Things you see and things you don't see...

It's already more than a week ago that I saw my first president at a physics conference. Doesn't time fly? There were so many things to see (or not) during ICHEP that it really stands out from other conferences I have been to. Hey, after all it was the first real big one with first real LHC results, after Physics at the LHC at DESY, which didn't have quite as many participants. Last year, at the Lepton Photon conference, the main conclusion after every talk was: "We are looking forward to results from the LHC!" It's great to see that those times are over and that the community is buzzing over limits and cuts and simulations and candidates!
Of course what we didn't see was the Higgs. Many people thought we would (which meant we also saw more journalists than ever before at a physics conference), and now the next big question is: what's next? Will the Tevatron keep running for another three to four years? Will that mean it will see the Higgs? From what I hear, that's not a given, but it'll certainly be an exciting time.
Some people also saw the film Sunshine during the nuit des particules at the Grand Rex, and at the time time saw a lot of the actress Irene Jacob - that dress, and a story about balls of fire in a kitchen will go down in particle physics history.
Now it's time to see what's next - for me, that's the global Particle Physics Photo Walk next Saturday. More than 200 amateur photographers from around the world will get an exclusive look behind the scenes of five physics labs (KEK, CERN DESY, Fermilab, TRIUMF) and we are very much looking forward to see our labs through their eyes.

Is there?

I just liked this...
For better pictures see Marco's photostream!

Back to the future

It's Tuesday and I'm exhausted! I've only just found some time to sit down and think about the future session that happened way in the past (on Saturday, pre-Sarkozy, pre-press conference, pre-dinner - gee, was it only three days ago?!). Anyway, with the network problems already reported by Gordon, the dinner already covered by Katie and hundreds of reports in media around the world I hope I am excused. Also, sitting in the press booth isn't exactly supportive of concentrated work as many people pass by for a chat. I guess I have to educate them to pass by for a chat AND bring a coffee. Since you ask, no sugar but a lot of milk please, thanks!

But now, here goes! Saturday saw a big overview of all the exiting and less exciting future projects for the world of particle physics. I leave it up to your judgement to decide which is which, comments are welcome! I am also arranging them by my brain's personal sorting system and will happily accept comments and corrections - the list is probably not complete.

Particle physics is a global field. You just have to look around around the room to notice that people come from all over the place. The big machines that we work on these days are challenging and cost a lot of money so that no one country could afford to build and host them - all countries have to chip in and work together. The more challenging the technologies become the more this is the case, and it also takes many years for a machine to evolve from idea to design study to running accelerator. Consequently it may seem strange to the outside world that while we've only just switched on the LHC and are waiting for discoveries, we already plan the next generation – but we have to have a variety of options in the drawer that will enable us to make the best choice when results are there. And then of course there are physics topics that aren't covered by the LHC!

There are several ideas for 'LHC follow-ups'. Two different varieties of LHC upgrades exist - one for more luminosity and thus higher statistics and safer discoveries, one for higher energies. Whereas one, the luminosity upgrade, is virtually around the corner, the energy upgrade is an option that's far in the future (around 2030, according to Roger Bailey's talk from Saturday). The discoveries at the LHC will probably dictate whether the higher energies are more interesting, or whether the LHC could be transformed into a electron-proton machine, or a 'superHERA', although it goes by the name of LHeC in the session, with the e for electron. LHeC would collide the LHC's protons with electrons from a linear collider - an intriguing thought for someone working on the ILC! My imagination already went off into dreamscapes where LHeC and the linear collider would run together on different physics programmes as the best possible synergy of machines we have yet to see (and believe me, physicists are great at creating synergies and reusing existing machines!). I guess I'll have to talk to a few proper scientists to check whether this is imagination running wild or whether it's actually possible.

Certainly possible and the most likely next big project is a linear collider for electron-positron collisions. It'll complement the LHC and it's only a question of LHC discoveries, again, whether the ILC or CLIC is the machine of choice. While the ILC is basically ready to be built - the Technical Design Report is due in 2012, which means "Here's how we would build it", CLIC is a few years behind, with its Conceptual Design Report due next year. When you think that first collisions from a linear collider could be expected in the 2020s you start to understand why there is plenty of planning, designing and testing going on around the world!

Then there are b factories, machines that would complement and extend anything that the b physics experiments around the world, like the LHCb experiment at the LHC, find. One is proposed in Italy, and KEK in Japan has just started reconfiguring its KEKB accelerator into - can you guess its name? - SuperKEKB. Funding isn't final but they are planning get 40 times more luminosity. The Italian b factory would also be a light source, and it shares its multifunctionality with Fermilab's 'Project X', which can contribute to the ILC, to a possible muon collider and ultimately a possible neutrino factory. Fermilab is busy working on a plan for a muon accelerator program (i.e. a MAP), and muon colliders, though technologically still a big challenge, are also a big topic for machine physicists. Probably something called 'dielectric acceleration is, too, but I couldn't tell you as I didn't understand the talk, sorry....but when asked about whether there is a plan for a beam delivery system, the speaker laughed and said that he'd like to have this questions again in 10-15 years -- so I conclude it's not something that would pop up in the next months.

What I missed in almost all of the talks were good, catching, convincing arguments why these machines that were proposed are needed. I am sure there are solid physics cases for all of them, but surely it can't harm to state them again, clearly, understandably, in talks like these that will live on for a while? I'll go hunting for them for a future story in NewsLine, but first I go hunt particles in the Grand Rex, the nuit des particules -- see you there!

Ca y est! (or something)

So here we go, this is it, the conference starts! A week of results and discussions (and plans) is just starting, and it's exciting. And it's like always at big conferences like these... you meet the first colleague on the metro, the next one on the way out, and by the time you have arrived at the registration desk you have become a crowd. First confusion (where are the rooms? where are the toilets? and most importantly: what's the password for the internet connection and where is a plug for my laptop??) soon calms down, and right now people file into Salle Maillot to hear a talk about the status of the LHC (the machine, that is, rather than the detectors). Interestingly, they all stay close to the edges of the seating area, apparently ready to flee, hop into the next session, catch news about ws and zs or secure a place at the computer terminals... are physicists noncommittal? We'll see later in the week...

Less of a rumour, more of a fact

There's quite a debate going on in the worlds (or is it only one world?) of science, media, PR, social media, science journalism and science blogging about sources, fact checking, new ways of doing your journalistic research and new ways of communicating the results of your scientific research. The debate has been going on for a while, so maybe those ways aren't really new anymore, but things have certainly changed from the olden days. And don't we all sometimes miss the olden days? So the nostalgics amongst us, and those who believe in getting information from the source, will be pleased to hear that there will be a press conference during ICHEP where all possible results from the world of international high-energy physics will be presented.

The press conference takes place on Monday, 26 July at 1 pm, at the Palais des Congrès in Paris.

Physics at LHC

This week some 270 people are getting a taster of what ICHEP may (or may not) be like: at Physics at LHC, a conference that started today at DESY in Hamburg, Germany, about, well... physics at the LHC. I've heard some hints that different results will be available for the summer conferences, seen many interesting talks and heard many excited scientists getting pure bliss out of the fact that they can finally present real data from real collisions at a really remarkable LHC.

If you're not in Hamburg you can still follow the action -- the talks are webcast and also recorded and put up on the conference's indico page along with the slides.

Enjoy!

Telescope transport now leaving from gate A...

Out on the job market in the real world, physicists are popular people. They can get almost any job because, well, they can do almost any job. They are good at maths, computing, logic, solution-oriented and creative thinking. They are used to working in teams, in different languages, with different cultures, so when physicists decide not to stay in physics, they might end up as investment bankers, software developers, patent lawyers, safety specialists, teachers, consultants. And probably many other professions that I’m not even aware of.

But it’s not only in life after physics that their versatility is useful. As particle physicist you are as much a brainy boffin as you are a technician with screwdriver in hand, or a manager, or an accountant – and sometimes you can be a truck driver. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a special kind of van will leave the German lab DESY and go to CERN to deliver a beam telescope. At the wheel: coordinator and physicist (and blogger) Ingrid Gregor…

The beam telescope is about as versatile as the people who use it. You need it to check whether what you think you see with your detector really is there, a sort of cross-check mechanism, only with lots of added value. In labs around the world, scores of physicists are already working on new generations of particle detectors – like the ones busy taking data at the LHC at CERN right now. These need to be tested, and the best way to test a particle detector is to put in a beam of particles, a test beam. There are test beams at all the major labs around the world, including DESY and CERN – particles circulating in the accelerators are directed to separate areas where many smallish experimental stations receive them. Different accelerator deliver different particles, and depending on the type of tests you want to make some are more useful than others.

The beam telescope – the product of the European ‘EUDET’ project that coordinates detector development infrastructures – gets into the ring with the test detectors (all sorts of different kinds, by the way) and tests their precision. A highly precise tool itself, its six boards, fitted with silicon pixel sensors, can measure the beam particle tracks to a precision of three micrometres, while another device, typically pixel or strip detectors, can be positioned in the middle to be studied. (I stole this sentence from a NewsLine story in case you’d like to read up on the telescope). It goes to CERN for a round of shifts with ATLAS detector upgrades and has an extremely full agenda at CERN until the end of November, when Ingrid gets back into the telescope truck and hauls it back to DESY.

And now the best bit: I’ll be part of the delivery! I’ll be driving down with Ingrid, Volker the technician, EUDET the telescope and a stack of freshly made CDs…it’s a twelve-hour trip after all. You’ll be hearing more of it later!

A perfectly workable unit

I'd like to introduce a new unit to the already rather colourful list of physics units (what do I mean, colourful? Well, what sort of a unit do call an 'inverse femtobarns'?) - the unit of 'big things to come'. It permeates my to-do list and determines absences, presences and social engagements. Last year's 'big things to come' were several orders of magnitude more abundant than those of previous years (though it never feels like nearing zero) - there were colliders to start back up, first collisions at various energies, anniversary celebrations, open days, First Physics days, exhibitions and finally an important political visit paired with a huge celebration. Now, amazingly, this is all over and it is time to cross done to-dos off the list and face the next big thing to come. For me, that is ICHEP.

I am not nearly as busy preparing for as some of my colleagues are, but it is there on the horizon as a week in Paris that might bring interesting developments for the ILC, maybe exciting news from LHC experiments, and definitely new shores in terms of particle physics communication. We'll tell you more about those later...