CERN Trip Report
Over weekend leave, a group of Upper Sixth Physics students headed to Geneva with Mr Roache,
Dr Twyford and Mrs Manners. After a 3 hour delay at the airport we arrived in the Geneva Airport,
at almost midnight. After a short rest, we were up at 6am to set off for our visit towards CERN –
The European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The world-class research facility lay just a short bus ride away from the city. It is possibly the
forefront of scientific discovery of our time. It didn’t disappoint. We arrived at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC), which has over 3000 staff from different countries working on a giant 27km tube
made of 1600 pieces (each of which cost half a million Euros). The LHC hosts two supercomputers
which – day and night – analyse data from millions of subatomic collisions per second, to gather
information on how exactly our world works. A lot was explained: taking two tiny particles,
accelerating them 99.9991% of the speed of light and smashing them together probably isn’t the
obvious, rational thing to do; however, the researcher giving the lecture managed to tell us - at 10 in
the morning - that this helps us understand how these particles behave, and allows us to create new
particles that we have never seen, but only theorised about. We then luckily received a
presentation and were toured around ATLAS, one of the Particle Detectors, by Dr Victoria Martin, a
key team member from the famous 'Higgs Particle' discovery of 2012, which very much captured the
imagination.
We were told that there were many things that have yet to be understood. The task is to bring
together Quantum Mechanics - the well-accepted model of how the subatomic world works - and
General Relativity - the equally well-accepted model that describes how the laws of science change
at very high speeds. Theoretically, the two are incompatible, and yet so far each has been verified
every single time by thousands of rigorous measurements taken over the past century. It is CERN’s
ongoing mission to resolve this and other universal contradictions, and it was this that we caught a
glimpse of: true determination to discover how our world works, regardless of the hurdles in the way.
After the visit to CERN, we toured around the city of Geneva. Despite falling into financial crisis, we
controlled ourselves to not spend more than 40SF on a slice of pizza each night, whilst finding the
French menus as confusing as the concept of Dark Matter. Our group managed to make the most
out of our opportunity, paying visits to attractions including Mont Salève, the History of Science
Museum, Botanical Gardens and Palais du Nations, which are all truly astonishing. And with 5SF
left in our pockets and 5 minutes left on the clock, we managed to catch the departing flight on the
Monday afternoon, and the wonderful trip came to an end.
We would like to thank the school, especially the Physics department, for organizing the trip.
Thanks go to Mr Roache, Dr Twyford and Mrs Manners for leading us, and specifically to Mr
Roache. This was a very unique experience for all of us, and I would encourage you all to take part
in upcoming trips, as I am sure you will all enjoy exploring new places. Thank You.
Eric
29 September 2015