Pilgramage To Los Alamos

It is so written, that each physicist should, in time, visit the birthplace of the atomic bomb.  Why Los Alamos?  One could argue that the first controlled, sustained chain reaction was initiated under the bleachers at the University of Chicago.  Or even before that, in the fall of 1938, the concept of spitting the atom was proposed by Lise Meitner.  Or maybe far longer than that, one could point to a natural nuclear reactor formed perhaps 2 billion years ago!

Again, why Los Alamos?  Never in the history of mankind (or womankind) has their been a gathering together of physicists and engineers for a single purpose:  to develop a weapon.  I won't go into the history behind the Manhattan Project or Los Alamos, you can find most of that on the web; nor will I delve into the ethics or morality of weapons save to say that I think that physicists lost their innocence at Trinity.

For quite a few years, I've drifted away from my roots as an experimental physicist.  Even though I work in the semiconductor industry, which is solid-state physics, I've gotten away from the first principles.  I currently work in software, not even modeling or simulation.  So, when the opportunity came to assist in some soft error rate (SER) experiments to be performed in the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) I jumped at the chance. 

So, late last year a few of us from work drove down to New Mexico.  I had hoped to stop along the way to take some photographs, but a late start foiled that aspiration.  We did manage to stop in Santa Fe to have a nice dinner at La Fonda.  (Santa Fe is such a wonderful place.)  Eventually we made it to the Mesa and found our lodging.  I'd been through Los Alamos on a previous trip to New Mexico, but I didn't get to explore as much as I did on this trip.  The following morning we checked into the laboratory to take exams and get our credentials.  We met our host in the visitor's center and he took us out to where our experiment would be run.

Our port on the beam line was in a small building on the outskirts of the Mesa the lab resides upon.  Unfortunately, the beam was fully scheduled and the current users were planning to use all of their time.  So, we had a free afternoon and evening.  The Principal Investigator (PI) thought that this would be a good time to explore the galleries and museums of Santa Fe and have another good dinner.  I thought that this was an excellent idea.  Even though the day was lightly overcast and a little chilly, Santa Fe is always a wonderful place to be.  With our little group I didn't feel like I could wander off and take pictures, so we stayed together a visited many of the galleries.  I did manage to take a few pictures (which I hope to attach).  We dined that evening at The Shed, which I recommend highly.











Early the next morning we were shown the safety procedures of the facility and began the setup of our experiment.  Much of the lab equipment was old (NIM crates, EG&G Ortec) and brought back many memories of my time at school.  After setting up the experiment and running a few tests, we divided our group into three shifts:  day, evening, and graveyard.  I selected the graveyard shift which was to be from 1 am to 8:30am.  Our experiments consisted of a group of boards connected by Ethernet to a laptop computer.  Vastly simple compared to the previous beam users from another well known semiconductor company.  So, my evening activities consisted of setting parameters determined by the PI and hitting the run button.  Each experiment ran for 30 minutes to an hour.  We would set two alarms to remind us when an experiment finished and to begin another: an egg timer and a computer alarm.  The computer alarm was set to sound like police sirens.  So, if that wasn't enough to rouse me, the egg timer certainly would. 

I think the most curious thing about that late a shift was how quiet it was.  The beam runs 24/7 and so occasionally there would be requests over the PA for techs or announcements that the beam was down (or up).  While runs were in progress I would write emails to friends or step outside to breath in the fresh air and look at the stars.  Oh, the stars.  It's been so long since I've seen the Milky Way.  On the southeast side of the Mesa, where the entrance to the building faced, I watched the morning moonrise followed by the sunrise.  I found that by sleeping from 6 pm to 12:30 am prepared me for my shift.  When I returned to the hotel room at 9 am, I napped until lunch time, which seemed to work well enough.  During our free time we did manage to tour the Bradbury Science and Historical Museums.  Our host also took us on a tour of the proton accelerator which was very cool.






Even though the majority of my work was just pushing buttons on a GUI, it was as though I was breathing the atmosphere of physics.  It's a little hard to explain.  I'm an experimental physicist, which means that my bread and butter is hardware:  electronics, cables, vacuum systems, cryogenics, superconductors, and so on.  Just being in the presence of this sort of stuff and other physicists made me feel like I was back in the fold.  I could almost feel my professors from school looking over my shoulder.  When I was working the late shift, I almost expected my boss to call me to ask if we had any liquid Helium left and to tell us a few more ideas for experiments he had.

We finished our work early Thursday morning, packed up the equipment that we could, and left behind the neutron activated parts behind.  The day was sunny and warm as we departed the Mesa.  I started this journey a little nervous and returned with a better feeling of my own direction.