Los Alamos at last!
I arrived in town on Saturday afternoon, following an interesting shuttle trip (it involved fording water), and have since been getting settled and getting to know my fellow researchers.
I’ve also learned that I will indeed be working on the dark matter project, as I’d hoped. It seems that Los Alamos scientists have invented a dark matter detector, which uses “WIMPs” for detection. Dark matter is believed to constitute the bulk of the universe’s “weight,” and has often been invoked for explaining universal expansion and otherwise-bizarre interactions between astronomical systems. It’s sort of like: “well, this thing is interacting as if there were more matter here; there must just be some we can’t see!” It’s been hypothesized that this elusive matter is actually WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. These are particles that have some finite mass, but don’t play well with others; they could easily pass through Earth, for example, without even noticing. They do interact with normal matter occassionally, and that is how this project tries to find them. I’ll be finding out more details and specifics later this week, when I meet my research group.
I actually went to the lab for the first time today, to get an ID badge and take a little tour. The place is daunting: 40 heavily wooded square miles, amid canyons and mountains. They also take security very seriously; no cell phones, no cameras (sorry, looks like my photos will be scenery, not research), and apparently if you leave luggage unattended, a SWAT team comes, evacuates the building, and sends a robot to blow it up. Many an innocent briefcase and laptop have thus met their untimely ends. Interesting place.
As an unfortunate side effect of the high security, my blog posts that discuss research will need to be cleared as nonclassified, which may delay posting of some information.
Tomorrow, I have lab employee orientation and training (joy), then on Wednesday I get to start working on my project!
I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Thanks for reading!
3 responses so far ↓
1
donna benson
// Jun 5, 2007 at 10:57 am
Sounds like you will fit in so well. Just don’t take your camera after it has been cleaned anywhere near the facility. I just found a picture on my computer (I’m cleaning files off of my h-drive) which is of you in 18th Century garb with an Einstein poster in the background.
Take care and keep writing.
Mrs. Benson
2
Gryphon
// Jun 5, 2007 at 9:53 pm
This won’t do at all Marty. How am I supposed to build my flux-capacitor if you can’t get any information out of that joint?
All I know is that you probably feel like a kid in a candy shoppe with all the cool things they are going to let you play with this summer. Do enjoy it.
3
that guy down the hall
// Jun 6, 2007 at 11:51 am
sweetness! I guess this also means no teleportation for me anytime soon? Though if that guy a while back was able to take out a couple of hard drives, how hard could it be?
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