Thought for the day

On this New Years day my trolling through the web came across this link

http://blog.thaczuk.com/?p=124

The mantra to take from this and what I working on for the next year

Climb Hard...Climb Dedicated...A 5.12 isn't hard!

It seems so simple but sometimes reading this is really what I need...and even more so the word "climb" can be substituted for anything I want to be good at in my life

Happy New Years to Everyone!

What did Santa bring the world of particle physics?

In short, Santa has brought the world of particle physics a huge hint and a leveling pain. The CDMS experiment (a direct dark matter detection group) has just published their latest results and the verdict is....WE CAN'T SAY ANYTHING!!!

As you can see from above the results of their search show two events in the signal region...and two more events so damn close you could sneeze them into the signal region. What does it mean?

Well with an expected background of +/- 0.8 events it means it isn't statistically significant enought to say anything.

It should be noted that in their previous results they had roughly the same background but had to report 0 events. So going from 0 to 2 events after adding another year of data is important...but in principal could be a statistical fluctuation.

So what is direct dark matter detection?

In a nut shell the argument goes like this...if dark matter is as pervasive in the universe as we believe then our planet, our solar system, and our galaxy is swimming in a sea of dark matter. However, this dark matter is very weakly interacting but very massive (called W.I.M.P.S., Weakly Interacting Massive ParticleS) so we can observe its existence indirectly by looking at how it interacts gravitationally.

That being said, even if the stuff doesn't interact with ordinary matter that much, if we but a whole bunch of dense material in a place where nothing else can interact with it and keep it very cold so it isn't vibrating around thermally. Then in a very rare case when one of the dark matter particles that is zipping through our planet hits some of the dense material we should be able to observe it. That is what the detectors at CDMS do.

They are very dense materials kept at near absolute zero at the bottom of a huge mine in the northern part of the U.S. Often dubbed the "Low Background Frontier" they are extremely sensitive and hold the best chance for finding dark matter directly.

With the tantalizing results of 2009 I'm sure they will be carefully and feverishly taking data in 2010 to try to beat the LHC in direct detection of dark matter

So could it be that Santa has brought us some direct detection of Dark Matter and solved a great puzzle in physics? Stay tuned in 2010!

Awesome Accelerator Book Online

Useful Accelerator Book that Google brings to me FREE

This is (in-part) related to my research and was put together by some giants in the field of High Energy Accelerators. So I share with everyone!
The link to it can be found here

5.10 d (my current climbing obsession)

During the cold and snowy days in Chicago I find myself at a local climbing gym called Vertical Endeavor's. This is really a premier climbing gym in the Chicagoland area and has amazing sport-lead routes, top rope, auto-belay, and bouldering.

Currently I am working on a lead project, a 5.10d that hangs over "the bridge" and finishes at the top of a 30 foot vertical ascent.

I haven't had a route like this ever consume my energy and thoughts the way this route does. There are 9 clips (5 in the overhang area) to the anchors and I can get through the first 8 without a fall.

The roof section is all on jugs and even coming out of the overhung area isn't that bad. The problem is I'm so pumped that by the time I'm doing the 30 foot slightly overhanging vertical ascent I blow out before I reach the last clip and the anchors.

I've managed to finish this route in one-fall...but never got my red-point. The route that is currently in this arrangement will likely be there for another couple of weeks and my hope is to send it before then.

Really routes like this is why I started climbing and learning to lead. So I need to get this one before I move on!!!

1st 2.36 TeV Collision Observed at CERN

While circulating 1.18 TeV proton beams around the LHC in the beginning stages of tests of the new accelerator the ATLAS experiment (one of two major multipurpose detectors designed to look for collisions) observed a candidate event that could prove to be the first major new collision at the High Energy Frontier.

While seeing only one event in a detector that happened to have its magnet off (hence why all the tracks look straight and make particle identification impossible) isn't enough to triumph the end of the era of the Tevatron (Fermilab's Particle Accelerator) but it does bring us one step closer to the new era of really high energy physics!

Exciting Times in the world of particle physics!

LHC Collsions Era is HERE!!!

And just like that on 11/23/09 we have entered the era of collisions at the LHC.
What this image is showing is energy that was deposited in the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector when two circulating beams of protons were sent whizzing around the LHC and made to collide somewhere near the center of a 5 story 5 ton heap of electronics.

There is no sense in getting to rushed about this though...while it is a monumental achievement...almost all the physics that is to come for the next year or so will be garbage out of CERN since they need to test/calibrate/and retest all their systems until they understand them. But in the mean time...this is good cause to be excited that we are entering a new era of discovery!

A funny article to change the day

So research has me down and life is full of crazy stress and tough events. But then I get a call from my brother, and all he had to do is share a funny article from The Onion and my whole day changed. 

The article he shared titled, Excuse Me, But I'll Be Handling The Gentleman's Discourse For The Rest Of The Evening, authored by a bottle of whisky is hilarious!!

What I came to love about this phone call and this article even more is that he read it to me over the phone. Every word, with a proper accent and clear gentleman speak where appropriate.
And that is all it took...a funny article, a laugh with my brother, and a quick "I love you man" and everything is back in perspective. Simple and strange how life can proceed!

Strange ways we can change a life

So a theme I've often thought about post-living in the Neighborhood is the strange ways our interactions can change each others lives.
There is no doubt in my mind that the funny interaction I had with the many gifted and special people from the Neighborhood changed my perspective on life, goals, what matters, and how to conduct my behavior. Likewise, I have been told by a few of the people that the valued time and experiences we shared together really did change their lives as well.
This idea was recently solidified for me in an off-hand conversation I had with a friend on Facebook about a week ago. We had been friends in high school but by no means close. Often we would share in a deep discussion or be at the same event at the same time...but often did run in different circles. I hadn't spoke with my friend Matt for probably 4 years and found out through Facebook that he was pursuing a PhD in Mathematics.

Turns out that in high school I had been reading a book by John Gribbon called In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. I was fascinated by the book and it was a great introduction into the realm of modern physics. Since you can't tread into the world of Quantum Mechanics without getting sucked into a philosophical discussion on the nature of reality I shared this book with my friend Matt. From the conversation I'll post below he credits this chance encounter with a book and a discussion with a friend into starting him down the road that has lead him to his career in mathematics.
Obviously there is more to the story and one doesn't go get a degree in mathematics because of one book...but I thought this story was a nice reminder to SHARE YOUR PASSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS.

Matthew
I started reading Shankar's quantum mechanics textbook

Jonathan
How do you like it?

Matthew
Not too far yet, but it's well written
Dirac's notation for linear algebra is pretty amazingly creative though

Jonathan
certainly...Shankar goes in a neat direction that keeps most of the book accessible throughout, even if it is your first go at Quantum Mechanics...I used it as a supplement book during my QM II course a few years back

Matthew
it's been a while since i dealt with any real physics, so i think the second chapter may be tough going for me

Jonathan
Why did you pick up Shankar?

Matthew
iv'e fogotten alot of my E&M I think
I started reading Dirac
The internet told me i may be better off with shankar

Jonathan
That is probably true...are you trying to learn to DO Quantum mechanics or understand QM?

Matthew
understand
though i;; probably do the excersizes in shankar for amusement

Jonathan
I don't even know if I'd waste my time with Shankar then...starting with Feynmann and his work "6 easy and not so Easy pieces" as well as some essays on QM might get you there quicker...then maybe use Shankar as a check of understanding

Matthew
well ive read QED a cople times, how that book complare?
i mean, i want to understand it, not "understand" it
ie. i want math in my quantum mechanics

Jonathan
ummm...it is close together...if you can follow QED and you want to get some math Feynmann is the way to go...then maybe go to Griffiths "Intro to Quantum Mechanics" I used that in undergrad and it was an awesome bridge between words and math

Matthew
ok, ill look at that in the library tomorrow

Jonathan
nice to hear from you and it sounds like you are keeping up the deep thoughts...that is awesome

Matthew
yah
actually, you gave me a book in high school
like schrodengers cat or something
that one thing probably has alot to do with me becoming a mathematician actaully
so thanks ,i was origionally gonna study physics but found out in college that i was really good at math

Jonathan
that is too cool...glad I could help someone along their path in life

Matthew
well we all do what we can

You never know who is listening...what they will take away from it...or where it will lead. Certainly, my exposure in the neighborhood and the direction and personality it placed in me as a human being helped in the meeting of my future wife. At the very least these people introduced me to soccer, which got me to play on an intramural team, which Heather was a part of, and therefore we became acquainted. Who knows if the passion for this sport was kept away from me would I've ever met her?
So, share your thoughts...they lead to amazing places!

My Life as told by Rock Climbing Shoes (Part II)

The next three pairs of rock climbing shoes I owned take me through a particularly crazy phase in my life. These shoes not only took me to interesting and fun places to climb, but also carried my feet through a particularly tough relationship, new people and new times, and ultimately to the women I am going to marry. So while this entry is about shoes, it is also about use, which is of course correlated to what is going on in my life at this time.

The first pair I am talking about is a yellow pair of Mad Rock Phoenix. Now don't get me wrong, these shoes were ugly. Yellow is a funny color to put on your feet and looked particularly weird on me...but these were really durable and tough shoes. I bought them through the gym I was climbing at A&M and they were very low in cost. They had no real toe to speak of and weren't that great for edging, but they did last and took me outside all around Texas and even overseas to visit and climb in Stockholm, Sweden...which was awesome.

I think the only reason I have anything negative to say about these Mad Rocks was because my climbing was improving. I was able to start to use small feet and wanted something more dynamic out of my shoes. Therefore I went back to trying Evolv's and tried this grey and black lace up pair. This was a time when I was climbing more outdoors than I'd ever had before in addition to getting a lot of practice in the gym.

I really liked these shoes and actually still keep them around despite having blown a hole in the toe. To their defense they managed to last almost 7 months of pretty intense climbing before giving out on some pink granite at Enchanted Rock in Texas. That rock is really hard, sharp, tiny crystals that you are balancing on as you inch up some steep climbs. It is a really great place to climb and these shoes served me very well with a nice toe and some relative stiffness that was refreshing.

It was about this time that I got the nod from my advisor to move up to Fermilab near Chicago and the women of my dreams got to come with me. Funny enough this was also my favorite pair of shoes ever came into my life. The La Sportiva Nago's have carried me through over a year of climbing and are still going. To the other shoes credit the first 4 months of my ownership they didn't see a lot of action. Between the move and the life at the lab I was climbing only about 4 times a month.

But after life got settled the climbing took off. They went with me on my first Midwest climb up to Devil's Lake in Wisconsin and managed very well on the slick graphite rock and were great for wedging into some very difficult cracks. Then a normal amount of climbing at our new indoor gym (Vertical Endeavors) went up to twice a week and the shoes were still holding out.

Finally, to La Sportiva's credit, I not only got a job as a rock wall instructor in Oak Park, Il which meant I was living in these shoes 4 hours a day / 3 days a week, in addition to normal climbing at VE...but then came the climbing trip of a lifetime.

Two friends of mine were teaching in Thailand and my fiancée and I had the opportunity to go visit them for 10 days or so...and of course go climb on the limestone bluffs overlooking the ocean. IT WAS AMAZING!!! We climbed and hiked 6-8 hours every day for 5 days in a row and my shoes held out and made the climbing so much fun.

I still keep these Nago's around as my casual shoes and they are only now starting to wear through. These are the first pair of shoes I've ever considered getting resoled and would recommend them to anyone.

The Amazing Tevatron!!!

So the other day I saw a status update come across my news feed on Facebook from my good friend The Tevatron that read:

Cap'n Tevatron: Store 7247 terminated intentionally after delivering 6900 nb^-1. Pacific Ocean earthquakes caused observable magnet motion.

This made my jaw drop!!! To understand what this means the average reader will need a little bit of background.

What is a Tevatron?

The Tevatron is the name given to the 4 mile long circular particle accelerator located at Fermi National Labs in Batavia, Il and is currently (as of 10/12/09)  the worlds highest energy particle collider. What the Tevatron does is create proton and anti-proton beams that circulate in opposite directions at speeds of ~99.99% the speed of light (2 TeV center of mass energy) and cause them to collilde at two different detectors located around the ring.

If it wasn't amazing enough to take things smaller than an atom and trap them into a space less then a millimeter across and then collide speed them up to near the speed of light (186,000 miles/hour) and then collide them to within a few centimeters of the center of TWO three story detectors...imagine doing all of this with magnets that are 8 times more powerful than the entire Earth's magnetic field requiring a power supply of a small town!!! No small task.

Magnets at the Tevatron

Now, how do we see an earthquake that happens on the other side of the world using these magnets. Well the piece of information you need to know to understand this is that these giant magnets we use at the Tevatron have to be cooled to really cold temperatures in order to allow them to reach the power we need to create the magnetic fields of the right strength. How cold is that...around -450 degrees Fahrenheit. When you are dealing with spaces smaller than a millimeter and temperatures that cold...any and all vibrations matter! So how do you detect and control these vibrations...how else, you put a level on whatever it is you built and measure and try to correct for these vibrations.


Ok, now it is a little more complicated than that...but not too much more detailed. So on each of these magnets to measure the vibrations and losses due to this is a level-of-sorts. This is what they use to detect the earthquakes. Basically, the control room notices that they are losing some protons or anti-protons because the magnets are moving changing the orbit of the particles. They check their levels, compare with any known earthquakes that may have happened on the earth...do a little physics and math...and compare to see if the observed motion matches where and when the earthquake occurs. Amazingly they do and this isn't the first time they've observed this...in 2006 (see plot below) they observed the same thing 

Obviously, they try to correct when the orbit starts to stray...but the time frame that the earthquake wave passes is very small and the correction software must adjust at some regular time interval. So even though it is rare to see these earthquakes...taking them into account and correcting for them is important.

Needless to say...THIS IS INCREDIBLE THAT WE CAN DO THIS!

The Future Mrs. Asaadi

Here she is! It is time to announce on my own blog that which everyone in my life already knows. Simply put, I am going to marry the most wonderful and beautiful girl I have ever known. Heather is the love of my life and is deserving of all sorts of praise that there is no way this one blog will ever contain.

First of all our wedding is going to occur on May 1st 2010 and you can find out the thoughts and plans that we have discussed all at Heather's blog. As I'm sure you will see by browsing this blog this will be a fun and interesting event. The time and thought that she is giving to making this day the most special event of our young lives speaks volumes to why I love this women so much.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good party and will go (and have gone) to great lengths throughout my time in the Neighborhood and at Fermilab to plan fun and complicated events. But this holds nothing to the love and care that Heather is giving our wedding and giving to me. SHE IS THINKING ABOUT EVERYTHING!

Unlike many "typical" women planning the wedding day the thoughts she lays out are broader then "What will make this my special day?" If that was all there was to this girl we wouldn't be getting married....no, she is planning a day for me, for her parents, for my parents, for our friends, for our lives. When she talks about the day it isn't just that day...it is about a tone for our life. Sustainable, sensible, beautiful, fun, frugal, visible, important, down-to-earth, and most of all memorable.

In many of the upcoming blog posts I hope to be able to share in little stories the events that have lead us to the sharing of our lives. Our meeting, what she does, how she helps my life, and basically all the things we share. But for now the official internet announcement of our lives...Mrs. Heather Asaadi is on her way to the rest of the world and bringing this lucky bum along for the ride!

Physics I'm Following

So I realized that before I get on with the business of pouring my heart out about the life I have been living I should also periodically update about the physics I find interesting and is going on now!

As a particle physicists (at least one in training) I find the questions about what the universe is made of and how it behaves to be some of the most compelling questions to be asked. Unfortunately these questions are also some of the most difficult to answer.  They often involve teasing out difficult details and very precise measurements from a variable sea of uninteresting and mis-measured parameters.

On place this is going on is the Belle Collaboration at the KEK Electron/Positron Collider in Tsukuba, Japan. Here they want to examine one of the strangest aspects of physics known as CP Violation (explained elsewhere for brevity). They do this by looking at a weird object known as B-mesons and trying to figure out if things look the way they expect according to our current understanding of the world.

The good news is that they are good at what they do, although not so good at making it easy to get this information in English.

What they have most recently found is that by looking at the angular distribution of the B-mesons they are producing they have found hints of new physics that we can't account for using our present theories.

Now as the results are discussed on Interactions.org in more clarity and detail than I'd expect a random viewer of my blog to want to read here I'll just say that these results are intriguing to me because they are experimental observation of what we already think we know...that is, that we don't know everything about the particle world

More exactly, it is that there is more to the theory and the reality of the early universe, the fundamental nature of matter, and what happens when you bang together really energetic particles than we ever get quite right the first go around.

This result and it's understanding might be a good place for up and comers to launch of of to get a real flavor for how weird and hard the physics I want to do really is.

My Life Told By Rock Climbing Shoes (Part I)

I thought it might be interesting to tell a little bit of my story of a journey through graduate school as seen through a tool that has been with me for a good portion of it. Namely my rock climbing shoes. There have been more shoes in my life than women (and thank god for that) throughout grad school, but each series tells a story about where I've been and the people that made the travels with me.

So my first pair of shoes I bought right after learning to climb was a neat pair of velcro Evolv's. They were way too nice of a shoe for me to be my first but they were recommended to me by the girl I was seeing at the time when we made our first trip ever to REI (a outdoor store which I am now a member of). The funny thing was that since my foot work was garbage as a new climbing and I was climbing 4 - 5 times a day in a gym I blew a hole right through the toe of the shoes in 3 months. Now that was WAY to quick to go through a pair of climbing shoes and the retail clerks at REI were sympathetic to my plight. So without too much hassle they replaced the shoes with a better beginner pair of Mad Rocks.

These shoes were big and clunky with no sharp toe and basically wore like a tight pair of firm gym shoes...perfect for a beginner climber like myself. They wore on with me beating them up in the gym for some time (maybe 6 months) and got me to realize that I needed to learn about foot work well before I worried about shoes.
This lesson might be a parallel to the lessons I was learning in life at the time...but I'll have to figure that out more later.

Finally came my brown La Sportiva's that I bought again from REI. These shoes were great and I took them on three of my first outdoor climbing expeditions around the Austin, TX region. They wore great, lasted a long time, I could wear them all day without too much discomfort, and performed wonderful on limestone and granite. I would recommend these shoes to first time climbers searching for a good shoe to take outdoors.

This basically takes me up through the first year of climbing I did while in graduate school. It was a fun year and took me on a wild trip around Austin area gaining experience with some sport climbing and getting introduced to the people at my college that did serious climbing both indoors and out. I had no idea that this sport was going to grab me the way it did and I certainly couldn't see where I was headed next.

From the Neighborhood to the Lab

I hope in the upcoming posts to catalog what my life has been like during the transition from the life in the neighborhood to the life at Fermilab. More than anything I don't want to say that one was better than the other...they are both great times in my life and I think in seeing how these two communities work and influence the world around them I have a blueprint for building a better life.

So in the neighborhood there were twenty or so central people who lived and gave to one another. A perfect example of this was an art show that was put on primarily by three girls (Mary Ellen, Carie, and Claire) but became the pet project of everyone in the Neighborhood. This show was called "Barefoot Art Guild" and was held about once every two months. What was truly amazing about this show is that what started as a small gathering of friends to share the art they created quickly grew to a show that spanned a city block, had live musicians come in from many different cities, would last 8 hours, and never charged a dime (except for food...which was still primarily given away)

In this example of my community I found the meaning of selfless enjoyment. Putting together, organizing, and breaking down these art shows took many hours and often a lot of resources. But the neighborhood always banded together, giving time, money and equipment to make sure that a good time could be had by complete strangers. All this was done without expectation and with very little drama. It was at one of the last Barefoot Art Guilds that it struck me why the Neighborhood functioned so well. Simply put, we were all interested in having a good time, and what was the unsaid truth is that we had a better time together than apart. So, by giving of what little we had to a common cause that would gather friends we could have a better time.

Seems simple enough. Give to your friends for the sake of fun. Don't be selfish with your resources and try to benefit those around you. The concept of the Neighborhood was all these things...but it was also more than that. It was a desire to be larger then our parts. We were becoming a force in College Station because there were many of us all contributing, watching out for one another and working for a greater good. Barefoot Art was just one of the many facets that the Neighborhood gave and in the future I will write more as to exactly what it was and maybe produce a timeline.

But more to the point I realized how this idea has leaked into my professional life here at Fermilab, and it is a good thing. I work with an amazing adviser (Prof. Dave Toback) and two other graduate students (Eunsin Lee and Adam Aurisano) on Supersymmetry searches at CDF. We do our work for the most part without a post-doc, and without our adviser being on site. Moreover, we all have wives or girlfriends, and Eunsin and Dave have kids. We have outside interests and responsibilities, however we are leading the way in photon searches and I see our institution as a leader on CDF.

 How is this possible? Simply, we give to one another, we support each others research, we give to each others lives. I wouldn't say that we are necessarily best of friends, but most of us in the Neighborhood weren't that way either. Instead we see that we are better when we give to each other and build something bigger than the individual. We support each other without ego or selfishness, and very little drama.

This idea, how did the Neighborhood change my life and how do I apply this to the world I am stepping into. Be it in particle physics, rock climbing, social life, moving...or whatever is part of the subject of this blog. The connection between Fermilab and the Neighborhood I hope can be teased out even further in future posts.
 

Life at the lab

So it has been just over a year since I made my journey from the little corner of Texas where the Neighborhood was founded and made my way to Fermilab to finish up my PhD.

I've loved my life and time up here so far and hope that I can share some of the unique experiences I am having right now living at the world's highest energy particle accelerator

I realize, of course, that the Tevatron won't be the world's best for that much longer. With the looming turn-on of the LHC at CERN coming ever closer I am witness to a unique time to be at this lab.

Funny enough when I originally moved up here it was to work on the LHC experiment through a collaboration known as CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), however with the delay it didn't make any sense to wait around for data while our group had a strong presence on a working experiment right here at Fermilab!

So I made the transition and started working on the BEST EXPERIMENT EVER (I'm paid to say that...but seriously I do love this experiment) So ever since December'ish 2008 I've been working on the Collider Detector @ Fermilab or lovingly called CDF.

This has really been a great transition and I am working on exciting searches on a well run machine with tons of experts and scientists who know how to squeeze every bit of information out of the detector we have.

Since joining I have many great stories and physics things to share and will slowly give all these up during this blog. Most recently I've been on what is known as "Ace Shifts" where you learn how to manage and control the detector for data acquisition quality. In short, I'm the pilot of this amazing experiment. Now it goes without saying that I'm only a link in the chain of many people and many years of work...so I don't want to paint myself as THE expert...just becoming AN expert.

Interestingly, I've gotten to be the Ace during a time where I was able to go down and stand in front of and climb around on this 3 ton 3 story monster of a machine and it was amazing! But that story is probably for another time

Climbing

One activity I continue to love to do more and more is the sport of climbing.

 

There are many physicists at Fermilab who love this sport and many more who are willing to give it a try. I think there is something to the challenge the sport represents that gives itself to the physics community. Maybe it is the problem solving of working through a route, or the community of cool and laid back people, or the love of self inflicted pain :-)

Luckily for those of us who spend our lives at Fermilab one of the best indoor climbing gyms I’ve ever been to is located very nearby. Vertical Endeavors in Warrenville offers a TON of top rope, sport lead, auto-belay, and bouldering. It is a great gym to train at, as well as having a laid back atmosphere for the very beginner climber.

One thing I would love to share with the world is the awesome experiences I’ve had traveling around the world in pursuit of climbing with great friends (some from the neighborhood). Additionally I think this will provide insight into how a person of science not only can break the mold of the ‘typical weakling’ scientist but how we also think about working through a problem be it climbing or science.

The same old song and dance...

If you've wondered here or have been sent here by someone you know, then you might be asking yourself "What is this blog about?"


Of course every blog has some statement about what it is and why you should read it. So I won't waste too much time explaining myself here, except to elaborate on the title of this blog.


In 2005, after 1 year in graduate school, I happened to stumble in with a crowd of the most creative, fun loving, and intelligent people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. We formed a loose confederation of alliances and all decided to move in next to each other in a little neighborhood of run down apartments near campus. This group quickly began to grow attracting more and more people and expanding to more and more buildings. 


Within a year we basically had only friends living on this small block and began to enjoy life and fun times entertaining ourselves through our college years. However, the spirit of this neighborhood is what came to define this group as being unique from everything else I’ve seen amongst friends. 


Everyone there began to see the idea of community and looking out for your neighbor as the way to increase their enjoyment in their life. The idea of giving to each other and contributing to the whole over just looking out for yourself began to be the normal. Quicker than I would have expected a small family of 20 some people was born where we looked to each other for fun and adventure while looking out for one another and providing fun and support to each other.


The experience was truly life changing and I’m sure many stories to follow in this blog will make this experience more clear and why it was so life changing. The point is now I and many of these people have moved away from our neighborhood and we carry this spirit of community and giving with us to the four corners of the world. I happen to take this to a little lab known as Fermilab in Batavia, Il. 


Here I work on one of the most complicated experiments ever conceived of by man exploring the world of the sub-atomic. Meanwhile, I continue to seek out a fun and active lifestyle while continuing to give back to the community as a whole. 

So, I figured blogging about the neighborhood, Fermilab, and my active life and research might be one small way to express the sense of sharing and life instilled by my friends and family.

I hope whomever you are you enjoy this random blog which I’m sure will cover a range of topics and ideas!