In my last post, I wrote about the second year anniversary of the Higgs boson discovery, so it was very timely that the weekend directly afterwards I spent at the Royal Society‘s Summer Science Exhibition, talking to the public about the Higgs boson and where it could lead.
The Higgs Boson and Beyond logo.
The exhibit was a partnership of many UK universities and they all sent researchers to take shifts on the stall during the event. I went on behalf of the University of Manchester. Here is a lovely video about the Higgs discovery, which was made for the exhibit:
High-energy physics aims to understand how nature works at a fundamental level described by elementary particles. Our current theory, the Standard Model of Particle Physics, is remarkably successful. Find out what the Higgs boson can tell us about new physics beyond the Standard Model.
Since I was working the weekend shifts, the exhibit was very busy both days and I was able to chat with many different people, from very young children to senior citizens, all wanting to know: “what is the Higgs boson?”. There were a lot of activities for them to take part in, such as working out the mass of the Higgs on a tablet computer, to manipulating a beam of electrons in magnetic field and also a competition to find rare Higgs events (and win prizes!). We also had an actual piece of the ATLAS detector (left over from when it was built) and knitted particles to help explain the theory of supersymmetry (or SUSY for short).
— Higgs Boson & Beyond (@HiggsBosonRS14) July 5, 2014
It was also fantastic that so many female scientists were available to work on the exhibit – just being visible, especially when there were so many young children visiting the stall, makes a huge difference!
— Higgs Boson & Beyond (@HiggsBosonRS14) July 7, 2014
Unfortunately the Royal Society Summer Science event is over for this year, but I highly recommend that you take a look at the booklet (via the website) that was produced for the exhibit. It’s very beautiful and it elegantly explains the whole process of creating a Higgs boson and how we study it, including some very difficult concepts!
Also, if you’d like the Higgs Boson and Beyond stall for a future science festival event, get in contact with them either on Twitter, or through their website: http://the-higgs-boson-and-beyond.org . Alternatively, you can leave a comment below and I will pass the message on.
Today is the Higgs boson’s second birthday! It was on this day, the fourth of July, in 2012 that the Higgs was unveiled to the world with the now immortal words of CERN Director General, Rolf Heuer, “I think we have it”.
Before the announcement was made, the atmosphere at CERN was like a rock concert. I, along with many PhD and summer students, spent the previous night waiting outside the auditorium where the talks from two of the LHC experiments, CMS and ATLAS, were to take place. This was to guarantee ourselves a seat to watch history being made.
Waiting in the queue for a seat in the CERN auditorium where the discovery of a Higgs-like boson was about to be announced.
It’s a shame that the room wasn’t larger as I know that many people were disappointed not to get a seat, especially if they had worked on the result, but I also think it’s fantastic that so many young people were able to be a part of it, as they will be the ones making the discoveries of the future. It was simultaneously streamed to other auditoriums in CERN, the ICHEP conference in Australia and online for the public to watch.
Such a privilege to be part of history! #Higgs#CERN
JoeIncandela from the CMS experiment went first to explain their results. He was followed by ATLAS spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti. Despite the importance of the results, many people on the internet didn’t like Fabiola’s choice of colours or font for her presentation and “comic sans” even started trending on twitter! It has now become a running joke at CERN, and there was even a video this April that CERN would be switching to the font.
The presentations concluded with a a standing ovation!
Standing ovation for the announcement by both CMS and ATLAS of a boson consistent with the Higgs! CERN, July 2012.
After the announcement, the audience poured out to join the crowds of people outside. My group headed the short distance to R1, CERN’s premiere restaurant. We sat outside and toasted the discovery with champagne and Pimms provided by Steve Bieniek from Heathrow airport. After a while excitement turned to exhaustion and I lay my head on my arms to nap. I woke when a reporter from the Times came over: “I could tell you were British” he told us, “as I could see the bottle of Pimms from the other side of the courtyard”. He asked us questions about the announcement and what we thought it meant. It seemed that I was coherent enough, even though I had just woken up, to make it into the article! Although, unfortunately the article is behind a paywall.
The next day the Higgs result was everywhere. It even made it onto the front page of the New York Times! The photograph included about four pixels of my head and I asked my American friends if someone could get a copy for me. It was brilliant how excited the world was about our discovery!
On the day, I had seen Professor Higgs, along with the other major theorists, from a distance. A little over a year later I was able to meet him in person. In 2013, Prof. Higgs was given an honorary degree at the University of Manchester only days after the Nobel prize for physics had been announced. I had just submitted my thesis and so was more than happy to spend the day preparing for his arrival by building a LEGO version of the ATLAS detector.
The team who rebuilt the ATLAS LEGO model at the University of Manchester.
Prof. Higgs was modest and fascinating to listen to as he told us the history of the theory. I was very fortunate to be able to get my copy of the New York Times front page article of the boson discovery signed by him!
Professor Higgs just after he had signed my NYT newspaper of the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN. Photo credit: S. Marsden. (Also, note I’m not a giant, just on the stairs)Signed copy of the front page of the New York Times from the day after the Higgs boson announcement, July 2012. If you look closely (and know where I was sitting) I can just be seen in the back of the auditorium!
If you’re celebrating Higgs-dependance day (as it was dubbed two years ago), you can re-live the excitement of the announcement by watching the recording on the CERN Document Server (CDS): http://cds.cern.ch/record/1459565
If you want to hear more about the Higgs boson (& beyond!), and are near London this week, the Royal Society has a Summer Science Exhibition including a Higgs boson stall. Since Tuesday, scientists from universities all over the UK have been talking to the public about the Higgs boson, it’s discovery two years ago and what we still want to learn. You can follow the Twitter account for the exhibit @HiggsBosonRS14 to see photos and find out more information. If you visit on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, I’ll be on the stall, so please come over and say hello!
Where were you when the Higgs boson discovery was announced? Did you watch online? Let me know in the comments below.
Last August (in 2013) the first LHComedy stand up show was held at CERN. I was in the final months of writing my PhD thesis, so obviously that was a perfect time to place myself at the mercy of a stand-up comedy crowd.
LHComedy: CERN After Dark
You might be asking, “why do a science comedy show?”. The word scientist can have so many negative connotations, just look at the autofill for Google if you type in “Scientists are…”, and you can see it’s not great!
Google’s predictive text for a sentence starting: “Scientists are…”
LHComedy was set up to combat some of these stereotypes, and of course, to entertain at the same time! This first event took place in CERN’s Globe of Science and Innovation and was hosted by Radio 4’s Helen Keen. There were fantastic performances by all the CERN amateur comedians: Alex Brown, Ben Frisch, Sam Gregson, Hugo Day & Claire Lee. Rob Knoops worked back stage to make sure everything ran smoothly. We also had professionals, Lieven Scheire and Piere Noveli, who were brilliant and not to mention the wonderfully geeky music from Jonny Berliner.
I performed a stand-up routine about particle physics and being a female physicist. I talked about being the only woman at an experiment at DESY during International Women’s Day and how my colleagues thought they could support me. I also recalled what happened when two male PhD physics students tried to show off when I worked as a barmaid (between semesters of my undergraduate physics degree).
We sold out all 300 tickets a week before the event so the globe was packed — an important factor when you do a stand-up gig is actually having an audience to perform to! That they were a lovely audience was an added bonus! The event was also broadcast live online via the CERN webcast and we had approximately ten thousand unique live connections – at the time it was the highest number since the Higgs announcement in July, 2012!
If you’d like to watch the whole thing, the link to the recording is here (if you’d like to jump ahead to me, I’m a little after 50 minutes, but I don’t encourage that! 😉 ): https://cds.cern.ch/record/1597883?ln=en
Me on stage for the LHComedy performance – 30th August 2014.
Since the first event, LHComedy has become Comedy Collider, due to another comedy group already having the original name. The evening was so successful, there had to be a second event, so as soon as after Christmas 2013, we begun the preparations. Recently, I’ve been diligently adding photos from our previous event onto the @ComedyCollider Twitter feed so that everything was up-to-date for the announcement of our second event! In case you missed it, here it is:
It will again take place in the Globe at CERN and all of our tickets sold out a couple of days ago, so we are looking forward to another full audience. Do not worry though, there will be a live webcast of the event here so you can watch online.
The show will be hosted by Chella Quint and we have a whole new ensemble of CERN amateur performers, Nazim Hussain, Aidan Randle-Conde and Cat Demetriades! We will also be joined by Helen Arney from Festival of the Spoken Nerdfor some fantastic music, and headlining will be FameLab Spain alumni, Miguel and Eduardo from The Big Van Theory.
Since I am in Romania for meetings this week, I will be watching the webcast too, and also monitoring the social media – why don’t you come over to @ComedyCollider during the show to say hi! Or you can use our hashtag, #noConCERN.
The next LHComedy event, Comedy Collider: No Cause for ConCERN, takes place at CERN tomorrow, Friday the 13th of June, starting at 8pm.
A little over a week ago, on Thursday 22nd May, the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) launched the Collider exhibit, a recreation of the experience of visiting CERN. I would have loved to have been there to help out, but unfortunately I had meetings at CERN the same week and couldn’t go in person. So I did the next best thing and suggested that we organise an ATLAS Virtual Visit to connect the Collider exhibit to CERN. A virtual visit is a live online connection to the ATLAS control room and is often used by schools to allow students to talk to scientists about the research taking place on the ATLAS experiment at CERN. As an aside, if you are a school teacher, you can organise a virtual visit for your class for free! Go to the following link to find out more: http://atlas-live-virtual-visit.web.cern.ch/atlas-live-virtual-visit/
Being at CERN also allowed me to show an example of just how faithful the exhibit is at recreating the corridors at CERN. In the following photo, Marieke (Manchester Science Festival Director at MOSI) and Andy (University of Manchester) pose in front of the recreation of a CERN office door:
I did get a few strange looks from the guy inside the office when I told him his door was part of an exhibit and I needed to shut it to take a photo!
In the ATLAS control room later that evening, we had physicists Steve Goldfarb, Hugo Day and myself. Hugo’s not technically an ATLAS physicist, but we let him off because he works on accelerators like the LHC, helping to provide us with lots of collision data! We chatted with visitors to the Collider launch as they walked past and answered their questions. I really enjoyed talking to everyone! Jon Butterworth, who was at the event to give a talk about his new popular physics book, Smashing Physics (available at all good book stores, I’m sure 😉 ) asked me where we were at the event. But honestly, I have no idea – all I could see of the room was red ceiling beams, which doesn’t narrow it down! Also, with the camera above us in the control room, and the computer screen below visitors in the exhibit, I did feel a little like they’d shrunk us and put us in the museum! You can see what I mean in the screenshot from the video feeds below.
At the launch of the Collider exhibit at MOSI, visitors talked to CERN scientists in the ATLAS Control Room. Screenshot courtesy of L. Aguirre.
I followed the rest of the launch on Twitter, and from what I could see it was a really successful evening! There were many Manchester physicists there to show what a strong contribution to the research at CERN Manchester (and indeed the UK) has. I was very proud when I saw the following tweet from a panel discussion with my PhD thesis examiner, masters supervisor and PhD supervisor respectively.
If you’re near Manchester and haven’t yet been to the Collider exhibit I thoroughly recommend it! This Friday, 6th June, there’s a late night opening:
Join us for a night at the museum that will entertain, inform and inspire. Mingle with scientists who work on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, get creative with drop-in screen printing workshops or make like an accelerated proton at our Large Hadron Collider roller disco*.
We’ll have another ATLAS Virtual Visit too, but this time with different physicists in the Control Room as I’ll be at the exhibit in person! Hopefully see you there!
If you’ve been to the Collider exhibit, in Manchester or when it was in London, I’d love to know what you thought, you can leave me a comment below!
On the 8th of May, I had some fantastic news in my inbox: the IBL, or Insertable B-Layer, had been taken 100m underground and installed into the ATLAS experiment at CERN! Unless you’re an ATLAS physicist yourself, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about when I mention the IBL. In short, it’s an extra layer of pixel detectors which has gone into the very centre of the ATLAS detector ready for data taking when we switch back on next year. This extra layer is there to cope with the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator to a higher energy by being faster, more accurate (the pixels are smaller) and better able to withstand the more intense radiation background. Working on prototypes of pixel detectors for the IBL, specifically on a new technology called 3D silicon pixel sensors, was the focus of my PhD with the University of Manchester and it’s brilliant that it has been successfully installed!
Installation of the Insertable B-Layer into the ATLAS detector. Photo credit Heinz Pernegger.
Last weekend was “Le CERN fête ses 60 ans avec ses voisins“, or public open day for CERN’s neighbours as part of the 60 years celebrations. If I’d known that I would definitely have been at CERN during the open day weekend, I would have volunteered to help, but instead I went along as a visitor myself. I have never been to visit the LHC tunnel before, so I was very excited yesterday when some friends said they were planning to go and that it was still possible to join a tour! It’s so rare to be able to visit the accelerator, because most of the time we are running and so it’s not open for tours – also, when the accelerator is on, it’s extremely radioactive!
Below are some of my photos from the trip underground and some extra explanations. Because my phone was already registered to connect to the CERN network, I had WiFi down there, so most of these were posted live.
The circumference of the LHC tunnel is 27 km, and there are only eight access points from the surface, so for the people working in the tunnel to get around easily there are bikes available.
For the LHC, there are two beams of protons; one goes clockwise and the other anticlockwise. These two beams need to be kept separate until we want to collide them inside one of the experiments around the ring.
We need strong magnets to bend the protons around the LHC, so they have to be cooled down to almost Absolute Zero (the coldest temperature there is at −273.15 degrees Celcius!).
The following is a sign to warn people working in the tunnel that there is gas being used or stored nearby. There are many people, however, who think that the person in the sign just looks a bit sad…
The tunnel that the LHC is based in was originally built for a previous CERN accelerator, called the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), which ran until 2000. A positron is the antiparticle of the electron. Using electrons and positrons gives a much cleaner signal because they are not composite particles (they do not contain other particles inside them). But because they are very light, we cannot accelerate them up really high energies and so the new particles we are looking for aren’t created. This is why it was decided to build a new particle accelerator after LEP finished but with protons instead of electrons.
The following signs are left over from when LEP was in the tunnel and remind people which way round each beam went.
I had a great time seeing the LHC and it was a rare treat to be able to go down and visit the accelerator! After the LHC tour, we decided we would check out how busy the open day was at CMS (another experimental detector on the LHC) – for this, see part two!
If you were at CERN for the open day last weekend, leave me a comment to let me know what you thought.
As this is the first time I’ve done this, you’ll have to excuse me if I stumble a little as I find my way. I wanted to start this blog as a place to collect all of the activities that fill my time (and my twitter feed!). I should probably introduce myself, as I guess that’s what you do in the first post! I’m Clara, I’m a particle physicist and I have the pleasure to be a part of the biggest experiment on the planet: the ATLAS experiment at CERN. I did my PhD in Manchester, UK with the HEP group, but now I live in Paris, France working at the Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire, or LAL for short.
One of the joys of my job is that I get to travel quite a bit, especially to Gevena in Switzerland where CERN is located. Below is a photo taken a couple of months ago when I went 100m underground to visit the ATLAS detector. We can only go when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is shutdown and we aren’t taking data, so you have to take the opportunities to go down when you can!
Me and the ATLAS detector.
I am also a science communicator and enjoy spreading the word about how exciting working in science is. So far, I’ve worked at science festivals, in schools and online to share my enthusiasm! I’ll be posting some more specific details about them in the coming weeks. I’ve also got a few exciting things in the pipeline so they will be announced here too (along with the usual places such as Twitter, Facebook and to anyone who meets me in person!). Speaking of twitter, if you’d like to follow me there you can find me at the very unimaginative handle, @claranellist, or click on the link on the side of the page.
I think that’s it for now. Thanks for reading! If you’d like to let me know a bit about yourself in the comments section, I’d love to know who has stumbled upon this (even if it’s no longer 2014).
Clara
Edit: Thanks to Alex for reminding me that this should, in true programming style, have been called “Hello World!”.
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Taking pictures of particles and other stories from a high energy physicist
