The last lecture and the last meetings for this year are done, and I’ve just returned the second iteration of the proofs for my STAR spin physics paper to the journal.
Snow next to the Autobahn on the way to Frankfurt.
Now Christmas is here, and it is time to “decelerate”. The year has been a wild ride: New Projects starting, significant progress in others, two diploma theses finished successfully in my group, another one started and now five PhD students in various stages of their research projects… After one year of getting started in 2008, this year my new group has picked up speed and is now buzzing more than ever with life and energy. For myself, it has been, among other things, a year of travel: More than 70 000 miles in airplanes, 20 multi-day trips, six of them intercontinental, and quite a few new places and impressions.
I am sure next year will be just as exciting, for me as well as for particle physics as a whole. Serious physics running will begin at the LHC, and answers to the question of where to go with the next big projects might start to emerge.
Before this happens though, now is the time to shift back a gear or two, and take a week to relax with friends and family, which is exactly what my wife and I will be doing. Despite the weather chaos that closed airports all throughout Europe, we were quite lucky not to hit any serious traffic or very bad road conditions on the way from Munich to the Frankfurt area, where we are both from. For quite a while, the Autobahn was leading us through a winter landscape, complete with falling snow and covered trees…
Now I’m ready for Christmas. Happy Holidays to all of you!
