Just Jazzed to Be on the Show

The CERN Globe

I do wish such a thing as a teleporter existed. I have discovered that I love traveling -- but only once I arrive at the destination. The getting-there part, to me, is miserable. However, today proved how worth it the miserable getting-there part really is.



Having spent the day falling victim to motion sickness and airport hurry-up-and-wait boredom, minutes before my last flight landed I was turning green and fantasizing about the following things: a bottle of water, a shower, and a nap. And then the plane landed. And literally seconds after I made it to the baggage-claim exit, my friend Allison walked in the door and whisked me off to tour CERN, where she works. The second she started to show me around the place (she's quite the tour guide!), I forgot what the word exhaustion even means and started to drink in this incredible facility.

A smaller version of the LHC

For anybody who doesn't know, CERN is essentially a campus of our planet's brightest minds figuring out how the universe works, and then figuring out how to use that information to human advantage. Some of you may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the news; the LHC is a massive machine that offers physicists more insight on matter, energy, space, and time. You know, important stuff. CERN also sort-of invented the internet. If anyone thought that was Al Gore's doing, sorry to disappoint you. The computer lab even has an "animal shelter" for old computer mice. Observe:


Allison is working on her doctorate in particle physics here. I offer her up as a perfect argument against he idea that women aren't good at science -- and as inspiration for all of the future woman scientists out there. Maybe she and the folks at CERN could invent a teleporter so I can enjoy traveling without motion-sickness on airplanes and 5-hour layovers.

While Allison gave me my tour today, I had two thoughts at the same time: a.)most of this is over my head and b.) I can appreciate how simultaneously vast and infinitessimal everything is, and why it is so important to learn about it. Maybe science isn't my thing, but the fact that is studied so passionately by people like Allison bodes well for the world.

The whole time I was touring CERN today, a line from the movie Galaxy Quest kept popping into my head. The character Guy, who always just been the extra on the set, is asked his opinion. In a state of disbelief and bliss at being included in the whole adventure, Guy answers, "I'm just jazzed to be on the show, man!" And that's exactly how I felt. Maybe I didn't get most of the science, but I was still in awe. Even the little things struck me as awesome: sitting in the outdoor patio of the CERN cafeteria, eating an apple tart and sipping the best cafe au lait I've ever had, I kept overhearing scientists arguing (amiably) in German accents about quarks and nuclei and equations just one table over. The whole moment made me smile.

We finished up the day with a grocery-store assembled dinner: local gruyere, fresh raspberries, rabbit meat sauteed in herbs and butter (prepared to perfection by Allison), a baguette, a bottle of Bordeaux and a great conversation on the deck overlooking the mountains. I really am so jazzed just to be on the show.