SGGS Student Antara was in Geneva at CERN for work experience over the Easter Break and had the most-excellent time. She was taken to the core particle physics Hadron Collider where PhD students from Caltech explained their work. She had the opportunity to spend an afternoon talking to the legendary theoretical physicist, John Ellis CBE who read at Kings College Cambridge in the 70s, is a senior fellow now at King's in London, and alternates on an indefinite posting both at CERN and Caltech. He is currently devising high energy proton (super synchrotron) experiments (!!!). 

 

Antara has been told she is welcome back to CERN and to shadow Mr Ellis in London at a later date over the summer holidays if she so wishes. 

 

Below are some pictures of Antara deep underground at the site of the Particle Accelerator, also near the Collider itself - both high security sites not open to visitors; the control room where bottles of champagne from the day scientists discovered the Higgs Boson still adorn shelves; and various points of interest around the campus. 

 

She worked very hard to get this work experience opportunity and it has really fired her up to apply to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences in 2020.