Last week I have visited CERN. It was just for a week, but I enjoyed really much discussions with my friend there. I have come to CERN about 5 years ago once, it was for a workshop after a STRINGS conference at Paris. There was a tour of LHC which was under construction then. Our tour group went down the ATLAS cite and I saw a small hole on the huge wall of the hole in which the ATLAS detecter would be built. This hall was nothing but the tunnel in which the superconducting magnets were installed. At that time, it was just a hole, but I remember that I was really moved to see the hole, as I imagined how supersymmetric particles may jump out of this hole!
And now, the time has come, LHC is on the way. I am happy to see many public visitors come to the CERN visitor office and are excited about the new LHC and ask many questions to the scientist guide. Yes, this is it!
Until 5 years ago, I thought that since I am a superstring theorist I would expect nothing out of this LHC. But, eventually, now I am looking very closely at ALICE experiment at LHC, since it will reveal the highest energy heavy ion collision soon. Now QCD at high density can be captured (at least partially and qualitatively) by string theory via gauge/gravity correspondence, I am quite excited to see experimental results of this ALICE experiment (as well as the ATLAS!).
