On the way back to #EstesPark, we encountered new wildlife species! A few bighorn sheep (the logo animal of #CSU) were calmly standing next to the road.
When we went ahead to the cottage where we will spent our well-deserved holidays, a few #elk were already waiting for us of course!
#ICOLS2023

The conference ended in a dramatic finale with thunder, lightning and hail which could be impressively seen through the large glass windows and on the lake behind the projection surface!
Then we went ahead to lab tours in #FortCollins at #CSU, getting a glimpse of a new set of precise clock measurements being set up there.
#ICOLS2023

Finally, last day of #ICOLS2023 !
We had the pleasure of listening to a very entertaining talk by #EricCornell about the new particles ("unicorns") we might be able to find by exploring the electron electric dipole moment with highly precise measurements (Also, his slides today are almost as good as the one showed previously from 1995). The other speakers also showed impressive measurements of fundamental constants.

We also took a photo of all conference attendees today, which will be really important for bragging once one of them wins a #NobelPrize (of course apart from the guy standing almost next to me who already has one 😁)!
The picture is online on the #ICOLS2023 website already (but in bad resolution): https://jila.colorado.edu/icols2023/sites/default/files/uploads/Group%20June%2029_1.jpg

I also finally realized today, that one PhD student also attending the conference, whose name sounded vaguely familiar, studied at the same university as I did (just started 2 years later) - and I probably graded some of his exercise sheets 10 years ago!
The world of physics is small, and sometimes you need to go around the globe to meet people from at home!
#ICOLS2023

We also had some time to explore #EstesPark downtown a bit - which is basically just a street full of souvenir shops with a lot of #Colorado T-shirts and moose, elk and bears in all different shapes XD
Of course we also saw another #elk - on a parking lot with elk-approved WiFi.
#ICOLS2023

I used today's poster session to inform everyone about the papers we have written which would really help them understand their experiments better :D And I noticed that after more than 6 years of working on an experiment, I might get a bit sarcastic when young PhD students tell me what they want to achieve in the next few years. I wished them good luck in the end :'D
#ICOLS2023

Day 4 of #ICOLS2023 !
Today we heard a lot of about the different applications of highly precise #AtomicClocks (and #MolecularClocks) - for detecting height differences via the gravitational redshift, for testing the fundamental principles of #GeneralRelativity or for detecting/excluding #DarkMatter candidates!
There were also very nice theory contributions explaining the ideas for new #physics and showing us what we could see if only our experiments measured at a higher precision!

The day ended with a very nice conference dinner - and with talks by #JohnHall and #EricCornell who summarized the history of the #ICOLS conference within the last 60 years or so - basically talking about #laser #spectroscopy since the invention of the laser!
Both speakers made it very clear that a) you cannot do what they did without the strong support of a partner and b) that they probably should have spent more time with their families and less time in the lab/at conferences.
#ICOLS2023