Pianos, The Metric System, and Analogue Black Holes

I don't have a picture, but Geneva is currently filled with street pianos. They're all painted differently, and are there for the public to use.

On the way to CERN, the walk from Rue Muzy to Bel-Air (the tram stop) is filled with piano music, played by pianists of all skill levels.

On Friday, that same walk was extended because of the women's march. It was the 'the largest political demonstration in the recent history of Switzerland'. It was awesome.

Powerful stuff.

I also noticed today that I referenced how big something was in meters. Not sure how that happened.

They do it different in Basel.

This weekend Ben and I went to Basel.

Basel is about as far north as you can go in Switzerland. It's where France, Germany, and Switzerland come together.

Ben is a really good influence in general, but specifically so when it comes to not speaking English. We spoke pretty much only French on Saturday, until Noah arrived -- then the two of them spoke pretty much only German while I listened and muttered to myself, Ich spreche kein Deutch.

I can't really explain what is so different about Basel. The best I can think of is to watch this guy above play the wine glasses. It's amazing how intricate and absorbed he is. It's like a two dimensional piano.

It rained, even though we brought the umbrellas.

We climbed the cathedral too.

This guy outside the cathedral was blowing the biggest bubbles I've ever seen. The wind was blowing, and after taking the picture below, I ran out of the way to avoid getting drenched in big bubble soap. I panicked and ran directly into a German guy to my right. Everyone around us laughed at me, but it's okay because I got the picture and the guy wasn't upset.

We spent a lot of time just sitting by the river in the sun.

Don't ask me about that smile.

On the train ride home, we saw a full moon come up over the alps. It was past 9 pm, but still bright out. And in the dusk light Mont Blanc (white) became Mont Rose (pink).

I went into the tunnels this week!

Just kidding, I still haven't gone in the tunnels! But I get closer every day.

I did some S-parameter measurements on Friday with Lukas. Measuring S-parameters of the 200 MHz cavities is a tedious work. It involves doing more or less the same thing 11 times for each cavity, but, because of this, I have become quite more with Network analyzers, and I understand the smith chart much better now.

Michael and I went to a talk at CERN on Hawking radiation of analogue black holes. In a normal black hole, gravity is what keeps light from escaping, but in their setup, the black hole was represented by temperature, and light by sound. They used lasers to cool an area to nearly absolute zero, where nothing can move, in order to keep the sound waves from propagating away from the 'black hole'. It's more complicated than that, but they were able to measure analogous, sound based Hawking radiation like what is predicted to come from a real black hole.

Usually Hawking radiation from a black hole is masked by the radiation it is absorbing, so its nearly impossible to detect directly. It's really cool that they were able to do so in this analogue system, and it could be a new way to study topics like The Information Paradox and other quantum entanglement type questions.

Here is a link to an article if you want to read more.

We had our last round of presentations on Monday, and this is what I found on my phone after I was done presenting.

Thanks for listening guys!

The semester is coming to a close, and the students who aren't continuing at CERN through the summer will be leaving on June 28th. The way I think about it, this marks the 2/3 point for me, with the 1/3 mark being Spring Break. I'll be sad to see my friends go, but the second third has definitely outshined the first, and I am really excited to see what's next.