PeterBraden.co.ukArticles Tagged "travel"

Monday morning I headed out to CERN. Having worked in a nuclear physics institut before, I have a fascination with cutting edge research and the incomprehensible theories it spawns. And as a web developer I was interested in seeing the place where the internet was invented. But mainly I was drawn by the certain masculine appeal of the biggest, most powerful machine in the world, designed to smash stuff up.

This is very precise destruction though. Built with Swiss acuracy on the Switzerland-France border, the facility sprawls around the 27km tunnel through which steams of particles are accelerated and then smashed together. In fact the experiments require such precision that scientists must compensate for the 1mm variation in length of the 27km circuit caused by the moon's tidal pull on the bedrock - that's right, rocks have tides too.

Magnet testing

The Museé Microcosm has the unenviable task of trying to explain why the particles must be destroyed in laymans terms. Begining by explaining that everything is made of atoms, within a few panels a live version of Rutherfords gold foil experiment takes place. The top half of the museum continues with the pop-culture statistics that you would expect (the LHC will produce enough data in a year to produce a stack of DVD's 15km high (No cases)), but still has no explanation of what the collisions will achieve. Instead it looks at the spectacular engineering feat behind the LHC.

For example, to bend the particle stream around the ring, electro-magnets are used to focus and angle the beam. If normal warm magnets were used, the ring would have to be 120km in circumference to provide the energies the LHC requires. Rather than dig that big a tunnel, the scientists opted to cool the magnets to around 1 kelvin to make them superconductors.

This of cource means that the 27km of equipment must be kept at -271 celsius, a feat which requires 500 tons of liquid helium. Each meter of magnet experiences the force equivalent to the weight of a jumbo jet when in operation, and if a single piece of the titanium-niobium wire is not accurately placed, then the friction generated by its movement can heat it enough to cause a 'quench' - where the metal loses it's superconductivity and immediately receives the resistance associated with the 7TeV travelling through it.

As far as I can tell from the scant information in the CERN journal, and by talking to scientists, this is what happened in the 'incident' which took CERN out of action last year. Apparently one of the thousands of solder connections between magnets was poorly made and caused it to arc. Normally quenches within the ring are handled by a subsystem which redirects the current into big copper blocks, but for some reason this didn't happen when the joint quenched. The magnetic field, combined with the superheated helium resulted in an explosion distorting the ring and damaging 37 of the magnets. These are being repaired on the surface, however they have also been replaced with spares. I heard rumours that the poor solder joints were due to a hurry to meet the deadline, this time around everything is being checked and double checked in a much more painstaking way.

Fancy Pipe

The bottom half of the museum went into more depth and attempted to explain a little of the science behind the CERN experiments, although it was dissapointingly disjointed, mentioning topics without introducing them and lacking a consistent narrative. Consequently I still have no idea of the difference between quarks, or understand the mass-energy relation in bosons.

The museum seemed a little small, and I really only came to see the real equipment, but apparently tours have to be booked a month in advance. Not having a month, I did what any self respecting person would do, and tried to sneak in with a Swiss school tour. Unfortunately I can no longer pass for a schoolkid and was caught, but a little bit of charm offensive and I managed to wangle my way onto the tour anyway.

Unfortunately the tour began with an hour long lecture, and as the school was from Zurich, it was in German. I passed the time by watching the students fall asleep - I don't know whether schoolkids in Switzerland are meant to know the difference betwen electron and tau neutrinos, but there was at least 10 minutes of passionate German on that slide, followed by one on antimatter - I think they understood less of the lecture than I did.

A lesser man may have given up after the lecture, but I figured they'd have to show us some cool stuff to make up for the lecture.

We were walked across the road and for one horrible moment I thought we would be taken into the 'Dan Brown' exhibit - yes that's right, the dude who writes airport trash about albino monks bombing the Vatican gets an exhibition at CERN. They claim it falls under their mandate of 'spreading knowledge' - I thought it interesting that they spread that knowledge, but prevented visitors from acessing their wifi - I mean, they invented the internet.

Luckily we turned towards the ATLAS facility where we watched a 3D film about the construction of the detector. The film was set to upbeat music; I don't think there are many funnier things than watching a room full of Swiss students wearing oversized earphones and polarised glasses dancing to a science video.

As I was beginning to despair of ever seeing real equipment (and a little tempted to peak inside the temptingly named and under surveilled "Control Room") we were taken inside the cavernous warehouse that sits atop the detector shaft. While the guide prattled on about the properties of some wire or something I peered down the shaft 100m down to the tunnel below.

Atlas Below

After the guide had finished his spiel we piled onto a bus and went to France. The French facility is used for testing the magnets, and like most scientific facilities, was a shiny pile of organised mess. I have no idea of what was explained here, the warehouse was filled with some extremely fancy plumbing - sections of the tunnel below us.

As we drove back to the reception at the end of the tour, I managed to talk to one of the guides in English. He told me about his research project which used technology developed for the detectors of the LHC to make better mammograms. So there we have it - the biggest machine on earth, made to smash stuff, and ultimately, if tangentially, save lives.

I didn't plan to go to Vegas. They knew how to twist my arm though — I'm not a particularly hard sell when it comes to spontaneous travel, especially when I've been drinking whiskey.

And so at 6:30 the next morning my alarm went off, my stomach was churning like a cement mixer and I had a email with a flight confirmation, the text message on my phone told me how much money I'd be wasting if I missed it. They knew how to twist my arm.

Photo by Roadsidepictures

I'd never flown over the desert before. The cold blue morning light and the endless ripples of dark brown rocks floated by the window as I drifted in and out of sleep. And then Vegas. From the air the city looks exactly like a Google Earth panorama — swathes of featureless suburbia surrounding the blocky buildings of the strip. As we landed the desert air threw the plane about like tumbleweed.

Vegas has an almost mythological reputation; a mirage of glamour, glitz and gambling - in this desert people don't dream of water, they dream of money. It is a place synonymous with excess and reckless abandon. The backdrop to a thousand films, and yet built like a movie set, filled with well dressed people and optimism, but built upon their shattered dreams. I had no idea what to expect — it seemed so ludicrous, so contradictory — and yet every American I had met was captivated &mdash I had to visit, I'd love it, they told me — it seemed so ingrained into the American psyche — Vegas was where you went for a good time. And I was a little caught up in the idea — after all who can't be excited at the sound of a city built for the sole purpose of having a good time?

We were checking into the Venetian. Our taxi had dropped us next door in the Palazzo so we had to wander through the marble halls, through the Casino, past the fountains filled with cranberries, to the elevators at the far end. I'd been bracing myself to hate the place, but I was too excited. The suite was as ridiculous as the hotel. Three televisions, a window overlooking the madness of the strip, marble sinks in the bathroom — ridiculous.

After dumping our stuff, and changing out of last nights clothes we grabbed the elevator back downstairs. The same song was playing as we descended — big girls don't cry. Out onto the strip and into the cold winter sunshine.

The strip is a sensory overload, as if a thousand movies are being made on a single road. Thousands of windows stare down from the monolithic hotels walling each side, suited men and dolled up women parade down the sidewalks and limousines compete with sports cars and billboard trucks for the strip itself. It is lined with casinos, each engaged in a battle for the most ludicrous gimmick — venetian canals, jungle volcanoes, the Eiffel tower. Inside they begin to merge into one though, because, although the decor matches the theme of the resort, the ubiquitous slot machines and the ranks of blackjack tables, the smell of disinfectant and smoke, the murky light and the restaurant-bars — all are the same — a disorienting maze from game room to game room.

We walk through the jungle of the Mirage and into the marble colonnade of Caesars. The day passes in a haze of drinks and blackjack. I lose 40 bucks in 2 hands and remember why I hate gambling. I'm content to watch the others fighting the statistics of the game, getting caught up on a 'hot' table, only to be sobered by mathematical karma. A waitress old enough to be my grandmother wearing little more than underwear brings us drinks — if you're gambling they're free, or as free as they can be while you are throwing chips onto the table.

We smoke cigars outside a bar and watch the winter's wind blowing down the strip, ruffling the perfectly manicured palm trees; the sun being replaced by a host of neon. The signs for the resorts explode with fireworks, or glitter with stars. Hundred foot sports cars race cross buildings, chased by marketing copy. A constant stream of people meander down the street. The air is filled with music, cars and voices.

Although I joined at the last minute, the night has been planned in meticulous detail — it's a work outing and some people love obsessing over details. I'm happy to make the most of their work, and although I missed the company subsidised happy hour while changing into my suit, I manage to make the most of several of the stretch Limo's that had been hired. The same song plays in the elevator as I return from getting dressed.

We eat at a Taco joint off the strip. The air is seedier, the clubs dirtier, the air less frenetic. Still the unescapable neon lights border the streets and the ringing cacophony of slot machines pound the senses. Here though, there is a grimier desperation, a weary resignation in the faces of the croupiers and sense of impatience for the crowds to lose their money and leave. I couldn't shake the thought that the disorienting floor plan, the dim lights, the complete isolation from anything external, was all social engineering — designed and tested to optimally trap people and take their money. It was robbery by interior design.

The group had pre-booked a table at a club, but by that time I was too tired and burnt out to want to spend the $50 cover, so opt instead to walk down the strip and see the lights. The excitement has worn off, and I'm running on the dregs of a steak and beer, my stomach is still hating me for the night before. I've seen too many washed up, stretch-marked waitresses; too many whored up girls on the arm of a slimy guy; too many children being dragged along by parents past the lines of grafters pushing porn ads; too many people throwing wages into the green felted void; too much meaningless nudity; too much tacky glitz. My faith in humanity is all but gone, and the spectacular fountains at the Bellaggio can't bring it back.

I began to see the city as it is — A shrine to hedonism, ostentatious wealth and human nature at it's most base — A neon dream supported by the silicon enhanced fantasies of an insecure nation. This is capitalism at it's most visceral — a town built to launder mafia money, now extorting people for their 'happiness' — a money grubbing perversion of the American dream.

Here everything has a price — women selling themselves for a thousandth of the price of the luxury watches strewn about the windows of the endless malls, bottles of water costing more than a week of third world meals. Everything is for show. The shallowness of the place is unescapeable — from the fake marble columns, to the fake European streets, to the fake botox smiles, it's all about building an illusion — trying to compensate for what is lacking — consumerism disguised as freedom, gambling disguised as opportunity, damaged girls disguised as sirens. This is a microcosm of America at it's worst, the American promise of opportunity unfettered by morality or conscience.

To me it seems unconscionable — the hordes of people taunted by their instinctual desires, their inability to understand risk and statistics, herded like sheep through pens of craps tables, searching for the big break that will put the jewelry from the mall windows in their hands. There's a difference between opportunity and opportunism, Vegas is all about the second. I guess I believe the aim of society should be to minimise the latter without compromising the former, here I see that I may be in the minority. The people seem to genuinely enjoy lusting after things just outside their reach; they seem to take perverse pleasure in losing it all while chasing luck; they embrace their position in this strange game, the only winning strategy is not to play.

I need reality, I need to get out, the next day's plane is delayed and the claustrophobia builds as I feel more and more like a pawn in some black comedy. At last we finally leave the ground. I've escaped.

As I write this a few days have passed since the trip. Although the sleep and healthier food have cured any remnants of the chaos my body was feeling, a little part of my head is still uneasy. I saw a stretch limousine on the way to work and a part of me shuddered. The few days in Vegas took me to the end of that road, and I didn't like what was there. I'll continue to party with my friends and watch them build their material fantasies, but now I know they're not for me. Vegas showed me that real wealth is not physical, and I never planned that either.

(Thanks Adam and Jacob for making me come — you guys are awesome)