Author: Stephen Sekula

Steve Sekula is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Particle Physics at Southern Methodist University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004, and currently spends most of his time either conducting research into the Higgs boson on the ATLAS Experiment or teaching. Oh, and he blogs. We all have flaws.
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To CERN and back again

It’s the last two days before I leave for CERN. The next six weeks will be an all-out science-packed physics-fest. A few key events have started happening just in the past few weeks which have me very excited about this summer. Despite being very tired, and feeling very drained, I am actually quite thrilled about this trip.

The first big event in the past few weeks is the appearance of my post-doctoral researcher at SMU. He’s still in the throes of wrapping up his thesis, but that will all be settled in the next two weeks. Despite that, we’ve hit the ground running, including beginning to make some in-roads to ATLAS physics and all-important detector operations and development work. In fact, I would say that the determination and enthusiasm level on the ATLAS side of my life has increased by a factor of 10 since his arrival. Having a post-doctoral researcher who serves as the research nexus of the group is critical to any faculty physics program.

The arrival of this researcher also helps to glue together my work with a graduate student who is joining me for the summer. We now have all levels of the research enterprise in physics represented, sans an undergraduate researcher. We’ve begun weekly progress meetings (no more than an hour, to keep in line with my philosophy that time and attention are finite and precious resources in physics), and we’re starting to think deeply about physics at a hadron collider. The past week has been filled with discussions about single-diffraction, double-diffraction, minimum bias, decays of heavy bosons, simulations of fundamental physics, and triggering.

CERN will be our Mecca this summer, our Hajj on the wings of a great jet airplane and on the backs of Geneva public transportation. This trip would be impossible without the support of my friends and colleagues, who have generously offered to host my student, post-doc, and me until we get setup. A roof over ones head, and money to buy food, are two of the most critical things to building happiness in research. Freed from the fears of finding housing and food, we will be liberated to put all our efforts into thinking about the universe, and how to unlock its mysteries.

I’ll try to be vigilant about reporting some stories of the summer here. In addition, I’ll be collecting audio this summer in preparation for a series of podcasts in the fall. If your interested in talking about your passion for physics, about how you got into this field and what keeps you going every day, I’d love to talk to you this summer!

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Day Four: San Francisco

(Photos from day four)

Our last full day of the trip began with a drive up the peninsula’s scenic highway, 280, to highway 1, and then just shy of the Golden Gate Bridge. Construction routed us away from the usual exit and instead up a scenic road overlooking the Pacific and the mouth of the Golden Gate. Eventually, we wound our way through SF city streets to the Exploratorium, a massive building next to the Palace of Fine Arts.

Unknown to us before we arrived, an awards dinner was being hosted there that night. About half the exhibits were closed off, along with the cafe. We got half-price admission as a result, and spent the next 1.5 hours playing with infrared cameras, soap bubbles, ore-rich sand and magnets, vortices, optical tricks, sound demonstrations, and my favorite: the cloud chamber.

We left as the Exploratorium was closing and headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf. After some initial exploring as a group, we broke into two smaller groups: one for Ghiradelli Square and the other for a walk out to a pier for photos of the city. When we regrouped at 5, we headed into one of the wharf’s many seafood restaurants for the final dinner of the trip. Over crab and shrimp and scallops, we traded stories and talked about all the things to come this summer.

We closed the day just an hour before sunset by parking at the Golden Gate Bridge and walking the whole 1.7 miles across, then the same back. The air was cool and windy, the traffic heavy over the bridge, and the city glowing like embers in the last rays of the setting sun. Building windows across the bay, in the Oakland hills, blazed like beacons in the sunset. We finally all arrived back at our van and headed back to the hotel.

We are all extremely grateful for Mr. Lightner’s support for this unique trip: a chance for the SPS students to experience a unique cradle of science and technology and all the environs that make people want to live here. Today, we concentrate on getting home.

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Days Two and Three: Lick Observatory and Google

(Photos from day two)

The last two days were extremely busy. Tuesday began with breakfast at Izzy’s Bagels again (by popular demand), and then we took some rest before piling into the van and heading to a few stops. The first was Eric’s Gourmet, a great little sandwich shop right near SLAC and a SLAC staple for many years. We then fueled up at the SLAC gift shop on tee shirts, mugs, and umbrellas – something we had forgotten to do on Monday while we were at SLAC. SLAC is conveniently located by the highway that takes us due south, then east, to Mt. Hamilton.

The road up to the top of Mt. Hamilton was long and winding. Twenty miles of nauseating twists and turns, with sheer drops and no guard rails, awaited us. We chugged slowly up the mountain, finally arriving at the observatory. After a subdued lunch in the cool, foggy air, we headed into the main building for a short tour. The tour treated us to a view of the large reflecting telescope in the main observatory building. While old, the telescope is still used about twice a week, depending on atmospheric conditions. The entire floor surrounding the telescope tower can raise and lower to allow for optimal viewing, the massive telescope is so well-balanced that a single observer can move it by hand using a large handle near the eyepiece.

Following that, we walked the half-mile to the 120-inch reflecting telescope, up a winding mountain road. By then, we were pretty tired, and sat in the dark outside the telescope half-napping to informational videos about the telescope. We concluded our visit to Lick with a walk past a few of the other 10 telescopes on the mountain, heading back to the van and our decent down the mountain. We closed that day with dinner at a noodle house in San Jose.

(Photos from day three)

The third day began with breakfast at one of my own favorite eateries – Stacks, a pancake house in Menlo Park. We were joined by a few colleagues, including our SLAC tour guide.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Bay trails near NASA Ames, to get in a walk and take in the site of the NASA Ames Research Center in the distance. We walked through salt marshland, the Bay to our northeast and the sprawling hangars and wind tunnels of NASA Ames to our southwest. Tired, hungry, and (for some) suffering allergies from all the plants near the trail, we headed into downtown Mountain View for lunch at Sono Sushi. We broke into small groups after that and browsed the small shops along Castro St. in Mt. View, including a vast used book store and a coffee shop.

This killed enough time that we were ready to head to Google for a private tour by a physics colleague of mine who now works at Google. He not only took us around the campus, he arranged a small forum with himself and another trained physicist who also works at Google. They fielded questions, asked about the students’ interests and experience, and gave us some amazing insight into the research philosophy of this important information company. We learned about 20% projects, which employees are encouraged to pursue out of interest in addition to their main projects. We learned about TGIF, a weekly Friday briefing on that week’s accomplishments in the company held in the main cafeteria. We saw the flexible cubicle spaces, the tent-like meeting rooms that look temporary but which are actually fixed parts of the work landscape. We learned about distraction, how to achieve it, and how not to fall prey to it. My own view of what Google is, and how it functions, was radically changed by this experience.