One of the reasons why I got involved with CERN in the first place was my former work at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) near Dallas, TX, where I was group leader for one of the pre-accelerators for the big machine. That project—which would have dwarfed the CERN LHC—was cancelled when the US Congress stopped funding for the project (after $2billon had already been sunk into it). Now, with the LHC beam commissioning proceeding quite nicely CERN is thinking about possible upgrades to the machine; one avenue being to raise the beam energy by maybe a factor 2.5. The machine we wanted to build in Texas would have had even higher energy so I was asked by CERN to recall the specific issues we faced when designing that machine and to present such recollections at an upgrade workshop they had organized in Malta. Wohoo! Pack bathing trunks and camera and off we go! Malta is not so far from Africa and promised to be warmer than already-becoming-chilly Geneva. As it turns out my talk was quite well received (good), but we were holed up in “Villa Bighi” all-day long (not so good). The Villa—where our conference was—was about 45 min by bus away from the hotel so no chance to sneak out over a lunch break, and the bathing trunks remained dry.
Our hopefully aptly named conference location, in the Villa Bighi on Malta
Well, CERN paid so I guess I should not complain. We did have very good food indeed, and a nice lunch cruise along Malta’s coast line showing off its fortifications and other buildings, all yellow (build from the yellow rock making up the island), and mostly more “blast from the past” as there are a lot of historic buildings. An intense but also satisfying two days.
Hard at work during the lunch cruise... (Photo by a workshop participant)
The reason this workshop was in Malta is noteworthy: The local organizer was a young physicist who had written his thesis at CERN on the LHC and now had a job with the Maltesian government and also is managing the conference venue (if I understood this all correctly). Fun for him and us as many CERN people knew him quite well. Maybe more relevant though is that Malta is lining up to become a member of CERN.
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