Part 1

Interacting with the carelessness, absent-mindedness, and superiority-complexes of physicists all day must be a nightmare to the Swiss.  A well-known, senior professor from a major US university was ahead of me in line at the badging office, and their irresponsibility provoked the wrath of the security agent.  He had visited before, and the information on file that the agent reviewed on their computer was troubling, effectively detailing a most heinous grand theft from the world’s most prestigious physics laboratory.  A stern, pointed rebuke rained like hellfire, all the more frightening because it was not yelled, that their previous badge was missing, was the property of the lab, and must be returned at the end of every visit.  The professor whimpered and shuffled over to the white backdrop, mustering his best smile while the agent snapped the photo and out of the printer popped the new, warm badge.  No love was shared as the agent slammed the badge on the counter and then turned to me, before the professor had left.  “I’m here to get my badge,” I stammer, and “Yes” was the curt reply, as this was the badging office after all.  This famous hospitality still rattled me as I stepped outside to walk back to my hostel room, reviewing my fresh badge expiring on 6 July 2012.  Welcome to CERN.

This was my second trip to CERN, and both times were to visit a collaborator, Peter, who worked in the theory division.  The first was just a few months earlier, in the height of winter, and we had planned to ski in the Jura mountains, visible from CERN and just a few miles into France.  That week, however, brought the coldest weather to Europe in many years, and at CERN itself were blizzard-like conditions with high winds and temperatures dipping to -25 C.  Our ski trip never materialized, but conditions were perfect for a dinner of fondue at Bains de Pâquis on Lake Geneva.  Now, in summer, I had coordinated this work trip with my honeymoon, first a few days at CERN, then meeting my wife for some sightseeing and travel to Italy for the main event.  The work excuse was convenient, as it meant that my trans-Atlantic plane ticket could be paid from research travel funds, helping spread our frugal graduate student and newlywed budget a bit further.  The specific dates for this second CERN visit was correspondingly set by our honeymoon, the tours we had scheduled or museum tickets we had reserved, and no other physically-motivated considerations.

By this time, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was the only high-energy particle collision experiment on Earth, as the Tevatron at Fermilab had completed data collection the previous year.  A visit to CERN, located in Meyrin, a municipality of Geneva right at the Franco-Swiss border, as a particle physicist was a religious experience, bestowing intellectual indulgences on pilgrims like a visit to Rome’s basilicas.  This was the center of the universe, with all eyes and ears focusing with intensity on every little result that was put forth and its consequences for our interpretation of Nature and drawing everything and everyone into its orbit like a black hole.  Its first period of data collection, Run 1, was coming to a close in the next six months, having collided about 100 trillion protons on protons for the past nearly three years, and the tens or hundreds of particles in each collision was pored over by thousands of graduate students from nearly every country on the planet.  There had been some whispers in the hallways and over lunches that something had been found, but had it been verified? was it just a fluctuation? was this created gossip to advertise CERN?  There was no other game in town, so all waited with anticipation.

The singular, largest yearly international particle physics conference, perhaps the biggest deadline for completing analyses, drawing conclusions, and writing talks for any experimentalist, was starting this week, too, but it was very literally on the opposite side of the planet, hosted in Melbourne.  Physicists arrived in Australia that weekend from CERN, from the US, from East Asia, and beyond, seeking their own little vacation before talks and discussions started in earnest mid-week.  This had the strange effect of displacing a significant fraction of CERN, and in this vacuum in late June, it was announced that there would be a special seminar on the morning of 4 July to present recent results from the LHC.  However, this seminar was to take place at CERN, undercutting the thousands in Australia, but no mind, it would be live-streamed throughout the world.  The rumors and secrecy surrounding these “results” only produced more intrigue as to what would be reported, and institutions in every time zone scheduled watch-parties and post-talks for interpretation.  My planning from months earlier had unwittingly plopped me at CERN in the middle of it all.

I dropped my suitcase and backpack on the floor and crumpled onto the bed in my hostel room with a headache, a sore throat, and nasal congestion certainly acquired from the lack of sleep and breathing in the miasma while above 30,000 feet.  I forced myself to sit up and stay awake, as it was just afternoon and a nap would perpetuate jet lag throughout the week.  There were two things that I could do now: first, I always forget that power outlets at CERN in particular have a narrow, squashed hexagonal profile that fits none of my adapters, so I would have to borrow from the front desk.  Second, the internet at CERN is only accessible if you have an official account or are an official visitor and then your host must validate your request.  Soon my email was churning out all the messages since I closed my computer to board my flight and, now knowing that I was in town, I had received an invitation to a party at Peter’s apartment in Geneva that night.  Eyelids drooping and head throbbing, I set an alarm for three hours in the future, which would be enough time to clean up but also force me to stay in this timezone.  My head hit the pillow and instantly my eyes opened again, but it was darker and the sun was low out my window.  My alarm had stopped chiming four hours ago, and all I could muster for the rest of the night was to drag myself to the cafeteria in the neighboring building for a meager dinner of the light, crisp, yet lacking a fluffy interior pommes frites scooped from under the heat lamp and pulled myself a draft Feldschlösschen that was at least half limp, foamy head.