Work has finally started on the Large Size Telescope. The first stone ceremony was held on October 9th. This week the bushes have been cut down ready for the bulldozers to move in. Like the MAGIC, the LST will be a huge Cherenkov telescope (looking for gamma rays from space) with a mirror 23m across. The larger mirror will enable it to see fainter Cherenkov light, and therefore lower energy particles….
And now I have both crowns fitted, which only took an hour. But my mouth is sore and my bite’s all wrong which makes it hard to chew. I’m sure my mouth will recover soon, and I can get the bite fixed on Monday. But in the mean time I’m not feeling happy. I’m going to have a break before the final two crowns.
I’ve been having major dentistry. On Monday the dentist took molds of my mouth, ground down two of my back teeth ready for crowns, and took molds of the left over stumps. It didn’t hurt, but it took two hours and afterwards my teeth were very sensitive to hot or cold and I could only chew on the left. It made for a very boring diet of soft, lukewarm food…
Starmus is a big festival of science and art in Tenerife, with many famous speakers like Stephen Hawking, Brian May and Neil de Grasse Tyson. On Thursday morning I met the VIP visitors from Starmus at the airport. The group included Nobel Prize winners and an astronaut! That’s when I found out that the organisers thought I was going to stay the night at the observatory. I told them two…