Foreign Perspectives

To be honest, with all the security things on these days, I figured that visits to CERN would have been cancelled but apparently not.

In fact, they seem pretty keen on getting people to go. Well, one aspect of that is that CERN costs a whole heap of public money and as with the likes of NASA they’re very keen to show that the money is being well spent.

That would ordinarily be particularly difficult for CERN in that the stuff that they do is very much into seriously technical high energy physics which, let’s face it, is far removed from most peoples’ lives. On the other hand, how could you put a value on the invention of the World Wide Web? The money that’s been generated by that single invention would more than likely repay all the money that’s been invested in CERN from the day it opened.

They go a little overboard on the visits in that they take a half day vs the cursory hour or so in normal places. That in turn means that they can’t have people just dropping in for a visit so if you book one, expect a wait of anything up to six months between your application and when they can show you around.

Oh, and they do show you around too. You get to see at least one of the experimental areas during your visit.