I am all for discovering the Meaning of Life. And though I was once concerned that you could never trust scientists enough to find it, many wise people persuaded me that we should still try.
However, I am concerned with the news reported by the Guardian that a hungry bird has halted testing on the Large Hadron Collider.
The Collider, positioned on the increasingly sensitive border between France and Switzerland, has been quiet for more than a year after electrical faults and helium leaks.
It is now being tested to prepare it for action and reaction. However, a de-beaked piece of bread that dropped into the machine appears to have caused a power outage.
CERN spokesperson Christine Sutton told the Guardian: "The problem related to the high voltage supply. We get mains voltage from the grid, and there was an interruption in the power supply, just like you might have a power cut at home. The person who went to investigate discovered bread and a bird eating the bread."
I know there will be some who might suggest that the bird was actually French, as the bread has been identified as being of baguette form.
However, shouldn't we be more concerned with the metaphysics of physics?
There are, according to the New York Times, some scientists who believe that this God particle experiment is being interfered with by time-traveling particles from our own future.
We need surely to be told not whether the bird was French but whether it was real, or whether it was some strange messenger from a future time, warning us not to mess with things we don't quite understand.
A 32-year-old nuclear physicist, part of the Large Hadron Collider project on the Swiss-French border, has been arrested by French police on suspicion of involvement with al-Qaeda.
According to The Independent, the arrest was made after anti-terrorist police had followed his movements for more than a year. Le Figaro newspaper suggested that the man's name had originally come to light in connection with the "Afghan network" of terrorist groups based in Europe.
(Credit:
CC Ethan Hein/Flickr)
Of Algerian origin, he was arrested together with his brother, who was not working on the Collider.
Sources told The Independent that the scientist was not thought to be threatening the Collider itself, but rather was helping terrorists choose nuclear targets for attack.
The French Ministry of the Interior told Le Figaro that, having seized the man's two computers, three hard disks, and several USB keys, it believed the threat was serious. A Ministry spokesman said, "Our investigation showed without doubt that there were targets in France and elsewhere and indicated that we have perhaps avoided the worst."
CERN reassured the Independent that the suspect was not working on any of the major elements of the Collider, nor did he have access to the tunnel in which the Big Bang experiment is to be carried out. The CERN representative added, "None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain."
The Collider is due to for a restart in November. One can only hope it's a safe one.
The Big Bang was supposed to have happened last year.
Then the Large Hadron Collider blew a fuse that had been wired by a couple of teenagers from Turkmenistan (I'm kidding. They were actually from the backstreets of Vilnius.) and had to be shut down for major repairs.
Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.
(Credit: Maximilien Brice for CERN)Meanwhile, it seems, physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., have been tinkering with their Tevatron.
The Tevatron doesn't have the scale of the Large Hadron Collider. But it does seem to have one small advantage: it's actually working. Yes, those beams of protons are smashing giddily into some antiprotons coming in the other direction. And, would you believe it, the Fermilab folks may be stumbling into some taxpayer dollars.
"We were looking at huge budget cuts last year, and now we are hoping to get stimulus package money and scrambling to see the best way to use it," Fermilab senior scientist Joe Lykken told the "Associated Press".
The Associated Press also quoted another scientist, Dmitri Denisov, as saying the probability of the Tevatron finding the Higgs Boson, the "God particle," is "between 50 percent and 90 percent."
I have had serious misgivings in the past about this Big Bang adventure. To some extent, I was concerned that scientists never really know quite what they're doing. But much more worrying was the disturbing rap video produced by some of the CERN staff working on the LHC.
So before throwing my weight behind the Tevatron's come-from-behind attempt to blow up the world in one almighty bang, I thought I'd do a YouTube search to see whether Fermilab's scientists might also have committed their inner Michael Jacksons to film.
The best (or worst, depending on your bent), appears to be this video, called "Accelerating Science". It does have more than a smidgen of early rap about it. And there is a very difficult moment when a yellow boot gives a purple beam a kick.
However, I think we can be more forgiving of this movie. It was made in 1992. And the fact that Fermilab attempted some rap beats all those years ago suggests that these are people who keep the curve behind them and never pretend they are Lot's Wife. It might also suggest to some that the Large Hadron Collider rappers were not exactly original.
How can one not be swayed by the words of Jacobo Konigsberg, a physicist from the University of Florida, who is working with Fermilab: "It's really what we live for, to have the opportunity to embark on such crazy quests."
Go crazy, Tevatron. Blow us up in style (again, kidding. Well, maybe).
The Large Hadron Collider is an emotive subject.
For some, it is the most serious thing to have ever happened in the world, beyond even their first kiss or their first algebra lesson. For others, it is a source of suspicion, like a pollster stopping you in the street or a well-dressed man asking you for spare change.
Some (with either excitement or trepidation) have even pointed out that one of the brains behind this vast eternal machine is Dr. Brian Cox, once the keyboard player for the band D:Ream. D:Ream's greatest hit, a song adopted by Tony Blair's Labor Party in its landslide election victory of 1997, was "Things Can Only Get Better." There are people who believe that this song served as the final psychological push towards Dr. Cox's deep and lasting commitment to particle physics.
Technically Incorrect does not sink to fripperies. We believe in the untrammeled possibilities of particle physics. And in the soft and sneaky power of marketing.
Now that the LHC is having to endure downtime that might last as long as six months, something of a public-relations disappointment, I believe that the collective brainpower of CNET's readership should be devoted, Uri Geller-like, to finding a good name for this, the most important experiment to ever (hopefully) take place this century.
Naturally, some organizations have already attempted to address the deep and painful need for a new moniker. The Royal Society of Chemistry dedicated all of its imagination (yes, all of it) to this task. And came up with the name Halo. I know that most chemists are nice, conscientious and caring people. They have to battle with more noxious odors than most human beings, and they do it with an admirable stoicism.
But if Halo is the best name they could come up with, then I fear for a chemical solution to global warming.
Wired magazine's readers, on the other hand, displayed a dedication and a humor that is to be admired, especially when the task at hand is so infernally difficult. The magazine recently announced that the winner of its renaming competition was Black Mesa.
I appreciate the atmosphere of dark foreboding that comes with this name, the sinister sense of unknown machinations in New Mexico. But I am concerned that its provenance is its greatest downfall. It is, after all, lifted straight from the Half-Life computer game and, well, derivatives are surely not the flavor of the month in our current disturbed world.
Shouldn't we really be looking for a little pure originality, a name that will capture the imagination of every man, woman, child, monkey, and dog on this planet, so that when the LHC gets going again, everyone will be glued to a live feed of the action?
Just to give you a flavor of some of Wired's runners-up or, as some would have it, second-place winners: there was The Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick Simulator, which would have been lovely, save for the fact that, well, these days, Mr. Norris' name is a little too close to the political world; there was also Master Blaster Atom Smasher; as well as the somewhat differently stroking What Willis Was Talking About; another that some might have favored was The Thing We Play With When We Aren't Playing Warcraft.
Perhaps that last one is a little too close to the truth for some.
There is still, therefore, an opening for a great new name, one that might bring with it a little more luck. And I leave it open to those who feel strongly about this celestial collision machine and, naturally, to those who feel their creative bent has been stifled by those in positions of power (which may include parents, spouses, dealers etc).
If a name emerges that moves everyone to ecstasy, I will ensure that the concerned of CERN will hear about it.
But, please, don't even think of calling it The D:Ream Machine.
- prev
- 1
- next
