Global Seminars: Day 18: CERN's "Antimatter Factory," and on to Zermatt

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Day 18: CERN's "Antimatter Factory," and on to Zermatt

This Saturday started with a bus ride the world renown scientific research center of CERN. We were able to get a tour of their building where they create and study antimatter, which is subtly called the “Antimatter Factory.”
This Saturday started with a bus ride the world renown scientific research center of CERN. We were able to get a tour of their building where they create and study antimatter, which is subtly called the “Antimatter Factory.”



They hit us with a lot of technical information on what particles are made of, how they produce antimatter, how their facilities work and much more that can not be fit into a single blog post. One strange fact that I took away from it was that CERN uses over half of the worlds yearly liquid helium supply just to cool their electromagnets.


After the Antimatter Factory, our tour guide explained to us how they store their data. We found out that their experiments produce roughly one gigabyte of data every second during operation which will add up to petabytes of data from their experiment!



We wrapped up the tour of CERN and were back on the bus for another long ride to Zermatt. The bus ride was beautiful as we drove around lakes at the base of the Appalachian Mountains, and once we got to Zermatt the view got even better.



Surrounded by mountains and with the famous Matterhorn mountain peak in the background, Zermatt is a picturesque mountain town that feels surreal to be in.


Once we got our stuff dropped off at the hostel, we had some free time to roam around the town. We split off into groups to go eat dinner and walk around, and then many of us met back up to hike to a scenic lookout point. There we found a fire pit and enjoyed a small bonfire before heading back to the hostel once it started to get dark.



-- Joseph Z.