It's a been while hasn't it? A lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to summarise briefly.
LHC-wise, the machine restarted on the 20th of November 2009 and first proton collisions at center of mass energies of 900 GeV happened on the 23rd and proton collisions at the world breaking center of mass energies of 2.36 TeV on the 30th. After short winter shutdown, proton collisions at further world breaking center of mass energies of 7 TeV started on the 30th of March 2010. Proton collisions continued at this energy until the end of October, when lead ion collisions began on the 8th of November. It's been pretty exciting.
Physics-wise, all the LHC experiments have have been very busy analysing, presenting and publishing. The performance of the detectors and the quality of the results have all been very impressive. There haven't been any significant discoveries yet though...
Personally, I've been very busy with my thesis, having reached the business end of my phd. I submitted it a fortnight ago. Had a little break, and now I'm back at CERN starting a postdoc position with Syracuse University on LHCb. Hence the resumption of this blog. We'll see how it goes...
I'm really in two minds about this whole endeavour. I'm excited and terrified about my job, and disenchanted and dreading living here. I'm excited about my job because I've heard good things about the Syracuse group and am looking forward to challenge of changing collaborations and learning new physics. I'm terrified because I don't know the people in my new group or collaboration and am worried about not knowing anything. Disenchanted because as fun as it to travel to foreign places, it's a completely different story living in a foreign country and dealing with all the bureaucracy in a foreign language. Dreading because Geneva is not Melbourne. It's not home.
