Are you creative? Want to make short movies? Are you also a huge physics dork?
Well then, here’s your big chance: the folks at the ATLAS experiment at CERN are looking for you. They’re looking for original media that will help promote ATLAS, the biggest particle experiment being run on the Large Hadron Collider, which I personally guarantee will not destroy the Earth. If I thought it did, would I help them promote the idea of posting things to YouTube? Hmmm?
Anyway, if they like what you did better than everyone else’s efforts, they’ll fly you to CERN so you can see the place for yourself!
Here’s the idea in their own words:
We want you to start by showing us your communication and creative skills by producing an original short film or multimedia piece, incorporating material about ATLAS, the biggest experiment on the LHC. The best submissions will be posted on the ATLAS website and YouTube page with full credit to the author, and enter a competition for a paid internship at CERN. The winner will be offered a trip to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and given exclusive access to scientists working on the project as well as all the equipment and expertise in CERN’s audiovisual lab.
Got that? If they like you best, you get to see the LHC! I was there last year, and let me say, it freakin’ rawks. You want to go there.
So get your camcorder or your iPod or whatever you kids are using these days* and make a video plugging particle physics.
And if you win, and you go to Geneva, and you go to old town early enough, and the chocolate store isn’t friggin’ closed like it was when I was there leaving me to drool on the window while mere centimeters away from hundreds of kilos of Swiss chocolate, then send me a bar or two, OK? I promise I won’t eat it in the microwave while wearing a tin foil hat, though a variation on that idea might make a good ATLAS video.
Better get started: the contest ends July 31.
*I’d make one myself but all my 8 track tapes are full of KC and the Sunshine Band.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
What? No Bee Gees?
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Na na na na na na na na na na na
Baby give it up
give it up
Only said that so I’m not the only one with KC going through their head. Heh heh.
No chockies BA, but I have a surplus of musk sticks if you want some.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
This is what happens when particle beams are crossed… or something. Beware wicked acting skillz…
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 am
This is perfect! I am a filmmaker and a scientist! I am all over this! Thank you so much for the heads up!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Whatever happened to the CERN Podcast by the way? (And the Amazing Podcast for that matter?)
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
BTW, nice title.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Alpinekat is totally amazing! If I knew anything about anything scientific other than whats in her video, I would try. Great opportunity!
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Interesting contest. Awesome prize!
Good luck making it funnier than Buzz Aldrin’s Rocket Experience.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Of course I want to go there, but I also want to do regular movies.
But, creative ideas all around. And ATLASt it starts. I, for one, welcome our Higgs fields.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I would apply, but they’re looking for someone to internship there in the Fall… and I can’t miss school for that. I know, I know: my surname is an opportunity that shouldn’t be passed up, but I have no choice…
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Can I CGI the whole thing?
Wait, if I win I have to go and do a job? Explain that to me? Win = work?
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I still wish the particle physics ATLAS people had consulted the nuclear physics ATLAS people
http://www.phy.anl.gov/atlas/research.html
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I was at CERN last November. My physics department offers this opportunity every year. Three days for just 50€. We weren’t able to see the LHC, but it was amazing none the less! I was really shocked, when we drove through CERN for the first time. It looks more like an old shabby industrial area than a super-high-technological laboratory. But beneath the crust there are very amazing things to find
. We were allowed to take a look into the lab where they checked the new magnets before they were installed in the LHC – really astonishing stuff!
But seeing the LHC would really rock! Too bad that skills to creat such videos are, say, non-existent
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Okay. Somebody needs to make a movie about ATLAS opening a portal to the multi-million sun super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It should end with a hundred million yottawatts of X-ray power screaming out of the portal to annihilate all life on Earth.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Totally off subject: Phil, not sure if you know this or not, but you were mentioned(and this site linked) in Brea Grant’s blog. Brea Grant, if you don’t know the name, was Daphne in this year’s heroes, and is in the upcoming H2 (halloween 2) movie. here’s the link: http://breagrant.com/blog/the-brea-list/06/brea-list-16/
and the mention:
“you’d have to ask phil plait but i’m pretty sure if an extraordinary comet went by earth we would all turn to dust or zombies.”
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
What is CERN? ATLAS Shrugged.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Phil,
Where do we go to collect on your “personal guarantee” if you’re wrong? The Supreme Court of Grey Goo? The Court of Infinite Density? Just wonderin’.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Maybe it’s the pint of ale I just consumed, but that is the funniest blog title I’ve heard in a long time.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I was there on a school trip. Way awesome science!
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
@beagledad (#16)
Will the universe suddenly be that vaccines are actually bad, homeopathy works, global warming and overpopulation are positives and going anything less than the speed of light is not possible.
Good point, I was wondering that myself. If we get converted into strange matter we may not notice a difference or will we?
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
At las, I con Cern,,,
JoeSmithCa:
Ah, that matters not strange, ’tis but tachyons,,,
GAry 7
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
And just who is this John Galt?
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Apocalypse Cow (#15) I follow Brea’s blog.
I learned she follows me on Twitter a few months ago, and even met her in Pasadena; search the blog for her name.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Hmm…
well I love the whole CERN/LHC thing.
but I hate ‘ Rights Grabbing ‘.
From the ATLAS Multimedia Contest Rules –
“USE BY ATLAS: ATLAS will retain all rights to use the multimedia projects submitted
during the application process in whole or in part, for publicity, outreach, or other
purposes. The applicant will retain the right to exhibit the work produced for the
application for the purposes of his or her own portfolio, provided that use does not
infringe upon any rights that may be exercised by the ATLAS Experiment at CERN.”
:-/
June 24th, 2009 at 5:38 am
MichaelWilce @ 24,
That’s pretty standard fare these days. It really puts a lot of professional film-makers off, as saleability of product is their stock in trade and doing spec work that they can’t then resell is anathema to them.
Then again, I’m still tempted. I worked a short film last year as VFX lead on the HiPER fusion project which has given me a taste for science films, but I need to have a think about that. Then again, who would I resell the film to, anyway? So as long as I’m allowed to show it…. hmmm…
June 24th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Love that telescope!
June 24th, 2009 at 6:28 am
To JoeSmithCA Says @ #20:
Did it occur to you that if we all became like Dr. Manhattan, we would be wearing no clothes at all?
June 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Egads a world full of omnipotent naked glowing people.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:40 am
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