And today at CERN . . .

. . . absolutely no work got done. Instead, everyone flooded the main auditorium early in the morning. It was full by 11:30 a.m. There were people sitting in the aisles. No one could connect to the internet because the wireless routers were flooded. Security prevented anyone else from entering after noon if they hadn't already found a seat.

The reason for the fuss was at 2:00 p.m., when the spokespeople for ATLAS and CMS (in that order) presented the status of their Higgs boson searches with the jaw-dropping amount of data they each collected this year. Details can be found here: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

Details can probably also be found on innumerable news and science websites. But I would suggest starting with what CERN had to say on the matter. After all, since scientists at CERN are studying the particle, shouldn't they know best what they've found out?

Change is in the Air

picture from science.nature.nps.gov

Today, the LHC ended the last of its heavy ions runs. Data-taking for 2011 is over, with over 5 inverse femtobarns of data delivered to each of the multipurpose experiments. The technical shut-down has begun.

CERN won't shut down of course, not for a while yet. Analyzing all that data is going at a fever-pitch, and with the end of beams in the accelerator tunnel the accelerator and experiments will be swarmed by engineers and technicians making repairs. But things are changing.

My little corner of this great enterprise is changing, too. As I'm planning on graduating next summer, my time at CERN now has an end date. I will return to the US early next year.

Boy oh boy, do I have a lot to get done.