Now we have it, what do we do with it?
My dad found the Higgs boson! Reminiscences of a CERN kid
When your Dad’s a bus driver or a bank manager life must be simple. Bring-your-kids-to-work day involves things like garages and spreadsheets: when I was little it meant trying not to step in front of a particle beam. As a child I attended the playgroup at CERN while my older sister was enrolled at their international school …
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Monday 9th July 2012 10:39 GMT David Cantrell
What do we do with it? No-one knows. That's OK, fundamental research is rarely useful immediately. Give it a few decades though, and it'll be the basis of all kinds of consumery stuff. Remember that electromagnetism, quantum mechanics and relativity were all nothing but intellectual curiosities for several decades before they suddenly turned up in the real world, giving us things like power grids, CD players and GPS.
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Friday 6th July 2012 16:44 GMT Aqua Marina
Ditto
A friend of mine has the same problem. He's been involved in the design process of most of the western worlds nuclear reactors, both power generating and military. He too holds the same access all areas pass, and he too is detained each time he leaves or enters the States for hours, because his passport says he's Iranian. Although he is in the true sense born and bred over there, only moving over here as an adult (with lots of nuclear qualifications and his services being snapped up in the 60s and 70s by governments wanting to implement this nuclear thingy).
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Friday 6th July 2012 09:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Thanks for this
It's an inspirational story, and an interesting at the personalities behind the scenes.
I especially liked the line, "all Freon and beams. I remember thinking: It doesn’t get much cooler than this." True, in more ways than one.
Big shout out to the CERN massive - job's a good'un!
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Friday 6th July 2012 11:13 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Great story! It must be an amazing feeling for your father, to have worked so hard for so long on something so momentous.
Coverage here in the states has been rather limited. It rales pales in comparison compared to the triumph of some doped up freaks at the superbowel, a sad reflection on our values unfortunately.
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Saturday 7th July 2012 01:38 GMT Clive Harris
Do nuclear physicists only have daughters?
It's a common observation that RF engineers father a much higher proportion of girls to boys. Reading this I wonder if that's true of nuclear physicists as well. It's quite likely that both would be exposed to strange forms of radiation at work, so there could be a connection. I don't work with RF or other radiation now, but I certainly did in my younger days, back when safety rules were more relaxed. I frequently stood in the near fields of transmitters, I once stood on top of a nuclear reactor (the Dounreay PFR), and I can honestly say that I once held a (very small) piece of plutonium in my hand. That could explain my two daughters and no sons. Have any statistical surveys been done at CERN?
(Nuclear fireball because it seems appropriate)