CERN stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research) and was founded shortly after WWII with the target of joint international nuclear science projects for peaceful purposes.
We were lucky enough to get two tickets for a guided tour in Geneva, so we were quite excited!
CERN is famous for a quite a few things, but mainly for
a) the invention of the world wide web (which is
NOT the same as the internet; the Americans have invented that!), and
b) the massive, MASSIVE (imagine a Jeremy Clarkson voice here) proton accelerator ALICE, or
Large Hadron Collider, that was built with a circumference of 27km, 100m below the surface, covering parts of Switzerland and France.
Protons are accelerated to more than 99.9% of speed of light and then shot against each others. Their collisions are simulating The Big Bang, so the scientists learn a lot about what our universe is made of.
Unfortunately our tour guide spoke English with an extremely heavy Italian accent and was almost incomprehensible. But even if he had spoken German we probably would not have understood a lot.
Still we really enjoyed the tour a lot as they were showing some very interesting movies, we had a chance to see the CERN control centre and we were able to breathe an atmosphere of internationality, science and intellectual freedom that reminded us very much of the Star Trek philosophy.
We would have loved to grasp a look at ALICE, but unfortunately this was not possible. Surely we highly recommend a visit of CERN to everybody who is planning to visit the area!
Ohh, very envious. I've have been watching progress on the LHC for years and following the development of the different detectors. It has been a driver for more network bandwidth within the R&E community. Pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteWe thought you might like this ;-)
DeleteI've got to slow down.....after spotting Herons, Sand Hill Cranes and Pelicans all day I thought your subject was HERONS flapping their wings into each other......context should have helped me avoid that mistake.
ReplyDeleteVery cool museum; the photos, explanations, etc. from all of your travels........Rick Steve's has nothing on you two!!
That gave us quite the chuckle... Herons colliding... ouch. Poor birds. Thanks, Coop. We only get a glimpse of what's around us, merely bouncing around like one of these particles sent on their way...
DeleteGood stuff Sonja! I echo RichardM's remarks....it would be so cool to see the place.
ReplyDeletewow .. that has to be the coolest place in the world, and I never would have thought to visit and expect a guided tour. Thanks so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAn excellent way to spend the day and inspiring. Soon I'll be a better tour guide in my new area, but for now it's just work.
ReplyDeleteThere is a time for everything, Martha. We do the "tour guide" thing now as we don't have that other thing called "work" just yet.
DeleteMy seasonal work will soon slow and then I'll be knocking on doors looking for work again. I hope very soon that job for you will swing by.
DeleteNow that would be a cool tour. Great job scoring tickets. Big Bang indeed. The shear size of it is unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteIf one is young, smart and enthusiastic, that's the place to be. The Italian guide was certainly bursting with the latter.
DeleteI have the T shirt
ReplyDeleteSo you are a survivor of the collisions!
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