Where are my robot hands?
Feb 26th
Earlier we discussed the LHC’s current robot monorail, little TIM, but 30 years ago CERN had far loftier goals and they were all about getting grabby. What follows are some photos grudgingly requinquished by CERN’s document server. The first one is my favorite, because this fellow is clearly living the 1981 dream.
Ever wish you could just shoot your arms through an iron-impregnated concrete wall and shake some sense into that radioactive pressure vessel on the other side? In 1981 you could.
The robot arms were eventually upgraded and attached to both monorails and trucks tethered by umbilical cord. “MANTIS’ as it was known, has more photos in CDS. You can also read more at “MANTIS – a compact mobile remote-handling system for accelerator halls and tunnels”, “MANTIS 2 : a new long range remote vehicle and servo-master-slave manipulator for the CERN accelerator complex” and “Teleoperator evolution at CERN”.
Reading some of those documents, MANTIS sounds like a really handy guy. Maybe that is why he was eventually incorporated into the military-industrial complex; given complex reasoning skills; and, through some fortune, jolted into a zest for more than just the life of a radioactive science-slave or autonomous killing machine. CERN was the crucible in which was forged one who “is alive”, a crafty, cultured cowboy. We miss you, Johnny Five!
Left: a slave in the bowels of CERN. Right: bandanas aren't just for the human overlords anymore.
Farm life and accelerators
Feb 20th
The highest energy accelerators in the world cover a lot of ground. The LHC tunnel passes mostly hidden under pasture and a few small farms, but even right in the middle of the laboratories, assembly buildings, and offices of CERN’s Meyrin site one finds a flock of sheep. The sheep rotate through a few disjoint grassy patches small enough that I really start to wonder if it’s worth the trouble. CERN’s sibling over in the US, Fermilab, hosts on its grounds some even more substantial farm and wildlife: bison, horses, deer (though the population was heavily culled a few years back to make the roads safer) and some ponds well stocked with fish and frequented by herons.
At least one person has relayed the speculation that the animals are primarily present to allay local’s fears of radiation: if sheep can spend all day snacking on top of an accelerator then how dangerous can it be? The problem I have with this theory is that it makes no mention of the scientists who spend just as much time in just as much proximity to our scary science stuff. Does the public honestly think we are so driven to distraction by our whizzing particles that we might very well hang our balls in the beam to see if it tickles? Let me go on record and say definitively, no, we are not.
Below I present evidence of how deadly serious the Fermilab-CERN competition is.
Sheep take shelter under CERN's ISR overpass near one of the LHC assembly building.
One of my many coyote sightings at Fermilab
Potential for future study:
- Apply a Lotka–Volterra model to the CERN and Fermilab scientific populations.
- Cite this blog post as the only motivation.
- Win Ig Nobel prize (for a physicist of my meager stature, the equivalent of ‘profit’).
That is unless one of our five highly esteemed readers scoops me on this. I dare you.
Spares
Feb 3rd
The LHC will employ the use of 1,232 dipole magnets, which are cooled to superconducting temperatures by liquid helium at 2 Kelvin and will provide magnetic fields as strong as 8.33 Tesla. As one might imagine, these puppies are valuable. To string two of them together, without interrupting the circuits through which currents as high as 11,850 Amps will flow, requires a highly sophisticated splice mechanism which must have a resistance of less than 0.000080 Ω for the machine to work properly.
Otherwise, this happens.
Of course, since CERN decided to display these magnificent beasts prominently (including one proudly and boldly showcased on the otherwise beautiful green lawn outside CERN’s Restaurant 1), they had to find a way to protect their valuable end-connections. These are the blag end-plugs you see in this photo of the lawn dipole.
Well, I suppose CERN had a spare endcap. I would never have been creative enough to devise this plan for its fate.
Another magnet cover-gone-planter.
It really ties the room together.
Rusty pipes
Jan 22nd
Every unused parking lot and road side is a potential scrapyard, and CERN is blessed with a lot of strange junk. Here’s a random example. Any ideas what this was?
Winter shutdown
Dec 21st
A quiet Christmas
The winter shutdown has begun. CERN closes its doors, turns off the heat, and stops doing physics for two full weeks, starting today. And CERN Love will do the same.
It’s time to say good-bye to 2009 — an epic year — and prepare ourselves for the next stage of CERN craziness. We here at CERN Love have appreciated all your support and willingness to laugh a bit at a place which we are truly lucky to be associated with, but one which is pretty fucking weird. We’ll be on holidays ourselves, trying to party as hard as our colleagues… and it appears we won’t be missing much here at the lab →
The LHC is expected to come back to life near Valentine’s Day/Chinese New Year, 2010 (that is 14 February for those of you who are neither consumers of greeting cards printed in China nor printers of greeting cards printed in China). Don’t worry, CERN Love is expected to come back to life much sooner, around 6 January, shortly after work begins again at CERN.
CERN Love would like to extend our heartfelt season’s greetings to you and yours. As a small gift to you, we attach a gallery of pictures from current and past winters in Geneva (including Fête de l’Escalade) and CERN.
Love,
CERN Love
Favorite Places: Building 553
Nov 16th
Much has been made of the lofty scientific forays undertaken at CERN, and the lives of the people who embark on these adventures of fundamental research and discovery. But do not the spaces these scientists inhabit deserve their equal measure of fame? After all, it is the roofs of CERN that protect us from the elements, the walls of CERN that hide our secret ambitions from the malicious eyes of our competitors, the soaring atria of CERN that inspire our creativity, and the very bricks and mortar of CERN that greet our eyes, day after day after motherfucking day.
In a word, it is the architecture of CERN that shall be unveiled and adored today. And what better candidate than building 553.
This timeless structure was specially commissioned by the Director General’s office and designed by the firm Merde Bâtiments. We are reminded that while in principle every type of material has its proper place and function, there is still room for an element of surprise and playfulness. Shingles need not only sit atop roofs; corrugated fiberglass is allowed to keep the rain off our heads; peeling paint is paint with character, and gray is, quite simply, beautiful. Take a deep breath and let us take you on a virtual tour of building 553.
More mysteries of the water tower
Nov 13th
Speaking of water tower mysteries. What the Fermilab is this picture about?
Is that bolted down?
This comes from the CERN document server which is a whole world of mysteries unto itself. There is almost no context for this image, a visual non sequitur. It gets the handy keywords ‘generalities’, ‘landscape’, and ‘nature’. From the title, View of the CERN by the water tower (Calendar 2002), it seems to be for a calendar. Really? There aren’t any cute kittens or scientists willing to pose naked? When in doubt you at least can’t go wrong with 12 months of beautiful landscapes; couldn’t the photographer have held out for a view of Mt. Blanc in the background? (It’s behind that haze.) I guess not.
I found six images on the document server for this “Calendar 2002.” There are a couple photos from the dismantling of LEP and another couple of the fire brigade in action. Good hearty CERN fare. But, finally, there is also a very creepy image of a sheep. I say creepy because, though I think the sheep has just been sheared, at first glance it looks dead or prepared for slaughter. Brilliant:
CERN, it’s where scientists do mysterious things with particles and sheep go to die.
Pipe in a box
Nov 2nd
metal box with pipe sticking out
Once upon a time, near the vineyards, past a parking lot, where the grass and flowers grow, at the farthest southeast corner of CERN, lived a metal box. This box sat alone and wore a hat. It was also a naughty box and had such a massive erection that a custom-made frame was required to support it. The box did not live near any buildings at all.There was nothing around the box but a few parked cars and grassy fields.
All day long, the box sat and ejaculated warm air and wet drops of some unidentified liquid out into the sunny Swiss air.
Hand-washing at CERN — it’s all in the details
Oct 28th
It’s true; scientists need a few gentle reminders every once in a while in order to maintain order and cleanliness. Just take a walk through CERN’s Restaurant 1 in the middle of the lunch hour, and you’ll be swarmed with a multitude of all-too-unpleasant smells resulting from lack of hygiene. In many cases, a not-so-subtle scolding from a significant other will have an effect. But, when it comes to more mundane habits like keeping one’s hands clean, we physicists really need more active guidance. Therefore, CERN has implemented a 12 Step Program designed to educate its community in the ways of hand hygiene. Nowadays, posted in several of the public lavatories around the lab, you’ll be lucky enough to find detailed instructions:
A tutorial.
From now on, you’ll never have to remember this intricate process yourself! An especially useful tool for physicsists, this should also ensure prevention of a massive H1N1 pandemic here at CERN. By following these steps (Wet, Soap, Wrists, Palms, Back of hands, Between fingers, Fingertips, Swirl fingertips, Thumbs, Rinse, Dry, and Turn off taps), you should have no problem keeping your hands squeaky clean. Finally, if you have questions or feedback, feel free to jot your thoughts down on the poster in green ink.
Underground CERN: it’s Half-Life in real-life
Oct 26th
It’s one of the greatest games of all time. You clamber over pipes and through ducts. Cables of unclear electrical status dangle uncomfortably close to puddles of water. Tunnels lit by rudimentary emergency lighting lead on and on past a hissing steam pipe, then dripping water, then silence, until the darkness slowly reveals a moist and fleshy lump growing out of the ground.
The game is high energy physics, though there are a couple decades of decay between these scenes and active science. A few years back, shortly before the game Half-Life 2 came out, a group of us explored the little-traveled CERN tunnels recorded in the photos below. The resemblance to the original Half-Life–with its steam leaks, ventilation shafts, and dark corners hiding headcrabs–is uncanny (though my observations indicate that CERN’s dark corners are not fully populated). It’s a testament to Half-Life’s genius design and storytelling that the fantasy of Gordon Freeman’s life becomes so plausible in this real-life setting. It’s also a testament to the awesomeness of science!
High energy physics these days requires all the infrastructure of a large industrial facility with some extra loving attention paid to cryogenics, cables, and computing clusters. It’s amazing to think that these abandoned tunnels, pipes, and cables, though extensive, are dwarfed by the facilities still in operation and newly built for the LHC.
It’s almost enough to make a scientist wonder, “will this open a dimensional rift?” and as a backup, “where is the nearest crowbar?”
CERN’s new water conservation initiative
Oct 19th
Working at a world-class institution like CERN is tremendously exciting. As you might assume, not only does CERN lead the world in particle physics, its general infrastructure is also top-notch and maintained by a tireless team of highly dedicated individuals. On a daily basis, you see the same incredible human ingenuity and generous financial resources used to probe the building blocks of matter also being put to use for more mundane things like plumbing. On a recent trip to the toilet, I discovered a bold new water conservation initiative apparently underway. And boy, does it work!
I ... think I'm done washing now.
First I should tell you a dirty little secret about myself. I can be a bit of a glutton, and sometimes this gluttony gets into the realm of wastefulness. One of the forbidden pleasures I allow myself is the use of warm water for hand-washing. Please don’t think I’m such a bad person, it just feels so warm and comfy, and when nobody is watching I just love it. Well, the CERN water engineers are far too clever for reprobates like me! They’ve installed a system whereby the warm water starts out clear but slowly turns yellow, until it is the color of unhealthy urine. Well let me tell you, I shut that hot water faucet off pretty quick! Some people like me never learn, but when your hands are covered in what is probably urine, you start to catch on! Although, I’ll be honest with you – and this is kind of embarrassing – the urine-based warning system has been in full production for several months and yet I still fall back to my old ways.
cutting-edge water conservation system
The story is not over though, because I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. I turned on the cold water and went right back to enjoying myself, getting all that soap off my hands, and I’ll admit, basking a little too long in the cooling water massage. I was so focused on my own pleasure that I didn’t immediately notice the warning signal, in the form of a splashing sound over and above the normal splashing from the sink. Well, I ignored that warning and I finally got the punishment I deserved. I suddenly realized my feet were soaking wet and my gorgeous Italian leather shoes were ruined. Because, get this, the water was going straight out through the drain onto the floor! Brilliant! This time I finally got the message.
I shut that water off immediately and will think very seriously about how often I wash my hands from now on. I can’t begin to imagine the level of sophisticated Swiss engineering needed to implement such an advanced water-conservation system, but CERN is obviously willing to shell out some big money to make it happen. Kudos to them! Hopefully I can be a better world citizen and steward of our precious natural resources from now on.
Around town: unmatched cargo to vehicle weight ratio
Oct 2nd
You might be amazed at what you can move with two wheels and a few CCs. We passed this fellow in Meyrin on the main route from Geneva to CERN. The bike is motorized, but only barely, notice it has pedals too! This is near the top of the hill in Meyrin, the ideal place to be with a rig like this. Most importantly, you have to appreciate this man’s impeccable sense of style: the plaid dog-bag perfectly coordinates dog, bike, and attire.
Mr. Electric Brushy Bear
Sep 25th
Science doesn’t always take place in a circle of fawning women as you tune up your Tesla coil. Sometimes there is nothing to do but sit in nature’s ventilation hood (“outside”) and scrub critical high voltage boards with acetone. But sometimes the novelty of nature and the sweet caress of solvent fumes is not enough to take away the tedium of scrubbing hundreds of boards. This is where one needs a carefully selected tool to maintain the highest scientific standards while at the same time speeding your work along.
Critical circuit boards cleaned with acetone and Mr. Electric Brushy Bear
Case in point: Mr. Brushy Bear. This cute guy (you’ll probably need to click and look closer at the photograph) brings happiness while his little condiment-colored motor does the work for us. Isn’t science great!
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