Category Archives: CERN

CERN > Freiburg > Wuppertal > Berlin

Berlin, CERN

The way back from the glaciers of the French alps we (Heike and me) started with an enjoyable night on the floor of Esbens CERN hostel room (thanx again) … as it turned out this was not the right way to recover after a day of snowboarding …

The next step on the journey was Freiburg where we were visiting some friends of mine I met at a summer university this year …
After dropping of Heike at the train-station (she had to go back to Berlin) I enjoyed another day in Freiburg and continued my journey …

The last stop before Berlin was the beautiful city of Wuppertal…
Climbing some hills, eating cookies, visiting the university built in the adorable style of the 70s and of course taking the “Schwebebahn Wuppertal” … this thing is over 100 years old! And for all you train-geeks here’s a little video

THE MACHINE

CERN

Today I had another opportunity to visit THE MACHINE…
Some people keep calling it ATLAS, I just call it THE MACHINE!
You can see


Still it is overwhelming and beautiful at the same time…
and a lot has changed since last time.
You can follow the build-up by watching the webcams.

ATLAS Inner Detector (ID) Barrel

CERN

Yesterday the ATLAS Inner Detector (ID) Barrel was tranported and installed into ATLAS. This includes the Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) barrel which is the machine I am mostly working on…
It’s getting closer and closer to the point where the real physics will start…

Things to come

CERN

Today the Scientific Policy Committee (SPC) of CERN released a first final plan for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC):
– beam pipe closure at the end of August ’07
– followed by LHC commissioning runs at 450+450 GeV (till end of ’07)
– shut-down for final machine commissioning
– followed by first physics runs at 14 TeV (full luminosity by end of ’08)

This might sound strange and boring for all non-physicists (even for some of them), but it’s at least a bit interesting for all those working for/at CERN…

I wonder if the B40-masterpiece will still be there at this time… PPJB rulez!

For those interested in movies…

CERN

… and the “machine” I am working for (on the physics/software front) I got something to look at.
I just got an email with a link to a webpage with some movies made out of webcam pictures taken in the cavern during the last months/years.

The birth of ATLAS http://www.hep.upenn.edu/atlas/movies/movies.html

[edit]
for those interested in other fancy stuff… I just got an email with this:
The official Ravensburger ATLAS jigsaw puzzle: click here (pdf)
and the ATLAS 3D viewer: click here (jpg)