CERN
Posted: 01 Jun 2013 22:33
So I was in CERN with the company I work for yesterday, to visit the ATLAS detector. It was super cool (even though I had to travel around for hours all over switzerland that day, and get up at 5:45 in the morning...)
We were guided by actual Physicists. And got to see the actual detector! (It is currently in a maintenance break.
This is the control room. Since the detector is not running, only surveillance images are shown, and not many people are there.
This is a small model of the detector. You can see the tiny humans on the side for scale.
The elevator down. It is reached by passing through a two step lock with radiation detector. The elevator has its own power supply and is isolated from the rest, so it can be used even in case of a fire. (Which is important, considering the accelerator is around 100 meters below ground)
The ATLAS detector. It is currently undergoing maintenance, so the middle part is pulled out. In the inside of the detector, the collisions happen at a frequency of 40 MHz. Each collision creates about 5 MB data. The data comes from various detectors layered around the collision spot, that try to track the path a particle takes through the detector and its energy. This allows identifying the particles that are created in the collision and by that what was created in the collision.
There was an exhibition with some interesting artefacts of the past, like the first Web Server ever (the WWW was created at CERN for easier coordination and information exchange)
The trip was totally worth it :D
We were guided by actual Physicists. And got to see the actual detector! (It is currently in a maintenance break.
This is the control room. Since the detector is not running, only surveillance images are shown, and not many people are there.
This is a small model of the detector. You can see the tiny humans on the side for scale.
The elevator down. It is reached by passing through a two step lock with radiation detector. The elevator has its own power supply and is isolated from the rest, so it can be used even in case of a fire. (Which is important, considering the accelerator is around 100 meters below ground)
The ATLAS detector. It is currently undergoing maintenance, so the middle part is pulled out. In the inside of the detector, the collisions happen at a frequency of 40 MHz. Each collision creates about 5 MB data. The data comes from various detectors layered around the collision spot, that try to track the path a particle takes through the detector and its energy. This allows identifying the particles that are created in the collision and by that what was created in the collision.
There was an exhibition with some interesting artefacts of the past, like the first Web Server ever (the WWW was created at CERN for easier coordination and information exchange)
The trip was totally worth it :D