This visit was a amazing day which started at around 7 AM in Zurich.
At 10:15 a group of motivated 20 people were at Gare Cornavin ready to live their CERN experience.
15 more were on the by with cars.
There, half of the group split and went to see CERN Globe with Stefan and Andrei, and the other half joined me by public transport directly to Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS).
11:45 - We got to the point 5 of CERN (CMS) after confronting heavy rain and passing one border.
There we have met Lars and Joao, two passionated physics researchers who work at CERN CMS. They were very welcoming and willing to give us first hand information about the research they were pursuing.
Before going 70 meters under-ground, we needed to have the right protection... Hence, the abundance of orange helmets in the following pictures.
In the underground Lars explained us how the CMS was build, why so many wires, how heavy it is ...but most importantly how the particles are accelerated and then how each collision is analyzed through the CMS detector. Here is where particle Higgs was discovered. Attention and curiosity was at maximum level.
13:00 Big group picture.
13:45 Shift change. Our great guides were very enthusiastic throughout the entire Saturday to tell us all about CMS in the second round of visits. The rest of the group went exploring Geneva and the other parts of CERN: Patek Philip and ONU Geneva, CERN Globe
There, we had just the right amount of geekiness for one day as you can see below. Some discovered proofs of crashed services, others played a bit with matter while others enjoyed taking pictures with the landmarks of CERN.
In the evening most of us had dinner at a small restaurant in Geneva. Afterwards, some went to take the train, others to see Palais des Nations Unies and others with me to have a small tour of Geneva old town.
The entire event started 2 months before. Having 35 showing up, just made the entire organizing work very rewarding. Thank you guys!
Visiting CERN is open for public throughout the entire year. While the CERN museum is open during normal working hours, for visiting one of the big detectors (ATLAS or CMS) you need a prior rezervation. The underground is available only when the LHC is shut-down. :)
