The corridors are whispering about particles larger than ever seen at CERN.
A new CLOUD campaign is currently going on at CERN. Atmospheric scientists have taken over almost the whole East hall, and the CERN physicists get to again wonder about the strange people talking about sulphuric acid and other ‘chemistry’ in the cafeteria.
Airmodus is an associate partner in the CLOUD-TRAIN project. The CLOUD experiment was started for studying the possible link between galactic cosmic rays and climate. The main challenge so far has been to understand on a molecular level the basic physics and chemistry leading to aersol particle formation. This would not be possible without instruments measuring particles starting from the sizes of the nuclating clusters, like the Airmodus Particle Size Magnifier.
Rick Flagan and Jill Crawen from Caltech are calibrating a setup consisting of a radial DMA and a PSM by the CLOUD chamber.
Recently, results from CLOUD were published in the prestigeous magazines Nature and PNAS.
Almeida et al.: Molecular understanding of sulphuric acid–amine particle nucleation in the atmosphere. Nature.
Schobesberger et al.: Molecular understanding of atmospheric particle formation from sulfuric acid and large oxidized organic molecules. PNAS.
Even after 5 campaigns, the blogger enjoys visiting CERN – not only due to the inspiring science, but because of the amazing characters involved in the project, and because of the croissants served at the CERN cafeteria.
- My typical CERN breakfast, consumed (of course) in front of the laptop.
