I confess to dreading the day when they have wireless on airplanes. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in the last year, and have come to value the time in the air as an opportunity for focused thinking. Taking away email and the perennial distraction of the internet makes it possible to write, to think, to really read papers, to develop coherent presentations. Yes, even in coach class.
So here is my first US LHC blog post, which I am writing this from the plane from Dallas to Boston. I spent 10 days in Madison, WI for the CTEQ summer school and workshop. It was a great experience, and I’ll write more about it in a later post. From Madison I traveled directly to Dallas to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law at my parents’ house. I had a few work obligations to follow through on while I was there, but it was nice to mostly unplug for a while and spend time with family before I shift my home base to Europe for the indefinite future.
At the end of August, after four years of traveling back and forth (by choice), I’ll be moving from Boston to Geneva. I’ll still be employed by Harvard as a postdoc, but for the first time I’ll be spending most of my time at CERN. CERN is in Switzerland, right on the Swiss-French border. Like many CERN visitors, I’ll be living in France, staying at our group’s apartment just a little ways up the hill in Thoiry. When I get back to Boston, I’ll need to immediately start the process of acquiring visas for both countries. Of the logistical details I need to settle, that seems likely to be the most challenging.
It should be a great year to be at CERN. Data are pouring in, and many of the measurements forming the broad LHC physics program have at least been started. If the intriguing results shown EPS turn out to be the first glimpses of new particles, it could be a very exciting year as those signals, and perhaps others, become unambiguous.
