Nothing really. Immensely predictable life of a graduate student. Only silver lining is I'll get to eat Kolkata food for a month in winter. After two years, got myself an India ticket. And a pretty good deal too on Al Italia. That's the good news, The bad new is I have to do a hell lot of work before I take off.
Summer in Fermilab was really up and down.it was a tough learning experience to start off with, but in the later stages as we started taking real data, thing became somewhat exciting. Then spent a drove up to Detroit, flew to Baltimore, ate great seafood, caught up with old friends in Philadelphia, Delaware and NYC. The drive back to Florida was through St.Louis, Memphis and Alabama. All the pictures are in here - http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/SummerTravel
I must have been missing Florida beaches, so after coming back travelled around a bit. The photos are in http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/StAugustine and in http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/Florida
Next post coming soon!
Showing posts with label Fermilab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fermilab. Show all posts
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Its My Work!
I have been asked by many persons what am I exactly doing here. So at the risk of making this post technical ( hence boring) let me try to describe that.
But even before that - let my try to explain in what I do for my research in ordinary language. Particle accelerators collide particles with high enough energies and we are looking for "New Physics" to come out from that. But if we try to look at a specific process - the signal for that is buried under a host of other associated physical processes, which we collectively refer to as "underlying events". Now we need to understand and model these so called underlying events to dig out the actual process of interest. This is often done by simulation studies and comparing them with real data. In my own research, I am looking at a particular physical process which would hop fully prove to be a good tool to model the underlying events.
As I mentioned - we need to use real data coming from the particle accelerators. Right now Tevatron in Fermi National Accelerator laboratory is world's highest energy running accelerator - and Collider Detector in Fermilab (or the CDF) is one of the two detectors looking at the data coming from the collisions. Since we get our data ( and a lot of cases simulation and analysis tools) from the CDF collaboration and I gather they (rather the Department of Energy) do not have enough money and manpower, we have to help out the collaboration in different ways, which are termed as "service work". Right now my job involves sitting in there main control room and look at the all monitors telling about different aspects. If things go wrong - normally characterized by some part of some screen turning red or an audible alarm (or both) , we are supposed to contact the relevant technical expert to fix it. Its by no means doing Physics, and nobody even pretends so. I hear its a lot of fun and excitement while there are actual data coming on, but right now we are in the midst of a "shutdown period", no actual particle collisions are going on, we are just looking at cosmic rays and technical people are trying to fine tune the detector for next set of real runs.
P.S - Technically I am called an "Ace" - which sounds more glamourous than the work actually is!
But even before that - let my try to explain in what I do for my research in ordinary language. Particle accelerators collide particles with high enough energies and we are looking for "New Physics" to come out from that. But if we try to look at a specific process - the signal for that is buried under a host of other associated physical processes, which we collectively refer to as "underlying events". Now we need to understand and model these so called underlying events to dig out the actual process of interest. This is often done by simulation studies and comparing them with real data. In my own research, I am looking at a particular physical process which would hop fully prove to be a good tool to model the underlying events.
As I mentioned - we need to use real data coming from the particle accelerators. Right now Tevatron in Fermi National Accelerator laboratory is world's highest energy running accelerator - and Collider Detector in Fermilab (or the CDF) is one of the two detectors looking at the data coming from the collisions. Since we get our data ( and a lot of cases simulation and analysis tools) from the CDF collaboration and I gather they (rather the Department of Energy) do not have enough money and manpower, we have to help out the collaboration in different ways, which are termed as "service work". Right now my job involves sitting in there main control room and look at the all monitors telling about different aspects. If things go wrong - normally characterized by some part of some screen turning red or an audible alarm (or both) , we are supposed to contact the relevant technical expert to fix it. Its by no means doing Physics, and nobody even pretends so. I hear its a lot of fun and excitement while there are actual data coming on, but right now we are in the midst of a "shutdown period", no actual particle collisions are going on, we are just looking at cosmic rays and technical people are trying to fine tune the detector for next set of real runs.
P.S - Technically I am called an "Ace" - which sounds more glamourous than the work actually is!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
T +1 day
Normally after such a big occasion all you feel is emptiness. The expectation and the tension being built over for months is just gone in minutes. Nothing immediate to look forward to and nothing more to get excited about now. Utter peace proved to be so boring at times like this before.
But not this time. Even if I temporarily forget the irate Fermilab collaborator's email for the moment, today was hardly a lazy day. Since I am leaving for Fermilab sometime tomorrow morning and that too driving all the way up there - there were hundreds of stuff screaming for attention. The car repair shop inevitably came up with and incredible "estimate", and finally addressing just the immediate "safety concerns" was enough to push me harder into imminent bankruptcy. I had to grab some national championship memorabilia (read tees,caps etc) and like the national championship itself - they don't come cheap! I had to pay all the bills and plan how would I pay the next ones. I still have to redirect my mail to my temporary Fermilab address. And I have a pile of unanswered emails - I should get back to all these nice people sometime.
I found out a couple of our Jadavpur Physics seniors in Nashville. So thats probably going to be my first stop after long 9 hours. From Nashville, Urbana-Champaign is around 6 hours more - should be spending the weekend with my ex Jadavpur classmate and his his wonderful girlfriend. Fermilab is just a couple of hours from there - I am sure there will be too much to do even before I settle down!
(And all that means I would be online very erratically in next few days.)
But not this time. Even if I temporarily forget the irate Fermilab collaborator's email for the moment, today was hardly a lazy day. Since I am leaving for Fermilab sometime tomorrow morning and that too driving all the way up there - there were hundreds of stuff screaming for attention. The car repair shop inevitably came up with and incredible "estimate", and finally addressing just the immediate "safety concerns" was enough to push me harder into imminent bankruptcy. I had to grab some national championship memorabilia (read tees,caps etc) and like the national championship itself - they don't come cheap! I had to pay all the bills and plan how would I pay the next ones. I still have to redirect my mail to my temporary Fermilab address. And I have a pile of unanswered emails - I should get back to all these nice people sometime.
I found out a couple of our Jadavpur Physics seniors in Nashville. So thats probably going to be my first stop after long 9 hours. From Nashville, Urbana-Champaign is around 6 hours more - should be spending the weekend with my ex Jadavpur classmate and his his wonderful girlfriend. Fermilab is just a couple of hours from there - I am sure there will be too much to do even before I settle down!
(And all that means I would be online very erratically in next few days.)
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