The aftermath of the ITER trip!

Dear friends. I have seen Provence in a whole new light. In the region of the world where the sun shines 300 days per year (according to banners in the airport) we had almost an entire week of rain. Very very unlucky.

But that is beyond the point. With this point I wish to tell you some of my experiences during the visit to the ITER site in Cadarache. Walking on the streets of Aix-en-Provence, the most touristy destination in Provence where our hotel was, I was thinking what should I post. Should I do another @StemQ post, something else maybe. And then I came up with an idea... You can see the exact place where I came up with the idea in the picture bellow. (Not really, but it sounds cool and it is pretty.)

The quality of the picture is shit becaue I am forced to use the phone camera, but the idea was not. Above, in the "title" photo you can see two photos really. The right one was taken in May of this year from the top of a garage at the ITER site. Next to it is a picture I took from the same place yesterday. Not much has changed really. But... This is only on the outside. To the uneducated and uninformed it seems like if the place was pretty much frozen in time, but on the inside massive progress has been made, with significant advances made in our understanding of physics of the tokamak environment.

The more I thought about it the more I see this collage of pictures as a sign for myself. On October the first anniversary has come and passed of when I started my PhD. My main accomplishement during the year was the publishing of my first scientific article. To my friends this was a big deal, but to me... Not really. Dont get me wrong. It is a massive accomplishement, especially for a first year PhD student, but I knew about all the road blocks that stood in my way to do this. I banged my head against the Physics wall more than once this year not only on the topic of the article but also on my other research topics. Things progressed slowly.

So what is the actuall comparison between the picture and my academic life. Well, to me at least, on the outside not much could be shown for all the roadblocks and walls in understanding I have smashed during my first year. But listening to various speakers at the PhD event I realized that not everything worth "seeing" is on the outside. Much more important is the understanding. The knowledge. The inside.

So a letter of all would be scientists. Science is full of roadblocks. Not everything is purely up to you. Many times you just have to let the fruit of your labor rippen, and only then can it be picked. Be patient.

Now just one last thing. I will paste some other interesting pictures here that I took on the ITER site. They have nothing really to do with what I tried to say here, but I think many of you might be interested what fruit has been "rippening" on the inside of the ITER building.

This is a picture of the half of the so-called cryostat. It will house the vacuum chamber and keep the walls of the vacuum at a frosty room temperature by active cooling with liquid nitrogen. Both parts (the other is going on top) will weigh about 1500 tons.

The massive 2000 ton assembling arms that will aling the parts of the vacuum wall, built all around the world into a true vacuum vessel with vacuum that is better than the one found in space. On the top you can see a yellow crain. This crain is able to transport 2000 tons of components at once and assemble then with millimeter precision.

The largest supermagnetic coils in existance, with a diameter of 26 meters. They will be actively cooled with liquid helium to a temperature of -269 degrees celsius. The superconductance allows for massive magnetic fields, which contain the plasma and prevent it from hitting the wall.

If you dont understand what I am saying dont worry. I promise I will do some explanation posts soon, where I will explain how fusion is made, from the bottom up.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy my posts you are welcome to upvote them and follow me for more.

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