RE: What is light ? (Atomic Physics Video Series – Part 2)
Let's see what I will be able to organize in due time ^^
Except this, I would only say a word: wow! What a story. Why have you left? I supposed you have been kind of forced to by some lack of positions?
When you write on Steemit, I suppose you discuss the topics explored with the CMS detector in general. What is actually your specific area?
I don't write much about CMS to be honest. My interactions with CMS consist of a tiny fraction of my activities. I am more writing about theory papers I read on particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, my own research once in a while and generalities about my field and physics in general. I could however write about LHC detectors and things like that. Explaining how this works. May be a good idea for a future post :)
What is actually your specific area?
I am mostly working on beyond the Standard Model phenomenology, both at the level of the LHC and cosmology/astrophysics (most on the dark matter side). Trying to understand new phenomena, how to see them and why we didn't see them that far. In addition, I am involved in precision calculations for getting better theory predictions (regardless of the theory), and I am finally also a developper of a bunch of computer programs and methods for high-energy physics. As I said above, on my free time, I participate on a CMS analysis once in a while. And this is just for the research part (I won't mention teaching and administration as this answer is already long enough :p ).
Hey @lemouth, The wow is reciprocal!
You are involved in quite a lot of interesting activities too. I wonder many times also what is the reach of the standard model, and where, one day we will see it crack open. However, I have to admit that it is quite an amazing theory in terms of predictive power. A little like in music, the Fender Strat electric guitar, designed in 1954, and never in need of a shape update since: the designers got it right from their first go…
Yeah, I didn’t really leave academia by choice. When I came back from Japan, the plan was that I’d work as an enseignant chercheur in a Physics lab with my buddies in Lyon (Uni Claude Bernard). I even had an office assigned to me and a grant accepted for 1 Million French francs to buy and set up a high pressure high temperature press in the lab, so I could continue working on my research projects. When I came back, budget cuts to research were decided by the government: all new position openings were either cancelled or suspended. Mine was cancelled before I even had worked my first day. I must say, that professionally, this was a painful period in my existence.
I turned to Industry, where I found a job in the Netherlands as a researcher in water chemistry (something quite different!). The 5 first years were interesting: there was a totally new field for me to explore, but the following 6 years were just a waste of time, the topic started to bore me because there was no possible vision for my work in this environment, even with great results. Leaders were just ass-holes, only caring about profitability and not doing anything good for the planet and the community as a whole, and this despite huge opportunities to do so. What is funny, is that my direct boss was in full agreement with that assessment. We both left the company the same year.
So in my early 40s, I started a new professional life, as an independent :-). This mid-life crisis, lead me to carry out a good move: I am really doing what I love now for a living, teaching sciences and producing music. I do have some nostalgia though for my academic years (and definitely not for my industrial ones haha!)
There are strong signs telling we actually need to go beyond. You may like for instance to read this post of mine where I give some of the reasons. However, there is no guarantee new physics is waiting for us at the LHC. Nature may just have fun of us and wait for the building of a more powerful accelerator.
(Therefore, the guitar is better.)
I am said to read your story, but happy also to see you manage to find a way i which you are happy. This is what matters the most!
Your students are lucky to have someone like you as a teacher, not only as I can tell from your blog and videos, but also it is not everyday that someone can benefit from the experience from people who were in contact with the academy.
For the fun, my first PhD student (who was very good) has left physics to work in an IT company in Amsterdam :)
Thanks you so much for your kind words!
I try to be the teacher I would have loved to have when I was in my late teens. And it seems to be working in terms of my student's rising interest for physics and their performances at school :-).
Some of my previous students that hated physics when I started with them made Physics their major at Uni, and they are still excited about it. Mission accomplished!
I am more pessimistic than you are. Although we should keep searching at the maximum of our abilities. We will reach a limit in energies we can produce with accelerators, and some knowledge will always stay out of reach.
Unless we start thinking differently and bigger to get answers to our questions in ultra high energy physics. For example, finding a way to study directly collisions of particles in accretion around a black hole (which I do not see happening soon, lol).
Yet we still have some way to go before technological limits. What will it be in your opinion: 100TeV? 1PeV?