Rockin' [with] the LHC

I'll come right out and say it: this is not at all a gluten, dairy, soy, nut, or anything food related post. Of course, there are no [food] allergens in subatomic particles, now are there? Sometimes I've heard of (and suffered from) a mild allergy to physics [homework], but no allergic responses to particle physics, so here goes!

As many of you know, by day I work in nuclear astrophysics (I love LENA, though our site is very outdated). What many of you (other than my parents who probably don't remember) don't know is that I did a brief stint in particle physics years back. I can't really claim more credit than that in the recent CERN LHC experiments as I spent only an internship at the University of Iowa in particle physics. However, I can proudly state that I came quite close friends with these cool little (very expensive) custom tubes which detect light given off by particle interactions inside a detector. In fact, I dreamed about Hamamatsu photomultiplier tubes (PMT) for a good few months after returning to my neck of the woods in Georgia and the safe haven of nuclear physics. If anyone is wondering how and why we need to characterize the dark current and radiation-exposure response of every single PMT going to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) @ CERN, the European Centre [Organization] for Nuclear Research, then email me. Just don't make me give another speech or seminar on it... please, pretty please?

A pictorial side-slice of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector on which a few of the pieces I tested are used. The colors and lines show tracks of various particles (charged particles like protons or electrons) and muons (the long blue line). Credit: CERN

Besides, this short video is much more interesting than my summer of testing equipment and writing computer codes for equipment used in the current experiments at the LHC. Plus, humor is great for your health. Congrats to you, LHC. I know this accelerator runtime is quite a hard-earned victory a long time in the making.