In case you were distracted by some obscure technical ramblings about “beams” and “collisions”, you may have missed our hugely important announcement regarding CERN building numbers. If your mind has not been blown by CERN’s building numbering system, well, you better sit down, because the numbering going on inside buildings is about to get a lot more amazing.

Let’s take a look at buildings 593 and 572, home of the technical training classrooms.  The classrooms are spread across these two adjacent buildings, attached by a short corridor.

Rooms at CERN are labeled with three numbers: building, floor, and room number. This actually makes sense. For example, the meeting room on the first floor of building 160 is labeled 160 1-009. Fair enough.

But CERN’s elite Technical Training team layers its own advanced numbering system on top of this, in an attempt to bring more choice to the customer. According to economists, more choice is always a good thing. For example, you can choose to refer to the auditorium as room 10 or room 11. Your choice. Room 10 means the auditorium. Room 11 means the auditorium. Room 10 also means a totally different room. And room 11 also means yet another different room. So many choices! I feel liberated, from my sanity, that is.