This weekend I attended my second steem-meetup (Steemfest2 being the first) together with members of the @steemSTEM community. It was incredible to see community members travelling from all over Europe, the US, Canada and Columbia to join the event. A great testimony to the uniqueness of the event as well as the strength of the community.
However, it may not have been that surprising considering that the meetup took place in what you might consider the Mecca of Physics: The Large Hadron Collider!
Me in front of the CMS 100 meter below the surface inside the Large Hadron Collider. Proudly wearing my epic name badge made by @suesa
The meetup itself took place this Friday, although most participants also joined an evening dinner on Thursday upon arrival. It was a cool chance to speak with so many of the @steemSTEM community members who I've come to know so well in the ~8 months that I have been on steemit.
I promised in my previous post that I would soon be sharing a lot of pictures from the event, so here they are!
Meeting up at CERN
Me and my one and only SteemPress co-founder @howo in front of the CERN public exhibition building
Overview of the Large Hadron Collider tunnels at the CERN public exhibition
As you may know, the Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometre long tunnel going in one large circle beneath Switzerland and France as you can see in the picture above.
Illustration of two particles colliding within the CERN exhibition
The exhibition was quite interesting containing everything from a measuring device of cosmic rays, to cool graphics illustrating how the collider works.
But nobody got on their planes to cross the Atlantic just to learn some particle physics! (sorry @lemouth), the real business was 100 meters below the ground!
Visiting the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)
steemSTEM meetup participants arriving at the CMS facilities at CERN
Our guide explains our group what we are about to see once further inside. Notice the STEEM badge on the arm of one participant ;)
Me and my friend @aurel.proorocu who I knew before we got into crypto about the same time in front of the CMS
Close-up picture of the CMS, or the "onion" as @lemouth dubbed it in his presentation
It was an impressive sight to say the least. Although we were mostly busy taking pictures together, I managed to find some time to just reflect on the sheer magnitude of this giant human creation. It is hard not to be impressed when you understand that these magnets are about 100 000 times stronger than the magnetic field of our planet and that it can accelerate particles up to more than 99.99999% the speed of light.
Similar to the feeling I get when I look at what we are achieving in space, I am proud to be part of a species that choose to collaborate on such a scale to deepen its knowledge of how the Universe works. It is beautiful in more than just one way.
Seeing Geneva
As if a day at the LHC with the @steemSTEM community wasn’t cool enough, myself, @howo, @aurel.proorocu and @ana.luiza decided to spend the rest of the weekend together sharing an Airbnb.
This was my first time in Switerland, and seeing Geneva was high up on my list of travel destinations!
Me in front of Lake Geneva, the view of the clear water, the fountain, the city and the mountains in the background was quite something!
It was also a lot of fun hanging out with such a fun bunch coming together from all over the place. I really hope to do this a lot more often as it is such a fresh breadth of air in the middle of your daily life.
@howo, @fredrikaa, @aurel.proorocu and @galotta in an intense game of perudo, a dice game introduced to us by @howo
Me, @howo and @aurel.proorocu hanging out on Sunday after leaving the apartment.
Steemit, the world’s first social media?
The meetup has reminded me yet again of an important selling point for STEEM, (one which I also discussed in my post after attending steemfest2).Which is that steemit is the only social media (that I am using anyway) where I actually make new friends. Other platforms might be good at proving a platform for existing friends to stay in touch, but how often do they make you engage and meet with new people?
I leave Geneva with a bunch of new relationships and with stronger bonds to many of the people I’ve been frequently speaking with on steemit.chat or Discord in the past months. In a time where many consider mainstream social media sites to be “anti-social”, I do increasingly find my time here to be well spent.
Taking the train back to Paris with @howo, probably our most productive hours working with SteemPress so far!
Thank you to all steemSTEMers who attended the meetup for making it so special! Thank you to the whole @steemstem team for building this community in the first place. Thank you to everyone who supports @steemstem which help us organise events like this (@liberosist, @fyrstikken / @booster and @reggaemuffin in particular this time) and last, but most of all, thank you @lemouth for taking the time to organise this event and give us all such an incredible opportunity!!
If you want to get involved with this awesome community yourself then make sure to follow @steemSTEM and join the steemSTEM channel on steemit.chat or Discord to engage with other scientists on steemit!
As always, take care and steem on!
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Being A SteemStem Member
This seems like a lot of fun! Seriously, it's so amazing that this community is so active and a lot of steemians actually meet up in real life and do some awesome things! Like visiting CERN and checking out the hadron collider. I have yet to see such an awesome community anywhere else!
I agree that steemit is actually the only social media where people make new friends and engage with strangers unlike all the other social medias. Take facebook for example, you will only engage with your current friends and you won't even think about getting to know someone new.
STEEM blockchain has so much value to offer for everyone who joins this wonderful platform!
Totally agreeing with this. I don't see how this could ever happen on facebook.
Thank you for sharing the experience of LHC tour, I missed my chance of visiting it (or even doing an internship) during my university years, but I will see it one day, went far away from particle physics. :)
It is so nice to see some internet community gathering together and strengthening the relationship and paving its future!
Cheers, Velibor! :)
Oh I am only happy to be able to share it in the first place^^
Are you studying astrophysics? How far are you into the degree?
And yes, the community is everything. Other blockchains may try to copy paste some code and create a new and perhaps technically better social media, but you can't quickly replicate a community.
I finished my master's degree last September. Now waiting for application results for two PhD projects in Australia.
Happened to find steemit and steemSTEM in the meantime, but will continue to produce scientific posts wherever I go! :D
That's really cool!
Astrophysics is probably where I would have ended up if I had caught my passion for space a few years earlier than I did. Some of my best friends though went on to take their PhDs in it and now do really cool work with different space agencies. It's an awesome job!
Thanks :)
I chose it even tho it is not really popular field in Serbia - hell, actually I have been a lonely student (the only one in the generation :) ) but managed to finish as the best in my class :P
So yeah this projects involve collaboration with ESO and VLT observations - and most likely some Keck time too. :)
Feeling in a limbo while waiting for response tho.
BTW, working in ESA headquarters is not a bad deal either :)
CONGRATS!
If you ever feel in need of a visitor.... :P :)
cheers!
We may organize a second event, one day. Just keep tuned :)
This is a great summary of our experience in geneva ! Looking forward for more of those weekends :D
Paris next! :D
Just let me know, about the when. I may be in Brussels on Thursday night, as I will be working with Freya on Friday :D
Now that's an amazing place for the Steemit Meetup, really amazing and scientific environment is reflecting in these pictures. Thanks for sharing this amazing place with us and best wishes for SteemStem team. 🙂
Stay Blessed.
Thank you! I totally agree, it will be difficult to come up with a cooler place for a meetup, not just for science-lovers in steemstem, but for people on steemit in general :)
Happy to be able to share it in the first place!
Welcome and agree with your words. 🙂
Shame that I didn't have a chance to talk with you, but I guess it was impossible to get to know everyone in just one day. Hopefully next time :)
Yeah, I agree! Well, I tend to say that 2-3 new friends are worth more than 50 new business cards, so I think building some good relationships with a couple of people is better than talking to everyone but then not really getting beneath the chit-chat levels of conversation.
I'm sure we'll find other opportunities though, this community doesn't seem like it is going anywhere, except to awesome places.
Waaaw, just look at all those smiles! Thought to provide you a tiny bit of compensation for your great post @fredrikaa!
t.
Damn! Maybe I need to run some analysis on how that picture feels compared to the other one too now? ;)
Oh yeah people were smiling! After all, we were in the Disney land for scientists!
Let me make that easier for you: (old)
t.
Så kult! Vi holder faktisk akkuratt på å lære om det som blir forsket på i CERN i Fysikken, interessant! :)
Kult er bare begynnelsen :D det var helt rått!
Ja det mest spennende som har hendt innen fysikken de siste 10 årene har nok foregått ved the LHC, så ikke rart om nye lærebøker inneholder eksemplet derfra :). Tar du fysikk på videregående eller universitetet? Kanskje du kunne delt litt om hva du lærer med #steemstem tag'en?
Hei! Jaa jeg tar fysikk på videregående nå, kan godt skrive litt om det! :)
I envy you in a good way! :)
I hope I can be a part of something like this some day. I just need to work harder and stop being so shy.
The Large Hadron Collider is definitely a must see.
You would be more than welcome! It may sound a bit cliche, but my experience from 2 steem meetups now is that there are no strangers here, only friends you've never met before, so no reason to be shy ;).
And yeah I'm so happy I got to see the collider! Most of my network and friends also outside of steemit are now jealous ^^
You destroyed my groove :D
The crash course posts were awesome though!
Actually did enjoy reading them and it made the trip to Geneva feel like it took minutes rather than hours^^
mmmmh this is why you relaxed during the lectures, you knew everything already :)
Its good to see you that you are arranging the steemit meetup. It's good for you and even for steemit community. Great working you are doing bro.
Thanks! All credit for this event goes to @lemouth and @steemstem both for organising the event and enabling it to happen in the first place by creating this community.
But you're absolutely right, this work is essential for the growth of steem communities and thus also the platform and token.
I'm so sad I couldn't make it. At least I get to see some pictures. Many thanks for sharing @fredrikaa!
I'm sure new steemstem meetups will take place in places that are also awesome, looking at how much people enjoyed this event and where steemstem is heading in terms of growth. :)
You got me wishing I took this trip :) .. Steemit is quite the deal, and steemstem is quite a community.
I call it the dream maker :)
Yup! And if anything I think this group is only hungry for more ;)
Wow, that's so cool. What an incredible experience, both from the Steemit perspective and the science perspective. How long did the tour last? Do they have any special requirements or clearances that you have to get to go down there?
The tour down into the collider didn't last that long, about an hour I would guess. But we had the whole day at CERN in general, looking at the exhibition, seeing the facilities and also getting a cool lecture from @lemouth
I knew that the Americans and the Russians had a Stargate but I didn't know that the Europeans also have one :D
We sure do, and it's much bigger than theirs x)
Science is my first love. These events and projects are of tremendous value to humanity. You are so fortunate to be part of it.
I completely agree!
That must have been quite an educative as well as exciting experience. The CMS resembled a giant generator stator. How much of the 27km tunnel did you guys navigate?
A couple of meters :)
I would have done anything just for those few meters. I was in Geneva back in 2010 I think when they were starting to build it. I was 24 years old and it sparked my imagination. I read all I could about LHC and the american smaller counterpart. It was too late for me to study particle physics but I have made it my goal now to push others towards science. On Steemit I am writing articles about physics and space under SteemStem and TheSteemEngine, I was featured by them a few times.
Let's get the science to the new generations. Great job and great feedback after the visit!
The LHC was actually built from 1998 to 2008. It started to operate in 2011. In 2010, there was an incident that delayed the whole process.
Note that there will be a long shutdown very soon, so that it may be a unique chance to go underground.
You are right. What I saw was a multitude of billboards around the Leman Lake presenting the phases of construction. There is much science to be analyzed, maybe tens of work-years from now, as was/is the case for Cassini.
I just saw you cofounded SteemSTEM :D It's an honor, I will not let the community down.
Thanks for your nice comment :)
I hope to be in one of these tours..Oh yeah, I love wishing for a lot of things...Someone just shot a roadster to space, so impossibility is nothing :)
Let's try to get as close as possible to this :)
A great post. I really appreciate the close up pictures and the post reads like a great time was had by everyone who went.
This is awesome. I wish I could go to CERN. I would have geeked out and wouldn't have stopped talking about frequency being the Higgs and sacred geometries in the test data. Jealous!
Wow! I know the memory of this would last long.
P.S: The CMS (I mean the Onion :D) looks so massive. I've never seen a picture of this before; maybe in my dreams :)
I'm still absorbing the many impressions. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before and probably ever will
They are all onions: CMS, ATLAS, CDF, D0, etc... just google the names you have never heard off ;)
Wow! I just did sir. I saw ALICE and LHCb. Are they still onions?
I'm trying to read up one of the articles posted by Matilda Heron about it. So much terminology :D
Alice yes, LHCb not. LHCb is a bookshelf ;)
Lol. Thanks for the correction sir :D
👍
Yes good @fredrikaa
It was interesting to read about interesting work. Thanks @fredrikaa
Good post .
now we full depend on technology
we cannot move on second without it
so we say that our life now depends on technology
Wow good work and nice man
Good work, good luck always in your career
great story and nice photo's , I thought I worked with big machines, but this is really huge
I'm such a nerd haha, I totally envy you were there!
Cheers to Living that Stanley Kubrik life. Interesting View.
Wow you guyz are doing some very amazing hehehehe
Good job bro amazing vote me plz n follow
Mr. Please votes @hazmisyahpura, thanks
Very good.... Please vote me mister.
Awesome! That stuff is really science at the edge whats currently possible! Thanks for sharing.
Hopefully one day I'll visit the LHC.. I've only heard about in movies but now I'm seeing science geeks visiting it. The place is amazing
Life of a scientist!
One day i will pay the CERN a visit...
Mom, we are working hard to make money 2018 version
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There is a great place for a great steem-meetup, the Large Hadron Collider one of the most iconic technology places in the world.
Great!!!!, I hope to be able to attend the next meeting, from today I start to raise money for the next meeting :D
Very nice teamwork right..good job to all of you
Is there tourist pass or something? Being a chemical engineer and physics lover, I would love to go to the LHC.
I'm going to look good.
I wish you all the happiest things.
Have a nice day :)
Well, you certainly looked like you had a lot of fun going on there.
I will also check on @SteemSTEM
We are waiting for you! :D
I wish I was there with you guys
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Thank You! ⚜
Wow, wasn't expecting the collider!!!
cool bro, play to account @suriono, lots of useful information