the assembly hall. Marina said that earlier a board hung in it and the speakers on it drew something there. And when it was replaced with a projector screen, there was a whole scandal. Conservative people, these theoretical theorists.



They even have a post office there.

Bicycles

Since inside the LHC tunnel you can only ride on small-sized equipment, you can often see photographs where an employee moves along the accelerator by bicycle. We were not allowed inside the tunnel, but I saw many bicycles where in the territory:

Open-air museum

In the courtyard there is a small lawn where they pulled out old exhibits (previously operating).



And miniature streets bear the names of different scientists.

SM18

The place where we watched all this is in Switzerland, right on the border with France. And if you want to show some objects along the route of the Great Hadron Collider tunnel, then they put people on a bus and take them to France. Fortunately there is one Schengen zone. And our next destination was already in France, 3 kilometers from the Globus building. We drove there in our car. This was the place where all superconducting magnets are tested, thanks to which it is possible to accelerate protons to such energies. In fact, this is such a large hangar or workshop with the name "SM18". It has a lot of interesting things! I will show a few photos from there.



Place of testing and “training” of magnets at low temperatures:





This is a piece of the spent segment of the accelerator:







And this is a place that is designed to compensate for the compression of materials during cooling and tension during heating. In other words, a compensator:



And this is the junction of superconductors. Once, in one such place, there was a “problem” and a well-known malfunction occurred, several years ago, as a result of which the accelerator stood a lot of time for repair:



This is how superconductors themselves look like on the background of copper conductors, which are equivalent in current transmission capabilities:

CMS detector

And finally, we went to look at the most interesting place for me - the particle detector. There are four of them along the path of accelerated particles, we were brought to the CMS. There are Atlas and some more.

On the spot, the three of us were handed over to Alexander, a CERN employee. He also turned out to be Russian and knew everything about the collider.



And it began. First we walked past the place where they monitor the work of the detector:



But these guys spoke very loud Russian and obviously not about protons :)



Then there was an elevator and many floors down:



Here are a few photos along the way:









Well, in the end, we almost there. It remains to overcome the main door with secret access. By the way, Alexander said that right here they shot a couple of shots for the film "Angels and Demons". I can’t confirm or refute - I didn’t watch the film.



Then the corridor:



And voila! Detector:



I will not hide, I was a little upset. After all, I wanted to see this:





I did not say one important thing. Detectors can only be accessed when the accelerator is stopped. It happens not often. They can turn off a week for a couple of hours or a day a month for some kind of repair work or diagnostics. But even then only employees serving the detector have access there. And for onlookers like me, access is generally always closed.

But now the accelerator is stopped for scheduled repairs and upgrades and it has been going on for a year and will last the same. And it is precisely at these “wonderful” moments that the suffering are allowed there. It’s clear that they’re only allowed to look at a small piece. And I was just not very lucky, because just a month ago (according to our guide) the detector rings were shifted elsewhere and a review opened up for much more interesting gizmos.

But in the end, I was glad about it:





By that time it was already dark on the street and we were tired (but happy!) Driving back to Switzerland.

Soon we will translate and voice one understandable and useful animation clip, which I shot there, and put it in the next post about CERN. Next I’ll try to make a series of simple and funny videos with explanations “on the fingers”, which will tell you about the principle of operation of the accelerator, detector and some other interesting things on the LHC. And, perhaps, I’ll shoot a couple of experiments for children on the topic of elementary particles. These are the plans for January-February.

Book for children "Simple Science"

Well, in the end, I want to again ask all those who have ideas or real opportunities to promote our book to share their thoughts on this. Any information will be useful to us. Here is information about the book and the application for the iPad .