Pix Mix
I just remembered that while I was at CERN last week I took a few crummy pics with my phone, so I thought I’d stick them on here.
This first one is actually of the control room of the ATLAS experiment, but it looked to me rather like the inside of a betting shop.
These two were taken in the facility where they test the magnets for the Large Hadron Collider. Each section of superconducting thingummyjig is about 10 metres long; the whole thing is 27km long so that’s a lot of sections! Although the magnets carry a huge current – 10,000 Amps – since they’re superconducting they have no resistance and therefore dissipate no power. However, they have to be kept at liquid helium temperatures, which does require quite a lot of power.
I like the sign on the second one: RISK OF LIQUID AIR.
Finally, here’s the most important one. While I am away Columbo is looked after by a lady called Helen who sends me daily updates. Here is Columbo in a characteristic pose.
Feed me. Feed me NOW!
In the Dark 
March 7, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Columbo has the same look that my cat has in this situation. I am convinced that the level in the kibble bowl doesn’t mean anything to them; it’s whether or not there is fresh kibble on top!
In a previous lifetime I worked for a manufacturer of precision instruments that had a liquid air plant. One day, a worker was delivering a 10 liter dewar of liquid air to the test stand. This was a 30 inch diameter by 5 foot high affair on 4 casters being pushed through the hallways of the engineering department. The casters failed to negotiate the overlooked power cord of the floor polisher and the dewar wound up on its side with the contents pouring out. Luckily, no one was injured, but all of the floor tiles that were inundated were cleanly detached from the underlying concrete. The building maintenance department thought that this had real possibilities, but safety issues intervened. Had the stuff not been as dangerous to living tissue, I wonder what other applications might have been discovered.
March 7, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Re: We use it to scare schoolchildren into studying physics.
March 7, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Liquid nitrogen in large amounts really is dangerous: gas evaporating from it can displace air and reduce oxygen levels, and you can easily end up unconscious or worse. But it’s fun playing with thermos flasks of the stuff – just as well that Heath and Safety didn’t know everything that went on. (To get away from H&S restrictions, one man I know set up his PhD experiment at home rather than in his university, even though it was clearly safe. And I could name a university department where H&S were at one point intending to flash-test PCs for safety; fried chips anyone?)
Anton
March 7, 2010 at 9:23 pm
“This first one is actually of the control room of the ATLAS experiment, but it looked to me rather like the inside of a betting shop.”
Yeah, they’re betting on what will go wrong next, and whether they’ll find the Higgs boson. (Personally I think Columbo has a better chance.)
If Phillip is reading this: When is/was that Bach unaccompanied violin concert?
Anton
March 8, 2010 at 11:10 am
That would have been glorious. I hope you enjoy the concert next week.
Anton
March 8, 2010 at 1:44 pm
If nothing else, this suggests that the East Germans could in fact afford to pay the Western going rate. But I don’t believe there was no prostitution in the German “Democratic” Republic…
Have you seen “Das Versprechen” [The Promise] by Margarethe von Trotta, a film about a courting couple who get separated the night the Berlin Wall goes up, and who then conduct a complex and strained relationship all the way through to Reunification (with an ambiguous ending). One of them is an astrophysicist, moreover. It is very moving and one of my favourite films.
Anton
March 12, 2010 at 10:30 pm
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