Glenn Starkman has traded his comfortable life in unexpectedly wonderful Cleveland (Heights), Ohio for the excitement and alpine scenery of global diplomatic and particle physics capital Geneva, Switzerland.
While every scientist he meets tells him this will be "an exciting time to be at CERN" he will set aside a few moments each month or so to share his observations of life in the fast lane with his fellow Scientific American readers.
The surroundings
Nestled among the vineyards outside Geneva, surrounded by the lush slopes of the Jura mountains on one side and the rugged snow-capped Alps on the other sits CERN, the premiere laboratory for particle physics in the world.
Here is the home of the Higgs, or at least of the Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS and CMS detectors that appear to have finally discovered this important piece of the Standard Model.
All roads lead to CERN
More than that, with the US having abruptly cancelled the post-war pre-eminence in accelerator physics that brought it discovery after discovery, and their attendant technological spinoffs, CERN is not just the Rome to which all European (and many non-European) roads in particle physics lead, but the gathering place of the exiles awaiting the return to Zion (or Batavia, IL or Menlo Park, CA), if only the U.S. Congress would foot the bill.
Functionality at its best
Straddling as it does the Swiss and French borders, you would imagine this contemporary Tower of Babel to be a place where fine Gallic taste and precision Helvetic expertise combine to create a cosmopolitan scientific paradise – a workplace that is both beautiful and functional.
Nahh. If only the fictional accounts of luxury and high design held the least grain of truth. Dan Brown: dream on.
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