This is shaping up to be a tremendously exciting year. The Large Hadron Collider is poised to return to normal data-taking operations in just over a month, and the expectations are that the dataset is going to grow extremely quickly. With about 40/pb (“forty inverse picobarns” [1]) of data currently being scrutinized, ATLAS is digging deep into what we have so that we are ready to tunnel to the bottom of the coming 2011 data sample. There is exhaustion and excitement; exhaustion, because the demands of physics analysis and review are large, but excitement because of the discoveries that may lie in wait.
For the first time since I joined ATLAS over a year ago, I’m finally feeling connected to the experiment and caught up in some of the excitement. It was VERY hard to plug into the collaboration, and even at this point it’s not entirely clear to me how I would advise another person to do it (especially a new faculty member). I think for post-docs and students who devote all of their time to being involved, it’s a lot easier than for a distracted faculty member who is trying to lead, teach, and serve all the same time.
I’m still learning. But I feel some of that child-like thrill of finally understanding something enough to tear it apart. Or, at least, feeling comfortable enough with the shovel to begin digging deep.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_%28unit%29#Inverse_femtobarn
