Eventful weekend

Hi, All,

To catch you up: I finally posted pictures of the 2008 Geneva Auto Show on our dropshots website. There's ~150 of them! -plus a few vids too. The best way to view them without being overwhelmed is to click on the "2008 Geneva Auto Show" Album on the left. That will give you a field of thumbnail images. If you rest your mouse on each the caption for the photo will show up, and you can choose to double-click on any one of them to see a bigger size photo. In fact you can get the full size photos if you keep clicking on them. :)

Also, last Sunday (March 30th) we went on a drive around the Jura. Here now is the map of the route we took.


View Larger Map

We first drove up to the Crozet "telecabine" - a mere ten minutes away - which takes skiers up to the top of the Jura - to ski the other side. (The town of Lelex on the other side also has a ski lift to the same runs.)

From near the telecabine we could observe the valley below, and the Alps beyond. In this first photo, the community of high-rises on the left is where we live in St. Genis, and the tower to left of them is the water tower on CERN property just on the Swiss side of the border. Click on it to get a larger version/better view.



These photos were "stitched" together for a panorama - didn't work so well for this second picture, but oh well...you see downtown Geneva, a glimpse of the lake, and the Saleve and Alps behind, with just a suggestion of Mt. Blanc.


From this location we took a brief stint up to Gex to get some gas before heading south. South of Collonge, you round the bend and pass through a gap in the Jura where the Rhone River flows through. At this narrow pass are the remains of an old fort, "Fort L'Ecluse," (great pictures here - it's in French, but you can use your mouse to see the panoramas!), high up on the cliffs, which is now a tourist attraction.

Another round of the bend takes you to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine - located at the confluence of the Valserine coming down from the valley north (where we were headed) and the Rhone. Then heading up the valley we found more winter than we had yet experienced ourselves...









Finally, at Mijoux, which is the ski town on the other side of Gex, we made the climb up and over the Jura back to our side. At the top, near "Col de la Faucille", Kathy saw these "snow curls" and had to take a picture:

This weekend was particularly eventful. CERN had its "Open Days". All around the area there have been large banners advertising the event, and huge long blue LHC dipole magnets festooning the roundabouts.

The big event was today, April 6th, in which numerous CERN sites were opened to the public, who were allowed even to go down to the LHC tunnel, and the underground caverns where the four different experiments on the ring are located: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHC-b. But we decided to avoid the festivities today in favor of the ones yesterday: they did the same thing on Saturday, except it was reserved for CERN personnel and their guests.

So I had reserved a slot for us to go down and see the CMS detector, now as it is mostly connected and just about ready to go. (We had previously been given a special private tour of the detector in the Summer of 2006, when most of it was in the surface hall at Point 5, and a lot less further along). We got a babysitter for B in the afternoon, when he usually naps, and took off to see the detector.

We did get about a 15 minute tour of the cavern. Here now are just a few pictures from that tour.




"It's got huuuge, sharp...it can leap...look at the bones!!!"

And then after stocking up on souvenirs we drove to Meyrin to see if we could get in to the cavern for ATLAS (A Toroidal Lhc ApparatuS - cute, huh?), CMS's main competition. But it was clear fairly quickly that the line was so long to get in (far larger turnout than they expected, even for CERN-personnel-only day), that at least one of us would have to go back to relieve the babysitter. So K went back and I pressed on and in.

I was able eventually to get into the ATLAS demonstration about 45 minutes later, a lot better wait time than expected. They had a 15-minute lecture in their spiffy Control Centre (some of that lecture is posted on dropshots - but watch the screen, it's more understandable than the guy speaking), and also a several-minute 3-D movie with the glasses you put on.




And then we got our 15 minute tour underground. In both cases for ATLAS and CMS, the detectors are far more put-together; that plus the fact that they had to limit people's exposure to all the equipment and tight quarters , and the sheer numbers of people, meant that you actually couldn't spend much time looking at the detectors or get many angles for your pictures. The following pictures are from just one end of ATLAS. The major part of it extends off to the left. In the second picture, you can see the ends of the toroid magnets, from whence ATLAS gets its name, as the orange striped tubes.




Difficult to capture the scope in just a couple shots; brief videos of each detector can be found on dropshots.

(One of the best ways to explain the power of the LHC beams I've seen came this weekend. Each proton in the beam is given an energy of "7 TeV". A "TeV" is a tera-electron-volt, or 1 trillion electron-volts. One TeV is roughly the equivalent energy of a mosquito in flight. So "big deal," you say. Except that this equivalent energy is packed down to a size that is roughly 13 orders of magnitude smaller. Still, "big deal", you say. Man, you're a tough crowd! But what if I told you that the beam itself contains the equivalent energy of a 400 metric ton train traveling at about 100mph? And that the energy contained in the beam could melt a half-a-ton of copper? Ah, now I see I have your attention...So how is this possible? Well, simply multiply each subatomic flying mosquito by a factor of 300 million million - because that's roughly how many protons are in each beam. Wow, that's some swarm of mosquitoes! That's like a typical summer night at dusk on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Something any Minnesotan can relate to...There are many more such fascinating facts for the enterprising internet troller, at www.cern.ch, click on "The LHC".)

Then today we had two potlucks to go to: the first was in the afternoon for a family that is moving back to the States very soon. The family was one that had helped us a great deal last year when we were preparing to move out here, answering our questions and providing invaluable information and encouragement. We already have pictures posted of a gathering we went to at their house around Thanksgiving time. We will miss them a lot.

Again we got a babysitter for B for the potluck this afternoon, but for the evening potluck we took him with us. It was put on by women of CREW - CERN Relocated English-speaking Women (I think that's right...), K's been to a couple meetings and corresponded with several of the women. We got to meet some new faces and old, and generally had a great time. B did too, until, as in Cinderella, the "midnight hour struck, and the chariot turned into a pumpkin." Yep, he had a meltdown. Too much stimulation. So we skedaddled out of there, and it didn't take long for Ben to get all happy again. That's our boy.

Speaking of our boy, he's on the verge of crawling - finally! - but I'll let K provide more of the details of his progress.

Take care,
-PKBD