CERN Opendays

[Kremmen]

Wasnt thinking of booking with fake id.

No of course not, that was just me making a lame joke.

Just it says on the website:

If the site displays 100% issued tickets, it means that it won’t be possible to get any tickets from our website.
There might be some last minute tickets available at the visits sites, but this will depend on various factors and cannot be guaranteed.
In this case, make sure you bring a picture ID with you, that you wear closed shoes (no open shoes, high heels or sandals) and that you don’t bring big bags. The age limit of 12 will also apply.

It is guaranteed that not 100.00% of the booked tickets will be presented at the time of the visits, every time. There will always be some last minute impediments preventing someone from being there in time or at all. I guess that might be one reason for the long lead times in preparing for the visits. That gives the organizers a chance to count heads and fill in the tour quotas with replacement visitors.

So wondered if unused tickets might be available on the day, i am sure they would prefer to have people to go on the tours instead of wasting unused tickets?

Absolutely.

[dexters_lab]

jeez, been away driving in france, switzerland and italy.

it either consisted of no internet access or missing the times of tickets so i still dont have any for the tours 

hopefully i can bag one now i am back at home

[aargee]

We went last year and only got the above ground tour,  which itself was a bit of a let down due to power problems.

If it's the ATLAS, it is the small collider, if I recall, it's not the LHC. So you won't be seeing the grand engineering of the LHC but it will certainly be worth a look.

[DenzilPenberthy]

Nope, ATLAS is one of the experiments on the main LHC ring. It's fekkin huge!

[brainwash]

Me and some friends might have some tickets left, we'll figure out how many we actually need in the last week once we round everybody up. I'll announce it first here and the interested people can send me their email addresses via PM so we can transfer the tickets.

[Dago]

Me and some friends might have some tickets left, we'll figure out how many we actually need in the last week once we round everybody up. I'll announce it first here and the interested people can send me their email addresses via PM so we can transfer the tickets.

Eh? I understood all the tickets are reserved for a specific person and are non transferable. And you have to show ID when you go for the tour.

[brainwash]

When you press delete on a ticket you reserved you have to option to transfer it to another person (via e-mail).

[rr100]

SCORED - ATLAS tickets a few days ago, booked like crazy hotels for the whole week.

Question (I see we have somebody who's been there before): they say photo/video cameras are allowed, I assume a bigger camera (a smallish DSLR) plus maybe a flash is still ok (sure, if they don't want flash pictures or pictures at all in some places that's fine as long as I can keep my equipment)? And a generous "man-purse" to keep them plus wallet and stuff (they say "no big bags but I assume they don't mean something as big as a big women purse).

[lewis]

Got tickets, channel tunnel sorted, hotel booked... off to see the Large Hadron Collider!

[dexters_lab]

Ok, managed to confirm a ticket for atlas on the sunday. I really wanted saturday so might bin it for a sat one.

Had a small issue trying to confirm, it would only accept +33 and +41 area codes, anyone else see this?

Need to work out flights and other details. I am guessing that given there are 1000s of tickets its going to be busy?

[dexters_lab]

Seems to be a few people going, any recommendations on hotels?

[rr100]

Look across the border in France otherwise hotels might be a problem. There are 2 Premiere Classe (dirt cheap hotel chain) in Annemasse, check public transport first if you don't have your own wheels.

Speaking of that:what's the best parking option for Cern. I've seen the diagram with the shuttles but there are many parkins and surely they differ wildly in price and avilability.

[dexters_lab]

ok

hotel booked, flights booked

 

[dexters_lab]

would be great to meet up with anyone else here, pm me for my mobile number, i'm staying in the NH Geneva which is near to the airport

i guess we'll have to arrange a postcard to keep dave happy 

[Setar2k11]

would be great to meet up with anyone else here, pm me for my mobile number, i'm staying in the NH Geneva which is near to the airport

i guess we'll have to arrange a postcard to keep dave happy 

Staying there also.....

[dexters_lab]

Cool, need to organise an eevblog meetup

[brainwash]

I have two tickets available for Saturday on a first-come first-served basis. I need your data (which will not be used for nefarious purposes) in order to transfer the ticket. I don't know if there is any other way to do this.

2x
Point   Accelerator Systems
Day   Saturday 28
Arrival Advised arrival time in the vicinity of CERN taking into account the time needed to reach your visit point with CERN shuttles    around 15:00
Check-In Time at which you must have checked-in on visit point. Showing late at check-in may result in cancellation of your visit.    16:00 at the latest
Visit time Time slot during which your visit will take place. A visit will last between 20 and 30 minutes. You have to be at Visit Entrance at least 30 minutes before the end of this slot.    between 17:00 and 18:00

Please send me your details via PM until end-of-day:
First (Given) Name Usual First (Given) Name as in official ID document but with no diacritical characters (accented or national characters). Value Required   
Last (Family) Name Last (Family) Name as in official ID document but with no diacritical characters (accented or national characters). Value Required   
Date of birth (DD.MM.YYYY) Visitor must be at least 12 years old at the time of visit. Value Required   
Mobile phone Swiss or French mobile phones only. We will use this number to warn you by SMS in case of last minute change. If you are in a group, provide only one phone number for one visitor. Extra SMS costs (e.g. roaming) will be at visitor's expense.         
Preferred Language This will help us organize groups of visitors by language. Only French and English visits are guaranteed. If you wish to have your visit in another language, please inform staff at check-in on visit site. Value Required   

The email is also required (or some shared/cloud file system) so I can give you the PDF ticket.
Only one ticket per individual, the site verifies similar and misspelled names and other stuff.

I am awaiting your messages for the next 5-6 hours after which I will cancel the tickets completely.

[cloudscapes]

The mother of all teardowns

I would love LOVE to see what kind of circuitry they use as sensor front-end. I wont be able to understand any of it. just as long as it looks really really expensive. 

[dexters_lab]

I followed a bit of the atlas construction at the time, i did find images at the time of the silicon modules used for parts of the tracker...

...it looked eye wateringely expensive

[nardev]

so sad i didn't know this before

[Dago]

Can anyone recommend stuff to do in Geneva? Or places to eat. I'll be spending the whole Sunday in CERN but I have nothing planned for Monday or Tuesday morning.

I'm also staying in NH Geneva.

[dexters_lab]

Met with lewis and Setar2k11 tonight

Hope to meet with kremmen and dago (what room are you in?) tomorow

So much to see here, some pics of the engineering workshops on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dexterslab2010/sets/72157635987692365/

More to come...

[Kremmen]

Back from today's rounds. Took lots of photos but unfortunately don't have the means to upload from my good camera. I'll see if i can publish some phone pics though.

[dexters_lab]

We just arrived back at the hotel after 11 hours of science!

Lots of pics to upload when i get home!

So we saw...

Linac 2 (Proton source for cern)
Linac 3 (heavy ion source for cern)
Linac 4 (future proton source, being built)
Antiproton decelerator (lots of experiments involving antiprotons)
Data centre servers and tape backup
Low energy ion ring (ion beam conditioning)
Atlas detector (part of the main lhc experiments)
Compact linear accelerator prototype (Clic, maybe the future of cern)
Cern workshops including the materials analysis and engineering workshops

[tszaboo]

Meanwhile I was in the Wigner Research Centre for Physics which hosts the secondary data center for CERN. They had also an open day, I was already there... I must say it was disappointingly short, and most of the locations were "too dangerous" to visit. They could have split the groups to people who can control themselves not to touch and rest. I would expect 70PB of data to be more exciting. And of course no pictures please