Sheep watching in Switzerland

We had a fascinating lesson in sheep psychology this weekend while walking along the pristine countryside around Aubonne. (see Autumn walk in Aubonne for more on Aubonne's beauty).

Walking along an unfrequented wooded path we chanced upon a flock of sheep grazing. A sight so common that we didn't even give it a second glance.

However, the sheep had other ideas. We, or perhaps our dog caught the eye of one sheep.

Of course, what one does the rest must do as well. One after another each of them turned their gaze towards us.

Soon all of them had their eyes fixed on us in concentrated unison.

They stood frozen in that position for several minutes and then the same sheep who first began to look at us, decided he wanted a closer look. Sure enough, every one of the others followed.

They stood a few feet in front of us just staring with almost identically quizzical expressions on their faces. I stared back.  We did this for all of three minutes.

Sheep watching us. 

Then startled probably by a bark from the dog, one turned around, and of course so did the others. They scampered off.

But no sooner did they retreat a safe distance, once again one sheep (the same one, I am quite convinced!) stopped. Turned to look back at us. As if on cue, each one of the others became motionless, turned their heads and trained their gaze towards us in perfect unison.

And there they remained, motionless and focused as they watched us walking off into the distance.

Now I know what sheep mentality means.

Protons, Bosons and other exotic particles ............a visit to the ATLAS Experiment at CERN

Some 100 meters deep in the bowels of the earth below where I stand, millions and millions of protons go around and round in a large 27 km circle that stretches from the Jura in France to Lake Geneva in Switzerland. 

They move faster and faster till they are almost at the speed of light in a tube that is colder than outer space (with temperatures that are close to absolute zero). At four points along the circle, superconducting magnets (like the one in the picture) make the protons deviate ever so slightly from their course so that they are likely to have a head on collision with protons that are are going around in a circle from the opposite direction. The smash or 'event' results in a burst of energy and millions and millions of other particles being formed rather like a glass going up in smithereens after a high speed car crash. 

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The data produced is massive ..like having 500 billion phone calls in a second. Hundreds of computers and high speed cameras (that click 4 million frames a minute) capture the data, filtering out all but the most relevant bits. And even then the data generated is massive: as much as 27 CDs every minute. Computers on site share the data with other offsite computers via the web ..........CERN is also the place where 25 years ago this month, the world wide web was invented for just this reason ..more efficient sharing of information.  

Mural on the external wall at depecits the ATLAS detector and the real thing up close (its twice the size of the building)

Not sci fi but absolute reality and just another day at the ATLAS detector at CERN when its functioning. It is on a well-earned break at the moment after the mind baffling co discovery of the Higgs Bosson particle. That and the kindness of a physicist friend who works there is what afforded the opportunity to go underground for a peep at this man (and women ..there are plenty of women physicists behind this experiment, so forget any stereotypes) made wonder. 

The detector surrounding the blue collider tube.

As we go to the first underground level feeling very important to have donned red hard hats and walk through narrow cable filled corridors we come to a viewing platform where we come head on with the detector straddling the blue Hadron Collider tube. 

An occasional scientist is doing some maintenance work on the magnets and those human figures are completely dwarfed by this machinery which is 5 stories high and weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower. And yet as our physicst guide assures us, they know the insides of the cables and magnets of this gigantic contraption to the precision of a human hair ! 


By now my mind is spinning as fast as the protons in the Hadron Collider at witnessing the vastness of the forces of the universe re created under the city of Geneva ......

The CERN dome

Maybe as an outside voyeur peeping momentarily into this world, I could be guilty of romanticizing but to me this seems to be one place where collaboration takes precedence over collision (of the human variety) and where petty politics is trumped by particle physics. Over 3000 scientists, 138 institutes and 38 countries collaborate on this experiment, CERN sits across and under two countries belonging to both and neither ……… where countries, people , theoretical and experimental physicists, the geeks and the layman come together and where cosmic mysteries makes all else seem petty and irrelevant. What the human brain can create under these circumstances is as miraculous and as elusive at the Higgs Boson. Seems both have been found at CERN.