Fun, it’s CERN open day today - wish I could be there. Open days at RHIC are a blast — especially when you can finally see experiments which you don’t work on — and the buzz at CERN is certainly getting louder and louder. Anyone see anything new and great?
There were 50000 visitors but only 15000 (probably for security reasons) had the chance to actually go underground to see the really cool stuff.
Unfortunately, I was too late…
Yes, it was a very difficult decision to not let more people underground, as the views down there are really a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people. And the main reason really was safety, I was one of the guides at the CMS experiment, and we managed to get just over 3000 people per day down to the detector. This involved the lifts running continuously, and completely full. With 36 people riding up and down in 3 by 4 meter lifts I can assure you it was only safety, not closer packing, that limited the number of possible visits. It definitely reminded me of Tokyo during rush hour, not pleasant at all.
Still, CERN always has normal visits that can be arranged through our visits service web site. One needs to make an appointment at least a few months in advance, though
Pete,
The open day was something I’ve personally been waiting for for months. I wanted to see ATLAS, but didn’t make it, even CMS was full up – also on Saturday ! However, apparently, the tour of ATLAS wasn’t much to write home about. However, I did spend much of Sunday ferrying people around ALICE and I must admit I saw the experiment in a different light. With most of the detectors installed, the aceclerator sitting there kinda just asking to be switched on, the counting room looking like it’s ready to start counting… it was a real buzz. The tour of ALICE was really awesome as you could see some of the tunnel, some of the dimuon spectrometer, but most of all because of the full frontal view of the inner details of the detectors and L3…
I had the privelige of having my high-school science teacher come with her class of kids. That was a really bizarre experience. However, I think they were a good example : we’ll definitely see the effect of this open day in a few years time.
50,000 people is an incredible number. We typically get a bit over 1000 people for RHIC open days (which are every year, I admit) and that feels like a lot. I hope you all at CERN are taking and posting photos!
The official numbers were even higher – 53,000 people on Sunday (open to everyone), and another 23,000 on Saturday (open to CERN people and their friends and family). The volunteer corps alone was 1,500 people. There was some discussion among a few Americans here this weekend if similar events in the U.S. would draw as many people. From your experience with RHIC days, perhaps the answer is no?
Some official CERN Photos can be found at http://photo.cern.ch/download2/opendayphoto/
They are really high-res though and not all of the experiments, there is a large emphasis also on the machine. I’m sure in the coming days though, there will be bajillions of personal snapshots flying about…
Egads – this is how CERN distributes official photos?!
nah, it’s the way we sneak a peak at their official photo distribution. http://photo.cern.ch is there official entry point, I gather, to photographic material. It’s even called “the CERN Photo Service”, so it must be snazzy. Anyway, it is kinda wierd that they make pages like this visible to the public.
Hi Peter, hi all,
Just to let you know that on this topic, there are some new photos of the open day at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1102709
And if I may, *ahem*, I draw your attention to CERN-GE-0804034 084 …
Cheers,
Bruce