SteemSTEM MeetUp - A Late Review

As everybody on Earth already knows on February 8-9th there was the first SteemSTEM MeetUp and it.... was… AWESOME!

The first to arrive at the restaurant:

(We were eating before everyone else even arrived, but that's a secret - thanks @howo for teaching me what real pâté is)

Many thanks to @aurel.proorocu for driving us every day all over France and Switzerland.
First day was fun, but the second day was even better!

We visited the Globe of Science and Innovation where there’s a permanent exhibition i highly suggest you to visit.
Crossing the street there’s the Microcosm Exhibition - an interactive museum worth every second of your time.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a cool cloud chamber.

(They are so cool I want to build one soon^TM)

An amazing thing I found at the Microcosm souvenir shop is this tape (image below) with about 1TB of data during real experiments in the LHC - actually I saw @Suesa purchased one and I immediately wanted one for myself

(Reminder for future self: open it and read all the data!)

The @SteemSTEM community is fantastic and I had the opportunity to meet 21 amazing people who are actively contributing to build a wonderful science community here on steemit.
Unfortunately I had not time to talk to everyone, but this is one more reason to have a second MeetUp( @lemouth ).

Special thanks to @dber , @galotta , @saunter , @ertwro, @howo , @fredrikaa , @aurel.proorocu , @ana.luiza and @kerriknox . I’m not a very outgoing person and usually i do not enjoy being in a group, but with you it was a different story. Being with you was an enriching experience and i wish to meet you again soon!
And the same goes for everyone else who was at the MeetUp (@alexs1320 , @scienceangel , @tristan-muller , @suesa , @reggaemuffin , @justtryme90 , @lemouth , @grandpere , @ceybiicien) - I really really wish we had more time to spend together, but I'm quite confident we will in the next MeetUp.

Anyway, time to talk about something a bit more serious.

The Value of CERN

During the MeetUp we had the opportunity to visit the CMS detector

This BEAST is capable of taking 3D “pictures” of particle collisions up to 40 million times every second!!!

Working on devices capable of such tasks is a huge engineering challenge, but these kind of challenges are what makes technology go further.
You probably already heard about this, but it is good to repeat it once in a while: we need (more) pure science projects in order to grow as a civilisation.
Not just because we want to understand the real nature of the universe (even though this may already be enough), but also because doing so we are forced to work on cutting edge technologies to solve problems that no one has ever had in the entire human history!

And to the smart guys saying: "Yeah, but it costs too much and we have bigger problems to focus on!"

Just show them this and remember them that this year the entire CERN budget probably cost them no more than a good espresso ;-)

Source

P.S.
Per i lettori italiani (For the italian readers):
tra domani e dopodomani sera dovrei riuscire a pubblicare la versione italiana utilizzando il tag #itastem - più dettagli, qualche video e spiegazioni su cosa si fa al CERN ed in particolare che cos'è il CMS.