CERN

I realize that these posts are incredibly anachronistic, but you will have to deal until my posts catch up to the current date, because I'm just writing about whatever is on my mind.

So for those of you who do not know, my dad is currently working at Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire also known as CERN (it used to be called Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, which is where the C in CERN comes from). CERN is the site for the Large Hadron Colider (LHC) which is the next generation particle accelerator. The project my dad is working on is called ATLAS. It is the largest of the six major experiments which are being conducted at the LHC and is designed to measure a very broad range of signals.

The amount of engineering going on for this project is enormous. I didn't have the opportunity to see the actualy detector, as entrance is extremely limited, but there are so many detectors, it is ridiculous. Just to give perspective, the detector will put out approximately 1 petabyte/second of raw data. And it's not as if these parts can be purchased at your local Radio Shack. Almost all these are designed and manufactured specifically for this experiment.

And to make it even more ridiculous, after assembling all the parts, they must lower it 100 meters underground, where the LHC actually resides. This requires two specialized cranes, each rated for up to 140 tons. Moreover, there are instruments that are longer than the length of the hole in which they must descend. So the engineers are forced to tilt the instrument, lower it 100 meters with just a few centimeters clearance from the walls on all four sides, then straighten it out underground. Simply put, ridiculous.