CERN (2013) Movie Script
Identification is completed.
Okay, welcome to CERN.
This is in fact the control
room for the Atlas experiment.
Atlas is one of the four large
experiments now going on at the LHC,
the large hadron collider.
The large hadron collider is
a huge ring of 27 kilometers,
and that's an accelerator
where we accelerate protons
in two different directions,
and then they collide in four points.
We are just above one of those colliding
points at the Atlas experiment.
So Atlas is both
a large collaboration
of about 3,000 people,
I'm one of them,
my name is Pauline Gagnon, I'm Canadian.
I work for an American institute,
Indiana University,
and I live here in France,
and work in Switzerland,
but that's just about
the kind of sociology
that you have with the
people here at CERN.
So it's a very mixed background.
On Atlas alone we have people from
more than 70 different countries.
There are only 38 countries
participating in the experiment,
but since people like me...
I'm Canadian,
and I grew up in American institute so then
there are people from different
countries working together.
The common language to work is broken
English, so everybody speaks it
with their own mistakes and
their own accent, and all that.
So but people get along,
and we usually get the work done.
All this, though, you may wonder
what's the purpose of all this?
Why do we do...
Why do we go to such an extent,
so much work?
3,000 people just to build the detector,
and work on it,
and analyze the data that comes out of it.
Essentially, it's just to increase the
knowledge about what matter is made of.
What is the universe where we live?
What is this place we are in,
and where did it come from?
Where is it going?
So it's very fundamental question.
It's nothing that puts food
on your plate right away.
The food might come later on, you know,
because with research you never know
what will come out of it.
We're going out,
and let's see what we find.
It's a bit like mushroom hunts, you know.
You can bring back something that is
really good, then you make a good dish,
or you might not come back
with anything suitable.
So, I was saying earlier
that we have the accelerator
which accelerates the particles,
and then we have the detectors that
are there just to detect what comes up.
A detector is just a very fancy camera.
So we take a snapshot of what happens
when two protons come into collisions.
All the energy released in the collision
then is in one small tiny point,
and it allows you to create a particle,
because E equals MC squared.
So the energy that you have put there,
you can transform it into mass.
The C squared's just the exchange
rate between energy and mass.
So we can create new particles,
and study how they behave.
I saw in 1995 there was an opening
at CERN, and LHC was due to start very
soon, and so this is why I decided
it could be a good opportunity,
and that's why I jumped.
I think it's actually
beautiful to be a part
of modern cathedrals building.
That's the way I see it.
It's like being a community with
a single aim and a single scope.
And we are producing
machines that actually
nobody has built before, like a cathedral.
I'm in charge of the magnets at CERN,
everything that has to do with magnets
for the machines, and I arrived at
CERN in 1995 after a few years working
for thermonuclear fusion, and I think
I was lured there by the adventure
of the LHC,
so it was at the beginning of the LHC,
and in fact where we are today is the hole
where we do all the maintenance, the work,
the construction,
the reconstruction of the LHC magnets.
We do mostly dipoles here,
and we work in quadropoles as well.
So these are the main
elements that make up
the superconducting cryostat of the LHC.
Well, magnets are the main
mass in an accelerator.
As you've seen, accelerators at CERN,
magnets guide particles.
They drive them around on a circular path,
so that they can go back to the real
accelerating component, which is a.
But they need to do
that thousands of times
and tens of thousands of times a second,
like in the LHC.
So the main function of the magnet
is to guide the particles back,
so this is what we call dipoles,
and they have to focus them onto
the closed orbit of the machine,
and this is the quadropole.
In addition to that, the quadropole,
they also squeeze the beam
down to the small size, like smaller
than a hair in the experimental region.
This is the main function of the magnets.
The video and ideal of
the powers and strength,
I think let's start with the
electrical power that we're using
because we need electrical
power to run the machines.
So CERN is using roughly 160 megawatts
of electrical power to run
all these accelerators,
and that's more or less the consumption
of a small city like Geneva,
so it requires indeed a lot of power
in spite of the fact that
we're using superconductors.
So the LHC by itself
uses about 60 megawatts,
and the whole complex
before the pre-injectors
use also about 60 megawatts to
inject the beam into the LHC.
As to the magnetic field,
to give you a feeling for how
strong the magnetic field is,
you should imagine a magnetic field
in our magnets of eight tesla,
produces forces.
And these magnets are 15 meters long,
and the forces that you
produce on the magnet
are of the order of 350
tons per half magnet.
So 350 tons per meter of magnets
for every half of the magnet.
So it's a lot of weight
that needs to be taken
by the very strong structures
that we put around them.
This is why the magnets are all encircled
in these very strong structural
steel that is keeping them together.
As to the magnetic field itself,
so the field nominal is eight tesla.
You can compare that to the
magnetic field of the earth,
which you can barely see
with a magnetic needle,
so the earth is producing here
in Geneva about half a gauss,
and if I compare that to the
magnetic field of the LHC,
it is eight tesla.
That's a factor of 100,000 more.
So we're producing in the LHC
100,000 more magnetic field
than we do compared to the
magnetic field of the earth.
We are at 90 meters underground between
the Jura and the Lake of Geneva,
and this is the cavern
of the ATLAS experiment.
It's the biggest experiment in
high energy physics we ever built,
so the cavern is huge.
It's 60 meters by 30 meters cavern,
and inside there is a
detector at least 7,000 tons.
It's the same weight of
the Tour Eiffel in Paris,
and the cavern is fully occupied,
in fact, by our detector,
and this is one of the detectors
that has measured the expulsion
this year and last year,
and now we are in maintenance mode,
so this a period in which we stop,
we open the detector, and we work on it.
So the aim of all this is quite varied.
So one of the main aim that this...
The one that you can find on the press
is the discovery of the expulsion.
That is, apart from being a particle,
it's a mechanism.
It's a field and is the
mechanism that gives the mass
to all the other particles, but this is
only one of the aims of this detector.
This is a general particles detector,
and can measure several
aspects of the nature
and the several aspects of the
nature in this very tiny dimensions,
and this very back in time.
The accelerator itself is a time machine,
and going up with energy allows us to go
back in time and to
reach just a tiny amount
of time after Big Bang.
The description of the
nature as we know today
is at the moment,
I would say, quite complete,
especially after the
discovery of the expulsions,
but there are many things
we don't understand
for which this detector
has been built for,
and this, for example,
is questions about dark matter,
and, well,
there is one very basic question.
That is the difference between the
amount of matter and anti-matter,
because all this knowledge,
all this building
on knowledge and building of
materials tells you that the Big Bang
at the certain moment in time beginning,
and all the matter, all the matter
that exists in the universe now
comes from a very small point from
where everything expanded in a way,
to give an image.
But to have this...
Find a tiny point with this anonymous
amount of energy and matter density,
you must have a way to put those together,
and the only conceivable
way you can see about this
is a symmetric way of thinking,
in that you must have the same amount
of matter and anti-matter.
And then of course,
you can ask yourself so why there is not
myself in antimatter
that is destroying me.
So in a way there is a tiny difference
between the matter and the anti-matter
that makes all this exist,
and this is certainly a mystery.
There are other mysteries like
the amount of dark matter.
We see that if we look...
we can look at this kind of
phenomena also in the space,
and we can look at the
matter in the space,
and we cannot really compute totally
the matter that is in the space.
We can compute it,
but we see that there is a deficit,
and there is what we call the
dark matter and the dark energy,
that they are not exactly the same thing.
To make this size of universe, and this
way, the matter is distributed possible,
and this is certainly a mystery.
Another mystery I would
like to give you is
that I explain to you that to the energy
and the time, they are correlated,
and the product of the energy and the time
has to give you a constant.
Now if you think for a moment that
the time that you aim at is zero,
then to keep this as a constant,
the energy has to be infinite.
So there is into this itself a paradox,
and there is something that
maybe we cannot approach.
We can do our best, but the time
zero is something that is difficult.
What we do,
we do in the research sounds a bit strange.
I mean, we in one hand, we want to make
a confirmation or test
of our present theory,
and at the same time,
we are always looking for something
which I asks destroying our present theory
to go to something, to find something new.
Yeah, you direct to have the explanation
of this Higgs particle.
Yeah, this is...
Yes, I mean,
the Higgs mechanism, I have...
This is one of my...
I have been wondering how
one can explain correctly
and easily the role of Higgs field
and Higgs mechanism
and the Higgs particle.
And this is something which
is difficult for me to do.
Yeah, how to explain is...
Higgs also does such a special,
very unique, important role,
even, I mean, allowing us to exist.
This such a important particle
has never been discovered until
just until one year ago.
So this is a kind of very,
I mean, frustrating situation.
We know that theory works very well.
However,
one of the key element of the theory
wasn't confirmed by experiment.
Nobody have seen this exist or not,
and now, we have very likely
be discovered.
This has very likely be discovered,
so in a sense, this has the last piece
of our theory has been,
I mean,
found and put into the jigsaw puzzle,
but this is...
If it is jigsaw puzzle, then it is a
completion, and you may just, I mean,
the glue and put on the wall,
or you may want to disassemble instead,
but in physics, this doesn't go like this.
Up to the analogy of last piece
of jigsaw puzzle works fine,
but as soon as after that,
the analogy doesn't uphold anymore.
So what we want to do is...
First of all, we have to confirm,
still confirm,
if this particle is really the last piece
of this jigsaw puzzle,
not something similar, but...
Which may be totally different.
We have a picture, which is a coarse
model history of our universe.
Nobody tells us that is the truth,
but within our present knowledge,
this is the best we can do, and indeed,
it does explain very nicely
all what we are able to observe.
Maybe we come up with new observation.
Remember, there is fundamentally in the
universe what we are studying at LHC
I taught is matter.
So matter constitute only
while the visible matter
constitute only 4% of the universe.
All the rest is unknown,
being dark matter,
which is something we know it exists,
but we have no clue on what it is,
and even something even more
mysterious is dark energy.
So, which is something we
gain with respect it exists
because we need it to explain
given properties of the
evolution of the universe,
but again, we have no clue what it exists.
So in other word, today,
we are in a situation.
We have a pool of knowledge of 4% percent
of the universe, and we ignore totally
what the rest of the universe is.
So the specific place where we are.
Now this is ATLAS experiment.
We are looking for
recreating primordial matter.
This is the matter as it existed
shortly after the Big Bang,
and here we are talking about a fraction
of microseconds after the
beginning of the universe.
At that time,
temperature were extremely high.
Energy density was very high, and matter
was in a completely different shape
as it is today.
So we recreate this new,
this primordial state of matter,
and try to understand what they are,
the nature and the properties
of this primordial matter,
and then how it evolves from
its state in the early universe
to the state as we know it today.
Just imagine in a single
collision of two lead nuclei,
we are producing about 10,000 of particles
which are going through our equipment,
and all this particles,
we have to look at it to
see it and to identify it,
so of course, we don't take a
picture of the particle itself.
We take a picture of the track
a particle leaves when it goes
through our equipment,
so it's more or less the same
as if you would go on a ski slope.
You don't see the skier.
You just see the traces of the skier,
and out of the traces, you say,
"Okay, here was a skier.
"He went from there to there."
Looking at the depths of the trace,
I can have an idea on
the weight of the skier,
and we are doing the same exercise.
We never see the skier.
We just see the traces, and of course,
to have a full trace of a skier,
you need a big field.
We are really using brute force.
We are not very smart,
so we use the energy we are able to make
to create in a collision to
create this new particles.
Now of course,
this is for the creation part,
so you need to bring a small
particle to very high speed.
When I talking about high speed,
it's something which is very close
to the speed of light.
So for that,
you just need a big machinery.
The machinery being, well,
you need magnet to make a particle turn,
and you need electric
field to accelerate it,
and then,
one million of different elements
just to make the whole thing work.
I think CERN is for me really the
best example in the world for humanity
following a common objective,
and this is,
if we don't discover anything in science,
I think having achieved
that is a major achievement.
We are speaking about , or no?
I don't know.
No, basically,
this I think we have to understand...
I think we have to really understand...
And bring this to the technical.
I think a list chaperone
also has to be important.
That's the suspicion right now is
that someone hit the crash button.
So that's the question.
So why did it turn off in the first place?
Yeah, it received emergency.
So it's as if someone
hit the crash button.
I mean, the meaning of the
measures is not that I don't know.
So the law is as if...
It's as if someone hit the crash button.
We don't think someone did, but it's
as if someone hit the crash button.
Okay, so the question is about
the first thing that he find,
that he looked at the
reprocess versus prom data,
and he just had to stay with the prompt,
but in the reprocess data there
are largest changes for jets,
so I find the statement
a little bit surprising.
So the question is is there
a quantitative measure
of this differences which you see?
Do you have some plots
also that show that?
If it's in the backup,
we can look at it later,
but I don't want to kill the stream.
I'm not quite sure if I put
it in the backup or not.
Just more of an assent, I think that's
what I'll learn from the question.
Okay, we can take it offline,
and we can go on from here.
You look frozen.
Are you still, you know, alive?
Think the shock was too
much on this question.
He's gone.
Okay, he became invisible.
So no more questions 'till the end,
please.
Can anybody outside CERN still hear us?
Oh good, good.
I can hear you.
So I can go and sit down and just wait.
At the beginning,
I was heavily involved in building a system
that we call the trigger system,
and this trigger system
actually selects online
in real time only the interesting
collisions that will be recorded
and that will be analyzed later.
Now, this involves the development
of an electronic system which
operates very, very fast.
It looks at the collision
40 million times per second.
It is sort of a digital camera
which takes 40 million
pictures per second.
It analyzes.
It doesn't only take this pictures,
but it looks at these pictures,
and looks if there are
some interesting patterns,
for example,
and if there are interesting patterns,
which is the case only maybe a
few hundred times per second,
then this trigger system recognizes these
and marks these photographs,
if you like, really for recording.
So we don't have...
Like, when you take photographs with a
digital camera, you take many snapshots,
but you eliminate those
that you do not like,
but we do this online extremely fast.
Our first important
discovery was a particle
that looks very much like
the so-called Higgs particle,
which is also called God particles,
God particle,
but this is a term that
physicists don't really like.
So anyway,
we have discovered a very new particle,
and now we are going to measure all its
properties and to make sure it is really
the long sought Higgs particles, or if
it is indeed something completely new,
but actually, this experiment was
built for another main purpose,
and this main purpose
was really to discover
if there are, for example,
new forces in physics.
You all know,
we all know gravity, for example,
but there are also other forces,
for example,
electromagnetic forces in the universe,
but maybe there are even other
forces we do not know about,
and this could be discovered
at this experiment here.
We could also, for example,
discover completely new spatial dimensions,
which may be very small so that up to now,
we have not been able to see them,
but with a tool like the large
hadron collider and this experiment,
we can use this really just
like a giant microscope.
So we can really look deep into nature,
and we hope to find something very new.
For example, it is imaginable that gravity
becomes a very, very strong force,
much stronger than we are used to it,
when we go to very small distances.
For example, when you smash two protons
against each other as
it is done in the LHC,
then you really come to very,
very small distances,
and it is possible that
gravity becomes very strong.
So if gravity becomes strong,
then we could also create mini-black holes,
microscopic black holes.
So this would be a spectacular new
signature for up to now unknown physics.
It's a constant struggle, and of course,
the kids sometimes complain,
"Mommy, there's nothing to eat.
"What shall we eat?"
But, well, I'm not alone,
and one has to get all the help one can.
But I think, even if the family suffers,
I think in the end they see
how enthusiastic we are,
and they see that we really
have achieved something,
something that is really satisfying,
that can show new ways,
and I think normally families understand,
but I should also say,
mind you, there have also been
lots of divorces at CERN here,
mainly because of just too much work.
But people are enthusiastic, you know.
I mean, these are not people that
come at nine and they leave at five,
and they look at their watch.
You know,
they really like to spend the time here,
and they put in all the means
they have to bring out results,
and also to get personal satisfaction.
This center is at CERN,
and has essentially two main,
very important connections.
One connection is brings
us to the experiments.
So essentially this is the main flux of
data is from the experiments to here.
So, when there is a beams are colliding,
the events, so the collisions,
the result of the collisions are recorded,
filtered across different
levels of filtering,
and eventually, they are shipped
to here via a dedicated network.
So this is the first connection.
The data routing here then are
stored on disc immediately,
and they are ready to
be immediately analyzed.
This is just the first
part of the analysis.
Actually,
we call it general reconstruction,
and the idea here is that
out of the raw data...
This is also the technical term,
the raw data which we are receiving
from the experiments,
we reconstruct trajectories, for example,
from which you can identify
particles and give to them...
Let's see,
assign them energies and directions.
These data are also shipped outside,
and they are shipped initially, I mean,
directly from CERN to a site
of important computer centers
more or less compatible to this one,
which are then, in turn,
redistributing the data to other
places where in a typical university
or university type of facilities,
where the final analysis, for example,
will be done, or other activities
connected with that analysis
of the data.
So, I think one can visualize data coming
from the experiments being stored,
being given to this initial reconstruction,
and also being distributed.
So this is a, let's say,
the backbone of our activity.
I was born in 1964, and I think,
talking with the LSA people of my age,
et cetera, I came to the conclusion
that, you know, the Apollo period,
end of the '60s, beginning of the '70s,
had really an influence on us.
Initially,
I was very passionate about astronomy
and astronauts, this kind of...
Which eventually, becoming and growing
older, became an interest in physics,
and so, then I decided for...
But I think there is a very specific,
you know, interest,
correlation with astronomy
and with that particular
period of space exploration.
You know, one side,
astronomy's this gigantic
distances,
worlds you cannot really visit directly
because of distances,
and once you go for particle physics,
is a kind of mirror image of this.
You go in the smaller and
the smaller and the smaller,
so you find there are worlds which are
really fascinating, strange sometimes,
bizarre, but it's clearly...
This is one of the things which clearly
moves me, or moved me, to go in physics.
And now, even if I'm in computing,
more on this side, clearly there is
the proudness to say, well, you know,
these experiments are
doing really something
really interesting, really cool,
and we are giving our
small contribution to this.
So, it's, I think for somebody
which with the physics background,
CERN, even if then you move,
keeps this fascination.
I mean, it's our home.
It's our dream place.
So it's...
I think this is this.
We have our own fire brigade.
We have our own emergency services.
Actually, we are like a city,
and this is a challenge for my job,
because you asked me in the beginning
where we are here.
We have to manage a small city,
and just to give you some ideas
about what I mean by city,
we have roughly 10,800 guest scientists
coming from all over the world,
120 nationalities.
We have roughly 2,500 staff.
We have 500 postdocs,
500 students and apprentices.
So it's a population
which needs accommodation
and services as any customer or client
would have needed it in the small city.
Actually, in some sense,
we are at the same time an organization
like any other organization,
but we also providing our own legislation,
if you like,
because the convention gives us the right
but also the obligation to
handle certain things ourselves.
For example, if we fix our salaries,
we cannot do it just like that.
We have to do it according to the rules
which were approved by
our 20 member states.
So, in some sense, we are kind of a state
in the states.
What you need is a long breath,
and this is sometimes a problem
if you discuss things with politicians.
They're used to work with
horizons of three to five years,
and they respect return on investment,
which is all more or less immediate.
Immediate means tomorrow,
but we have seen,
if I take the example of the world wide
web, which was invented here at CERN,
you need sometimes I would say,
on an average,
at least 10 years, 10 to 15 years,
between the first basic ideas
and the first industrial product.
So I'm a theoretical physicist,
so my job, you know, is to come up
with some ideas,
some possible explanation,
and then I'm trying to understand what
are the consequences of these ideas
and how you can test those
ideas using experimental result,
but result that obtain now
in this LHC is big machine
that have been built here at CERN,
and is working pretty well, at the moment.
I mean, some good ideas can come up at
every moment, and you have to be ready.
And it can be dangerous,
in particular,
when you are driving your car, right?
You should try to keep your ideas alert
and be prepared when you
are getting back home
to take a little piece of paper,
writing down your ideas,
and try to finish your computation.
Most of the time, you are stupid.
You are making errors, et cetera,
but from time to time, you are right,
and you understand exactly something new.
That's fantastic, of course, these days.
When you are coming back home in the
evening, you are feeling very good
because you're more
manageable in the evenings
and in the morning,
and the feeling that you understand
that something that nobody in the
world had thought about before,
but that's really what is
exciting about research.
For a few hours, for a few moments,
you'll be, you know,
the only people on the earth
to really have clear
understanding of the problem.
Discovering the expulsion is not like
discovering yet another particle.
What we are really after is really trying
to understand some fundamental laws
from fundamental principle
that govern the universe.
So for a very long time, you know,
one main team of particle physics,
and theoretical physics,
high energy physics, was Gauge principle.
So the Gauge principle
is really the theory
that explain how particle
interact with each other,
basic exchange of the Gauge possum,
and maybe with the
discovery of the X possum,
we are about to discover a new,
fundamental
principle of nature
that could really govern
how the universe is structured.
But, again, I mean, we are not so
much interested in new particle.
What we really want to understand is
what is a principle
behind this new particles?
Is this discovery of the new particle
is telling me something more fundamental
about nature, more fundamental physics
would be is there a new
space time dimension?
Is there a new interactions,
new fundamental interaction
between those particles?
That's really what we are about.
I mean, the fact that, you know,
up to now, we understand interaction
as the exchange of Gauge possum.
It was really big step forward
in the understanding of nature,
but still there is few things
that we don't quite understand.
I mean, for instance,
the fact that electromagnetism
is described by one
particular symmetry of nature.
There was a weak interaction which
is described by another symmetry.
There is a strong interaction,
yet another symmetry.
Why those particles are symmetry?
Is there something deeper
behind those symmetries?
A bigger symmetry, for instance,
that will unify all those symmetries
associated to the different interactions?
Yeah, we're trying to
understand this kind of things.
We have good ideas, but we still don't
know if our ideas are true or not.
I mean, I'm not a physicist,
and I used to explain that I'm here
to develop the toys for physicists,
so I'm involved in the machine side.
So there is several people at CERN
deciding what has to be
done for the physics,
and then we are in charge
to develop the tools
in order to allow these
people to make the research.
There is not really hierarchy at CERN,
or at least, this is my feeling.
There is people from the physics side
deciding more or less what has to be done,
and we are here to provide them
the required tools to
be able to investigate
what they are looking for.
So there is no real hierarchy.
There is several...
There is different specialties at CERN,
and in the technical parts.
So our section is called MDT,
and my actual section leader
used to translate that by
"Making Dreams True."
So there is people asking
for some dedicated tools,
and we are here to try
to develop these tools.
So we are presently working on the new
generation of superconducting magnets
using new technology
superconducting cables in
order to reach higher field
that will be required for the
upgrade of the luminosity of LHC.
So the magnets presently installed in
LHC are based on titanium technology
and we reach the limit of the
magnetic field that can be reached
with such a kind of superconductors.
We are trying to develop a new dipole,
100 millimeters bore
with 13 tesla,
and to give you a rough idea
about what this represent,
the required cable to produce
one coil is around 100,000
Swiss francs per coil,
and we need four coils in size.
And we just need a few
seconds to destroy the cables,
so this is quite difficult to deal with.
We are working in superconductivity,
so the magnets we have to test.
So they have to be cooled down
to a very low temperature,
in this case to 4.2 Kelvin,
or even to lower temperature
which is 1.9 Kelvin.
To do that, you need a kind of a thermos,
what you need,
and a vessel that is a well-insulated
from the outside which is very warm
with respect to the magnet.
Basically,
you have a 300 Kelvin difference,
which would be the same if I say to 300
degree because it's a relative number.
So then you have to make possible that
the heat in leak is really minimum.
So we build equipments
which are essentially made
by a vessel itself in which we can put
the magnet, then we can, obviously,
we close it,
and we can access it by a liquid
which is in this case liquid helium,
and to cool down to 4.2 K.
And then to this equipment,
we have to connect the powering
because obviously the power generation
is on surface and in a nominal
20 degrees celsius
temperature is in the hole.
So you have to bring the current
into the magnet through this vessel.
So this vessel is also helps us to
make the interface between the magnet
and the outside, and then, obviously,
we have all the information
coming out which are in form of wires,
and we are plugging it into cards
for data acquisition,
and then we have behind a controlled room
where on front of us who are computers,
we get the information visible
and in the graphical way, such a way
that we can analyze them later on.
So that is essentially
what we are have behind,
and basically you have here behind
me three test station of this type.
So three units which
are nearly independent,
one from the others.
Well, my family's completely here
because I have to say,
my husband is working at CERN.
My husband is working in the
same area that I'm doing,
so he's doing also magnets,
and, okay, life is like this.
We have a three years old child,
and she's going to the school,
kindergarten at CERN.
So in the morning we are
coming in family at CERN,
and we are dispatched
all over the three sides.
My husband is working in the side,
which is in the French area.
I am working between the Swiss part
and the French parts,
still in French territory,
and my daughter is on the
Swiss side in a kindergarten.
Yeah, my husband has also another son,
by the way.
He's in the control room.
I have his family also.
I have my brother-in-law
working in Atlas detector.
So in the end, we are all a family.
We're all here, yeah.
Well,
when you are saying that we have to leave
maybe some space for imagination,
you are assuming that what we are doing
is enough to understand the world,
how the universe works.
I'm not so sure.
I think that we are in a territory
where we are so difficult,
somehow so close to understand
what is the complete stuff
that it becomes very, very hard to improve,
and I am not at all convinced
that this steps which are big itself
are big enough to get rid of the space
which remains there.
So I think that we are on the top,
but this now is going
very slowly high and high,
but I think that we are
still very far away.
I'm not sure that it will come next year.
Higgs, we explain Higgs,
and then the dreams are gone.
No, I think that going ahead, we will
find a new elements which may bring...
That is my idea, of course,
probably will bring us closer and closer,
but I'm not convinced that we will
understand the complete picture.
You might know there is a principle
which is called the Tropic principle.
It's the whole nature, laws of nature,
has been designed only to make
it possible that man can exist,
but I doubt it.
Of course, we also realize that science,
physics is only one perspective
of understanding reality and nature.
And I had a long discussion here
with the Pope when he visited CERN,
not the present Pope,
not the previous Pope.
It was John Paul the
Second who is the third.
So I discussed with him can there be
a conflict between science,
between physics and religion?
And he agreed, no,
there cannot be a conflict.
He agreed to that.
Then, I ask him, well, if you agree,
why don't you repelitate the Helium?
If you have the plate, eating plate,
you are looking at it from top.
You would say that's a circle.
If you look at it from the side,
you say that's not a circle.
That's a line.
So this will be two
conflicting perspectives,
and you might ask forever,
is it a line, or is it a circle?
So that's what science does with reality.
We're looking at reality
different projections.
We see one projection.
Religious is another projection,
and they might fight who is right.
In the end, these are two different
projections of the same reality.
It takes a long time to
clarify a sub-concept.
How do we define something?
So the real image data
sync in the true science
is to create the concepts
which are necessary
to find the laws of nature.
Maybe these concepts are not unique.
They might be different
way how to describe nature,
why different concepts.
Okay, welcome to CERN.
This is in fact the control
room for the Atlas experiment.
Atlas is one of the four large
experiments now going on at the LHC,
the large hadron collider.
The large hadron collider is
a huge ring of 27 kilometers,
and that's an accelerator
where we accelerate protons
in two different directions,
and then they collide in four points.
We are just above one of those colliding
points at the Atlas experiment.
So Atlas is both
a large collaboration
of about 3,000 people,
I'm one of them,
my name is Pauline Gagnon, I'm Canadian.
I work for an American institute,
Indiana University,
and I live here in France,
and work in Switzerland,
but that's just about
the kind of sociology
that you have with the
people here at CERN.
So it's a very mixed background.
On Atlas alone we have people from
more than 70 different countries.
There are only 38 countries
participating in the experiment,
but since people like me...
I'm Canadian,
and I grew up in American institute so then
there are people from different
countries working together.
The common language to work is broken
English, so everybody speaks it
with their own mistakes and
their own accent, and all that.
So but people get along,
and we usually get the work done.
All this, though, you may wonder
what's the purpose of all this?
Why do we do...
Why do we go to such an extent,
so much work?
3,000 people just to build the detector,
and work on it,
and analyze the data that comes out of it.
Essentially, it's just to increase the
knowledge about what matter is made of.
What is the universe where we live?
What is this place we are in,
and where did it come from?
Where is it going?
So it's very fundamental question.
It's nothing that puts food
on your plate right away.
The food might come later on, you know,
because with research you never know
what will come out of it.
We're going out,
and let's see what we find.
It's a bit like mushroom hunts, you know.
You can bring back something that is
really good, then you make a good dish,
or you might not come back
with anything suitable.
So, I was saying earlier
that we have the accelerator
which accelerates the particles,
and then we have the detectors that
are there just to detect what comes up.
A detector is just a very fancy camera.
So we take a snapshot of what happens
when two protons come into collisions.
All the energy released in the collision
then is in one small tiny point,
and it allows you to create a particle,
because E equals MC squared.
So the energy that you have put there,
you can transform it into mass.
The C squared's just the exchange
rate between energy and mass.
So we can create new particles,
and study how they behave.
I saw in 1995 there was an opening
at CERN, and LHC was due to start very
soon, and so this is why I decided
it could be a good opportunity,
and that's why I jumped.
I think it's actually
beautiful to be a part
of modern cathedrals building.
That's the way I see it.
It's like being a community with
a single aim and a single scope.
And we are producing
machines that actually
nobody has built before, like a cathedral.
I'm in charge of the magnets at CERN,
everything that has to do with magnets
for the machines, and I arrived at
CERN in 1995 after a few years working
for thermonuclear fusion, and I think
I was lured there by the adventure
of the LHC,
so it was at the beginning of the LHC,
and in fact where we are today is the hole
where we do all the maintenance, the work,
the construction,
the reconstruction of the LHC magnets.
We do mostly dipoles here,
and we work in quadropoles as well.
So these are the main
elements that make up
the superconducting cryostat of the LHC.
Well, magnets are the main
mass in an accelerator.
As you've seen, accelerators at CERN,
magnets guide particles.
They drive them around on a circular path,
so that they can go back to the real
accelerating component, which is a.
But they need to do
that thousands of times
and tens of thousands of times a second,
like in the LHC.
So the main function of the magnet
is to guide the particles back,
so this is what we call dipoles,
and they have to focus them onto
the closed orbit of the machine,
and this is the quadropole.
In addition to that, the quadropole,
they also squeeze the beam
down to the small size, like smaller
than a hair in the experimental region.
This is the main function of the magnets.
The video and ideal of
the powers and strength,
I think let's start with the
electrical power that we're using
because we need electrical
power to run the machines.
So CERN is using roughly 160 megawatts
of electrical power to run
all these accelerators,
and that's more or less the consumption
of a small city like Geneva,
so it requires indeed a lot of power
in spite of the fact that
we're using superconductors.
So the LHC by itself
uses about 60 megawatts,
and the whole complex
before the pre-injectors
use also about 60 megawatts to
inject the beam into the LHC.
As to the magnetic field,
to give you a feeling for how
strong the magnetic field is,
you should imagine a magnetic field
in our magnets of eight tesla,
produces forces.
And these magnets are 15 meters long,
and the forces that you
produce on the magnet
are of the order of 350
tons per half magnet.
So 350 tons per meter of magnets
for every half of the magnet.
So it's a lot of weight
that needs to be taken
by the very strong structures
that we put around them.
This is why the magnets are all encircled
in these very strong structural
steel that is keeping them together.
As to the magnetic field itself,
so the field nominal is eight tesla.
You can compare that to the
magnetic field of the earth,
which you can barely see
with a magnetic needle,
so the earth is producing here
in Geneva about half a gauss,
and if I compare that to the
magnetic field of the LHC,
it is eight tesla.
That's a factor of 100,000 more.
So we're producing in the LHC
100,000 more magnetic field
than we do compared to the
magnetic field of the earth.
We are at 90 meters underground between
the Jura and the Lake of Geneva,
and this is the cavern
of the ATLAS experiment.
It's the biggest experiment in
high energy physics we ever built,
so the cavern is huge.
It's 60 meters by 30 meters cavern,
and inside there is a
detector at least 7,000 tons.
It's the same weight of
the Tour Eiffel in Paris,
and the cavern is fully occupied,
in fact, by our detector,
and this is one of the detectors
that has measured the expulsion
this year and last year,
and now we are in maintenance mode,
so this a period in which we stop,
we open the detector, and we work on it.
So the aim of all this is quite varied.
So one of the main aim that this...
The one that you can find on the press
is the discovery of the expulsion.
That is, apart from being a particle,
it's a mechanism.
It's a field and is the
mechanism that gives the mass
to all the other particles, but this is
only one of the aims of this detector.
This is a general particles detector,
and can measure several
aspects of the nature
and the several aspects of the
nature in this very tiny dimensions,
and this very back in time.
The accelerator itself is a time machine,
and going up with energy allows us to go
back in time and to
reach just a tiny amount
of time after Big Bang.
The description of the
nature as we know today
is at the moment,
I would say, quite complete,
especially after the
discovery of the expulsions,
but there are many things
we don't understand
for which this detector
has been built for,
and this, for example,
is questions about dark matter,
and, well,
there is one very basic question.
That is the difference between the
amount of matter and anti-matter,
because all this knowledge,
all this building
on knowledge and building of
materials tells you that the Big Bang
at the certain moment in time beginning,
and all the matter, all the matter
that exists in the universe now
comes from a very small point from
where everything expanded in a way,
to give an image.
But to have this...
Find a tiny point with this anonymous
amount of energy and matter density,
you must have a way to put those together,
and the only conceivable
way you can see about this
is a symmetric way of thinking,
in that you must have the same amount
of matter and anti-matter.
And then of course,
you can ask yourself so why there is not
myself in antimatter
that is destroying me.
So in a way there is a tiny difference
between the matter and the anti-matter
that makes all this exist,
and this is certainly a mystery.
There are other mysteries like
the amount of dark matter.
We see that if we look...
we can look at this kind of
phenomena also in the space,
and we can look at the
matter in the space,
and we cannot really compute totally
the matter that is in the space.
We can compute it,
but we see that there is a deficit,
and there is what we call the
dark matter and the dark energy,
that they are not exactly the same thing.
To make this size of universe, and this
way, the matter is distributed possible,
and this is certainly a mystery.
Another mystery I would
like to give you is
that I explain to you that to the energy
and the time, they are correlated,
and the product of the energy and the time
has to give you a constant.
Now if you think for a moment that
the time that you aim at is zero,
then to keep this as a constant,
the energy has to be infinite.
So there is into this itself a paradox,
and there is something that
maybe we cannot approach.
We can do our best, but the time
zero is something that is difficult.
What we do,
we do in the research sounds a bit strange.
I mean, we in one hand, we want to make
a confirmation or test
of our present theory,
and at the same time,
we are always looking for something
which I asks destroying our present theory
to go to something, to find something new.
Yeah, you direct to have the explanation
of this Higgs particle.
Yeah, this is...
Yes, I mean,
the Higgs mechanism, I have...
This is one of my...
I have been wondering how
one can explain correctly
and easily the role of Higgs field
and Higgs mechanism
and the Higgs particle.
And this is something which
is difficult for me to do.
Yeah, how to explain is...
Higgs also does such a special,
very unique, important role,
even, I mean, allowing us to exist.
This such a important particle
has never been discovered until
just until one year ago.
So this is a kind of very,
I mean, frustrating situation.
We know that theory works very well.
However,
one of the key element of the theory
wasn't confirmed by experiment.
Nobody have seen this exist or not,
and now, we have very likely
be discovered.
This has very likely be discovered,
so in a sense, this has the last piece
of our theory has been,
I mean,
found and put into the jigsaw puzzle,
but this is...
If it is jigsaw puzzle, then it is a
completion, and you may just, I mean,
the glue and put on the wall,
or you may want to disassemble instead,
but in physics, this doesn't go like this.
Up to the analogy of last piece
of jigsaw puzzle works fine,
but as soon as after that,
the analogy doesn't uphold anymore.
So what we want to do is...
First of all, we have to confirm,
still confirm,
if this particle is really the last piece
of this jigsaw puzzle,
not something similar, but...
Which may be totally different.
We have a picture, which is a coarse
model history of our universe.
Nobody tells us that is the truth,
but within our present knowledge,
this is the best we can do, and indeed,
it does explain very nicely
all what we are able to observe.
Maybe we come up with new observation.
Remember, there is fundamentally in the
universe what we are studying at LHC
I taught is matter.
So matter constitute only
while the visible matter
constitute only 4% of the universe.
All the rest is unknown,
being dark matter,
which is something we know it exists,
but we have no clue on what it is,
and even something even more
mysterious is dark energy.
So, which is something we
gain with respect it exists
because we need it to explain
given properties of the
evolution of the universe,
but again, we have no clue what it exists.
So in other word, today,
we are in a situation.
We have a pool of knowledge of 4% percent
of the universe, and we ignore totally
what the rest of the universe is.
So the specific place where we are.
Now this is ATLAS experiment.
We are looking for
recreating primordial matter.
This is the matter as it existed
shortly after the Big Bang,
and here we are talking about a fraction
of microseconds after the
beginning of the universe.
At that time,
temperature were extremely high.
Energy density was very high, and matter
was in a completely different shape
as it is today.
So we recreate this new,
this primordial state of matter,
and try to understand what they are,
the nature and the properties
of this primordial matter,
and then how it evolves from
its state in the early universe
to the state as we know it today.
Just imagine in a single
collision of two lead nuclei,
we are producing about 10,000 of particles
which are going through our equipment,
and all this particles,
we have to look at it to
see it and to identify it,
so of course, we don't take a
picture of the particle itself.
We take a picture of the track
a particle leaves when it goes
through our equipment,
so it's more or less the same
as if you would go on a ski slope.
You don't see the skier.
You just see the traces of the skier,
and out of the traces, you say,
"Okay, here was a skier.
"He went from there to there."
Looking at the depths of the trace,
I can have an idea on
the weight of the skier,
and we are doing the same exercise.
We never see the skier.
We just see the traces, and of course,
to have a full trace of a skier,
you need a big field.
We are really using brute force.
We are not very smart,
so we use the energy we are able to make
to create in a collision to
create this new particles.
Now of course,
this is for the creation part,
so you need to bring a small
particle to very high speed.
When I talking about high speed,
it's something which is very close
to the speed of light.
So for that,
you just need a big machinery.
The machinery being, well,
you need magnet to make a particle turn,
and you need electric
field to accelerate it,
and then,
one million of different elements
just to make the whole thing work.
I think CERN is for me really the
best example in the world for humanity
following a common objective,
and this is,
if we don't discover anything in science,
I think having achieved
that is a major achievement.
We are speaking about , or no?
I don't know.
No, basically,
this I think we have to understand...
I think we have to really understand...
And bring this to the technical.
I think a list chaperone
also has to be important.
That's the suspicion right now is
that someone hit the crash button.
So that's the question.
So why did it turn off in the first place?
Yeah, it received emergency.
So it's as if someone
hit the crash button.
I mean, the meaning of the
measures is not that I don't know.
So the law is as if...
It's as if someone hit the crash button.
We don't think someone did, but it's
as if someone hit the crash button.
Okay, so the question is about
the first thing that he find,
that he looked at the
reprocess versus prom data,
and he just had to stay with the prompt,
but in the reprocess data there
are largest changes for jets,
so I find the statement
a little bit surprising.
So the question is is there
a quantitative measure
of this differences which you see?
Do you have some plots
also that show that?
If it's in the backup,
we can look at it later,
but I don't want to kill the stream.
I'm not quite sure if I put
it in the backup or not.
Just more of an assent, I think that's
what I'll learn from the question.
Okay, we can take it offline,
and we can go on from here.
You look frozen.
Are you still, you know, alive?
Think the shock was too
much on this question.
He's gone.
Okay, he became invisible.
So no more questions 'till the end,
please.
Can anybody outside CERN still hear us?
Oh good, good.
I can hear you.
So I can go and sit down and just wait.
At the beginning,
I was heavily involved in building a system
that we call the trigger system,
and this trigger system
actually selects online
in real time only the interesting
collisions that will be recorded
and that will be analyzed later.
Now, this involves the development
of an electronic system which
operates very, very fast.
It looks at the collision
40 million times per second.
It is sort of a digital camera
which takes 40 million
pictures per second.
It analyzes.
It doesn't only take this pictures,
but it looks at these pictures,
and looks if there are
some interesting patterns,
for example,
and if there are interesting patterns,
which is the case only maybe a
few hundred times per second,
then this trigger system recognizes these
and marks these photographs,
if you like, really for recording.
So we don't have...
Like, when you take photographs with a
digital camera, you take many snapshots,
but you eliminate those
that you do not like,
but we do this online extremely fast.
Our first important
discovery was a particle
that looks very much like
the so-called Higgs particle,
which is also called God particles,
God particle,
but this is a term that
physicists don't really like.
So anyway,
we have discovered a very new particle,
and now we are going to measure all its
properties and to make sure it is really
the long sought Higgs particles, or if
it is indeed something completely new,
but actually, this experiment was
built for another main purpose,
and this main purpose
was really to discover
if there are, for example,
new forces in physics.
You all know,
we all know gravity, for example,
but there are also other forces,
for example,
electromagnetic forces in the universe,
but maybe there are even other
forces we do not know about,
and this could be discovered
at this experiment here.
We could also, for example,
discover completely new spatial dimensions,
which may be very small so that up to now,
we have not been able to see them,
but with a tool like the large
hadron collider and this experiment,
we can use this really just
like a giant microscope.
So we can really look deep into nature,
and we hope to find something very new.
For example, it is imaginable that gravity
becomes a very, very strong force,
much stronger than we are used to it,
when we go to very small distances.
For example, when you smash two protons
against each other as
it is done in the LHC,
then you really come to very,
very small distances,
and it is possible that
gravity becomes very strong.
So if gravity becomes strong,
then we could also create mini-black holes,
microscopic black holes.
So this would be a spectacular new
signature for up to now unknown physics.
It's a constant struggle, and of course,
the kids sometimes complain,
"Mommy, there's nothing to eat.
"What shall we eat?"
But, well, I'm not alone,
and one has to get all the help one can.
But I think, even if the family suffers,
I think in the end they see
how enthusiastic we are,
and they see that we really
have achieved something,
something that is really satisfying,
that can show new ways,
and I think normally families understand,
but I should also say,
mind you, there have also been
lots of divorces at CERN here,
mainly because of just too much work.
But people are enthusiastic, you know.
I mean, these are not people that
come at nine and they leave at five,
and they look at their watch.
You know,
they really like to spend the time here,
and they put in all the means
they have to bring out results,
and also to get personal satisfaction.
This center is at CERN,
and has essentially two main,
very important connections.
One connection is brings
us to the experiments.
So essentially this is the main flux of
data is from the experiments to here.
So, when there is a beams are colliding,
the events, so the collisions,
the result of the collisions are recorded,
filtered across different
levels of filtering,
and eventually, they are shipped
to here via a dedicated network.
So this is the first connection.
The data routing here then are
stored on disc immediately,
and they are ready to
be immediately analyzed.
This is just the first
part of the analysis.
Actually,
we call it general reconstruction,
and the idea here is that
out of the raw data...
This is also the technical term,
the raw data which we are receiving
from the experiments,
we reconstruct trajectories, for example,
from which you can identify
particles and give to them...
Let's see,
assign them energies and directions.
These data are also shipped outside,
and they are shipped initially, I mean,
directly from CERN to a site
of important computer centers
more or less compatible to this one,
which are then, in turn,
redistributing the data to other
places where in a typical university
or university type of facilities,
where the final analysis, for example,
will be done, or other activities
connected with that analysis
of the data.
So, I think one can visualize data coming
from the experiments being stored,
being given to this initial reconstruction,
and also being distributed.
So this is a, let's say,
the backbone of our activity.
I was born in 1964, and I think,
talking with the LSA people of my age,
et cetera, I came to the conclusion
that, you know, the Apollo period,
end of the '60s, beginning of the '70s,
had really an influence on us.
Initially,
I was very passionate about astronomy
and astronauts, this kind of...
Which eventually, becoming and growing
older, became an interest in physics,
and so, then I decided for...
But I think there is a very specific,
you know, interest,
correlation with astronomy
and with that particular
period of space exploration.
You know, one side,
astronomy's this gigantic
distances,
worlds you cannot really visit directly
because of distances,
and once you go for particle physics,
is a kind of mirror image of this.
You go in the smaller and
the smaller and the smaller,
so you find there are worlds which are
really fascinating, strange sometimes,
bizarre, but it's clearly...
This is one of the things which clearly
moves me, or moved me, to go in physics.
And now, even if I'm in computing,
more on this side, clearly there is
the proudness to say, well, you know,
these experiments are
doing really something
really interesting, really cool,
and we are giving our
small contribution to this.
So, it's, I think for somebody
which with the physics background,
CERN, even if then you move,
keeps this fascination.
I mean, it's our home.
It's our dream place.
So it's...
I think this is this.
We have our own fire brigade.
We have our own emergency services.
Actually, we are like a city,
and this is a challenge for my job,
because you asked me in the beginning
where we are here.
We have to manage a small city,
and just to give you some ideas
about what I mean by city,
we have roughly 10,800 guest scientists
coming from all over the world,
120 nationalities.
We have roughly 2,500 staff.
We have 500 postdocs,
500 students and apprentices.
So it's a population
which needs accommodation
and services as any customer or client
would have needed it in the small city.
Actually, in some sense,
we are at the same time an organization
like any other organization,
but we also providing our own legislation,
if you like,
because the convention gives us the right
but also the obligation to
handle certain things ourselves.
For example, if we fix our salaries,
we cannot do it just like that.
We have to do it according to the rules
which were approved by
our 20 member states.
So, in some sense, we are kind of a state
in the states.
What you need is a long breath,
and this is sometimes a problem
if you discuss things with politicians.
They're used to work with
horizons of three to five years,
and they respect return on investment,
which is all more or less immediate.
Immediate means tomorrow,
but we have seen,
if I take the example of the world wide
web, which was invented here at CERN,
you need sometimes I would say,
on an average,
at least 10 years, 10 to 15 years,
between the first basic ideas
and the first industrial product.
So I'm a theoretical physicist,
so my job, you know, is to come up
with some ideas,
some possible explanation,
and then I'm trying to understand what
are the consequences of these ideas
and how you can test those
ideas using experimental result,
but result that obtain now
in this LHC is big machine
that have been built here at CERN,
and is working pretty well, at the moment.
I mean, some good ideas can come up at
every moment, and you have to be ready.
And it can be dangerous,
in particular,
when you are driving your car, right?
You should try to keep your ideas alert
and be prepared when you
are getting back home
to take a little piece of paper,
writing down your ideas,
and try to finish your computation.
Most of the time, you are stupid.
You are making errors, et cetera,
but from time to time, you are right,
and you understand exactly something new.
That's fantastic, of course, these days.
When you are coming back home in the
evening, you are feeling very good
because you're more
manageable in the evenings
and in the morning,
and the feeling that you understand
that something that nobody in the
world had thought about before,
but that's really what is
exciting about research.
For a few hours, for a few moments,
you'll be, you know,
the only people on the earth
to really have clear
understanding of the problem.
Discovering the expulsion is not like
discovering yet another particle.
What we are really after is really trying
to understand some fundamental laws
from fundamental principle
that govern the universe.
So for a very long time, you know,
one main team of particle physics,
and theoretical physics,
high energy physics, was Gauge principle.
So the Gauge principle
is really the theory
that explain how particle
interact with each other,
basic exchange of the Gauge possum,
and maybe with the
discovery of the X possum,
we are about to discover a new,
fundamental
principle of nature
that could really govern
how the universe is structured.
But, again, I mean, we are not so
much interested in new particle.
What we really want to understand is
what is a principle
behind this new particles?
Is this discovery of the new particle
is telling me something more fundamental
about nature, more fundamental physics
would be is there a new
space time dimension?
Is there a new interactions,
new fundamental interaction
between those particles?
That's really what we are about.
I mean, the fact that, you know,
up to now, we understand interaction
as the exchange of Gauge possum.
It was really big step forward
in the understanding of nature,
but still there is few things
that we don't quite understand.
I mean, for instance,
the fact that electromagnetism
is described by one
particular symmetry of nature.
There was a weak interaction which
is described by another symmetry.
There is a strong interaction,
yet another symmetry.
Why those particles are symmetry?
Is there something deeper
behind those symmetries?
A bigger symmetry, for instance,
that will unify all those symmetries
associated to the different interactions?
Yeah, we're trying to
understand this kind of things.
We have good ideas, but we still don't
know if our ideas are true or not.
I mean, I'm not a physicist,
and I used to explain that I'm here
to develop the toys for physicists,
so I'm involved in the machine side.
So there is several people at CERN
deciding what has to be
done for the physics,
and then we are in charge
to develop the tools
in order to allow these
people to make the research.
There is not really hierarchy at CERN,
or at least, this is my feeling.
There is people from the physics side
deciding more or less what has to be done,
and we are here to provide them
the required tools to
be able to investigate
what they are looking for.
So there is no real hierarchy.
There is several...
There is different specialties at CERN,
and in the technical parts.
So our section is called MDT,
and my actual section leader
used to translate that by
"Making Dreams True."
So there is people asking
for some dedicated tools,
and we are here to try
to develop these tools.
So we are presently working on the new
generation of superconducting magnets
using new technology
superconducting cables in
order to reach higher field
that will be required for the
upgrade of the luminosity of LHC.
So the magnets presently installed in
LHC are based on titanium technology
and we reach the limit of the
magnetic field that can be reached
with such a kind of superconductors.
We are trying to develop a new dipole,
100 millimeters bore
with 13 tesla,
and to give you a rough idea
about what this represent,
the required cable to produce
one coil is around 100,000
Swiss francs per coil,
and we need four coils in size.
And we just need a few
seconds to destroy the cables,
so this is quite difficult to deal with.
We are working in superconductivity,
so the magnets we have to test.
So they have to be cooled down
to a very low temperature,
in this case to 4.2 Kelvin,
or even to lower temperature
which is 1.9 Kelvin.
To do that, you need a kind of a thermos,
what you need,
and a vessel that is a well-insulated
from the outside which is very warm
with respect to the magnet.
Basically,
you have a 300 Kelvin difference,
which would be the same if I say to 300
degree because it's a relative number.
So then you have to make possible that
the heat in leak is really minimum.
So we build equipments
which are essentially made
by a vessel itself in which we can put
the magnet, then we can, obviously,
we close it,
and we can access it by a liquid
which is in this case liquid helium,
and to cool down to 4.2 K.
And then to this equipment,
we have to connect the powering
because obviously the power generation
is on surface and in a nominal
20 degrees celsius
temperature is in the hole.
So you have to bring the current
into the magnet through this vessel.
So this vessel is also helps us to
make the interface between the magnet
and the outside, and then, obviously,
we have all the information
coming out which are in form of wires,
and we are plugging it into cards
for data acquisition,
and then we have behind a controlled room
where on front of us who are computers,
we get the information visible
and in the graphical way, such a way
that we can analyze them later on.
So that is essentially
what we are have behind,
and basically you have here behind
me three test station of this type.
So three units which
are nearly independent,
one from the others.
Well, my family's completely here
because I have to say,
my husband is working at CERN.
My husband is working in the
same area that I'm doing,
so he's doing also magnets,
and, okay, life is like this.
We have a three years old child,
and she's going to the school,
kindergarten at CERN.
So in the morning we are
coming in family at CERN,
and we are dispatched
all over the three sides.
My husband is working in the side,
which is in the French area.
I am working between the Swiss part
and the French parts,
still in French territory,
and my daughter is on the
Swiss side in a kindergarten.
Yeah, my husband has also another son,
by the way.
He's in the control room.
I have his family also.
I have my brother-in-law
working in Atlas detector.
So in the end, we are all a family.
We're all here, yeah.
Well,
when you are saying that we have to leave
maybe some space for imagination,
you are assuming that what we are doing
is enough to understand the world,
how the universe works.
I'm not so sure.
I think that we are in a territory
where we are so difficult,
somehow so close to understand
what is the complete stuff
that it becomes very, very hard to improve,
and I am not at all convinced
that this steps which are big itself
are big enough to get rid of the space
which remains there.
So I think that we are on the top,
but this now is going
very slowly high and high,
but I think that we are
still very far away.
I'm not sure that it will come next year.
Higgs, we explain Higgs,
and then the dreams are gone.
No, I think that going ahead, we will
find a new elements which may bring...
That is my idea, of course,
probably will bring us closer and closer,
but I'm not convinced that we will
understand the complete picture.
You might know there is a principle
which is called the Tropic principle.
It's the whole nature, laws of nature,
has been designed only to make
it possible that man can exist,
but I doubt it.
Of course, we also realize that science,
physics is only one perspective
of understanding reality and nature.
And I had a long discussion here
with the Pope when he visited CERN,
not the present Pope,
not the previous Pope.
It was John Paul the
Second who is the third.
So I discussed with him can there be
a conflict between science,
between physics and religion?
And he agreed, no,
there cannot be a conflict.
He agreed to that.
Then, I ask him, well, if you agree,
why don't you repelitate the Helium?
If you have the plate, eating plate,
you are looking at it from top.
You would say that's a circle.
If you look at it from the side,
you say that's not a circle.
That's a line.
So this will be two
conflicting perspectives,
and you might ask forever,
is it a line, or is it a circle?
So that's what science does with reality.
We're looking at reality
different projections.
We see one projection.
Religious is another projection,
and they might fight who is right.
In the end, these are two different
projections of the same reality.
It takes a long time to
clarify a sub-concept.
How do we define something?
So the real image data
sync in the true science
is to create the concepts
which are necessary
to find the laws of nature.
Maybe these concepts are not unique.
They might be different
way how to describe nature,
why different concepts.