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).
Welcome to the Year of Fear. They say 2009 will be difficult, dangerous, maybe even disastrous. But, here at Technically Incorrect, we believe it will be the year that the seemingly impossible will be the most likely to happen.
So here are 6 things that we feel sure will occur in 2009. Notice the vital importance of advertising in each of these surefire occurrences.
1. FACEBOOK WILL BE SOLD TO A NETWORK TV STATION. Oh, guffaw away if you must. But some time this year the folks at Facebook will sit down and realize that they haven't sold much advertising. Again. They will look around, from beanbag to beanbag, at the faces in the room and realize that TV stations are still somehow selling ad space. Best bet to pick up this bottle-fed (no teat showing, as per Facebook rules) baby will be NBC. I mean, if you can sell the Olympics on the basis of NOT showing it live, then you really are the magicians of ad sales.
2. HULU WILL START ITS OWN PORN SITE. I think I read somewhere that hotels make most of their money from porn channels. You know, sad, lonely men hanging around in hotel rooms with nothing better to do than hang around. Hulu will get in on this market. Naturally, the biggest difficulty will be selling advertising around this channel. However, NBC is a major player in Hulu. See Prediction No.1 for details of the network's phenomenal advertising sales skills.
(Credit:
CC Mosieur J)
3. GOOGLE WILL BUY TWITTER. Because Google is so committed to privacy, deeply, deeply committed, it will buy Twitter. No, not so that you can merely follow someone around, very privately. No, it's so that you can very privately keep up with other people's Google searches in real time. Mark my words, this is the next growth area. People watching people searching. Very privately. And just think of the advertising opportunities. Ads beamed to you in real time reflecting your real up-to-the-minute moods and feelings. And the moods and feelings of everyone you're following. Cool, huh?
4. YOUTUBE WILL LAUNCH ITS OWN CABLE CHANNEL. You know, it's not always easy to find the videos you really want to see on YouTube. If you look at what people are watching most, it often seems to be soccer matches from Poland or Turkey. So YouTube will launch a cable channel, probably in partnership with hitherto advertising-free HBO, that will feature the finest new uploads: the plaintive Britney fans, the strange college sportscasters, the scorned theatrical wives. It will be like America's Funniest Videos but will last for 24 hours each day. Advertisers will, naturally, flock to this surefire hit.
5. ADVERTISING AGENCIES WILL LAY OFF ALL CREATIVE STAFF AND PRODUCE ADS BY ALGORITHM. You thought this had already happened? Well, almost. Mathematicians have proved that there are only so many new ideas in the world and we've pretty much seen them all. In today's difficult business environment, mathematicians are far better placed to work out precisely what will sell than the hairy, unwashed potheads who went to art school but can't paint a lick. Google has proved itself to be the world's most efficient advertising agency and its greatest problem will lie in keeping its mathematicians out of the clutches of the folks who brought you Tony the Tiger and the Five Dollar Foot Long song.
6. THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER WILL LAUNCH ON THE SAME DAY AS WINDOWS 7. This is perhaps the surest of all our predictions. The two greatest steps forward for mankind will not only be launched on the same day, but will do it in a joint promotion. The Collider's computers will all be running Windows 7, while Windows 7 will be available with a new, free dance video from the Collider scientists. It will be the greatest success in scientific and advertising history.
This is Technically Incorrect, yes, Incorrect, thanking all those who realize that entertainment is far more important than news and wishing you an extraordinary New Year. This post was generated using the Deleterious Substances Algorithm, kindly loaned to me by a chap from Google I met in a local sushi restaurant.
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.
I am not an intelligent designer. Nor am I a resident of France or Switzerland.
But this Large Hadron Collider experiment, in which particles are breaking the speed limit somewhere beneath the French/Swiss border and then crashing into each other like teenage drunks in fairground bumper cars scares the semi-comatose bejaysus out of me.
These scientists claim to know what they are doing. But scientists always claim to know what they are doing. Then they discover, while doing the thing that they claim to know they are doing, that they are doing something entirely different.
Is any government monitoring these people? What if the Alps are suddenly sent into orbit by two particularly control-free particles and land square on top of, I don't know, Cleveland?
Alright, sometimes experiments do have excellent unintended consequences. But not often enough. Yugoslavia was an experiment. Look what happened to that.
The subatomic particles in their long tubes will be going at just this side of the speed of light and no one, but no one, knows what will happen when they enjoy their protonic fender-bender. It's all very well for Stephen Hawking to bet $100 that the supposed "God Particle' will not be found by this experiment. It's all very well for scientists to mock Professor Otto Rossler, who says that black holes will be created that will suck the earth away.
But let me tell you this. I have proof these scientists may be several wires short of a working plug. Before they began their descent into scientific instability, these people actually made a rap video.
In this rap they declare that this madness of theirs will "rock you in the head." They rumble on about anti-matter being "matter's evil twin." And in some twisted way, they seem to want to recreate the Big Bang that made everything other than the Partridge Family and the Palin Family.
These people are clearly on an insane quest for anti-matter, the so-called evil twin. They are like the antagonists in ConAir or A Beautiful Mind, the sort of folks who want to blow up the whole world and deny Russell Crowe an award.
Is no one prepared to put a leash on this crazyfest? The first collision is due in around thirty days. Please, look at that video. Don't they look like mad people to you? They're not a day over 25 and if you're telling me they're compos mentis, I'm telling you that Amy Winehouse is taking tea with Richard Dawkins next week.
Will someone not put a stop to this? I don't care if I'm made up of tiny little bits of string. I just want to be in one piece to watch the next Superbowl, the next series of Entourage and, although this is very ambitious, the Olympics live on the West Coast.
Techies, please help me here. Well, the sane ones amongst you, anyway.
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