h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, after some hours they've finally got the two particles to make the 19 mile circuit of the Particle Accelerator, moving separately in opposite directions near the speed of light, without meltdown or explosions. This involved the achieving of the lowest temperature ever attained, far beneath the surface of the Earth. The next step will be to get them to collide, reproducing the beginnings of the universe, which may take a few years. But at least we now know it's possible. Here is Andrew Marr's report, with a smack in the eye near the end for scientific fundamentalists such as Richard Dawkins:

1515pm (BST) FROM Andrew Marr, Radio 4

"Well, the big excitements of the day are over. CERN has made much more progress in a single day than they'd expected and the mood is triumphal. For it is now clear that this expensive, intricate and awesomely large piece of lab kit, a concrete doughnut with giant cameras attached, actually works. Now, as the director general has told his staff, it's over to the physicists to uncover the mysteries.

It's a historic day which is being compared to the Apollo project or Hubble - except that it's looking deeply into things, rather than up and out at things.

What's discovered here over the next months and years should change our view of the universe (94 per cent of which we can't see and know little about). The main thing is - this is the start of the story and the chapters ahead will be more interesting still.

September 10 2008. A day to remember."

I am not a physicist. Questions may be best addressed to the website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Jab

You know, it's funny. I would have completely missed all the excitement if it hadn't been for the various threads here on hootoo.
Nobody here talked about it. Most people were completely unaware of it if my colleagues are anything to go by. My eldest son had no idea but remembered having heard about it two years ago.
It wasn't in the headlines of the Bild Zeitung but on the last page.
The Bild Zeitung (comparable to the Sun) is widely read throughout Germany.

"(94 per cent of which we can't see and know little about)"

In what reckoning? For example, if that's to be taken in terms of C-theta sectors, I don't know that the current state of knowlege allows a reasonably accurate estimate of the size of the universe as yet.

I only knew of it because Hubby is interested in that sort of thing.

Then I forgot about it, until the recent threads began popping up

Not to do with size, but with complexity. Obviously an estimate from current workers in Quantum Physics, I should think. But questions such as this may be more satisfactoriuly resolved through the website, as I indicated.

Jab

are we still here!?

I am given to understand that the Stone-Age man of about 5,000 years ago had barcarole in the way of formal education, lived in a primarily agrarian society, probably believed in some form of god about which he knew diddley-squat, fought with his neighbours and was not too far along the evolutionary scale – in fact remarkably similar to the average male inhabitant of Benshasha today.

So – imagine that a total stranger comes along one day (like me) and settles into the community, somewhat against eveybody's better judgement, but as he hasn't actually attacked anybody and fetches his own water, he's left to himself.

One day, when the local lads have returned from a hard day's 'hunter-gathering', mostly of the belongings of unwary tourists (who have no right to be there anyway) and having settled down to a nice, quiet pipe or two of kif under the shade of the mosque wall, the interloper joins them with a bottle or two of Mekenes-best and says,
"Hey lads, I've been thinking – what we really need here is a half decent calendar so that on mid-summer's day we can all get up early in the morning and watch the sun rise."

Everyone in the assembled throng nods politely. They have all had their doubts about the stranger's mental health ever since he'd arrived but as he had a ready supply of the forbidden drink (that they all liked, whenever they could get their hands on a bottle – bugger what the imam said), it was better to go along with what he said, however nonsensical.

"Well," continues the stranger, "all we need is about sixty REALLY big stones – about 25 tonnes, but that's OK 'cos we can get them from just the other side of Bouznika. However, we really need thirty or so smaller ones, only four or five tonnes each but we'll have to drag these all the way from Tangier."

At this point, the local lads get to their feet and shuffle unsteadily off to their homes wondering whether Ami Hamid has finally flipped of maybe the kif was a bit stronger than usual.

Needless to say, they were not all queuing up in the morning to plod the 26 kilometers to the other side of Bouznika and steal sixty 25 tonne bits of stone and try and drag them back home before lunch.

Well – perhaps the lads in Benshasha aint quite so daft.

A bunch of bearded weirdos have come along and said;
"Hey chaps, lets build a huge circular tunnel nearly a mile underneath the Alps and then we can whiz something really, really, REALLY small - in fact SOOOO small that it doesn't really exist – round and round so fast that you wouldn't believe it if you saw it because if you could you couldn't because it's too small and moving so fast that it nearly overtakes the light – ANYWAY – if we then whizz another one round in the opposite direction and then SMASH them together we haven't the faintest foggiest idea what will happen BUT IT WILL BE EXCITING."

And everyone was up early next morning and started digging the tunnel.
I wonder, in 500 years time, whether it will be Swizerland's only World Heritege Site!

That original story sounded like Stonehenge. The Druids are thought, by some, to have been oak-worshippers.

Oak - or the contents of the casks?

I think that oak imparted some of its essence to its contents .

So - are you saying that the builders of Stonehenge were under the affluence of incohol?

That is the unanswered perennial question, at least as Charles Ives saw it. In that piece, the string instruments represent the silence of the Druids (who know, see, and hear nothing), the trumpet asks the perennial question of existence, and the woodwinds seek the invisible answer, but ultimately give up in frustration. That just leaves the strings in the end, answering the question with just silence.

A bit like death really - or at least it was the last time I tried it!

FROM THE WEBSITE:

"1636pm (BST) FROM Andrew Caspari, Radio 4, in central control room

Just spoken to Lyn Evans who has been running things here at CERN. He confirms no collisions for the time being. The next phase is really to start to control the beams or in the language here, 'capture them'. The first collisions which will be at relatively low energy will be in a week or so they think. These are unlikely immediately to offer *new physics* but the word from Lyn Evans is there is a lot of excitement even over what they have so far."


They're going to start small collisions much sooner than I thought. The upshot of this Mega-experiment is to understand the origin of the universe, and thus perhaps understand the universe, which may result in a NEW PHYSICS. A new form of understanding altogether. The immediate questions to be answered are (a) how something came out of nothing - and (b) we don't understand MATTER at all. How it forms out of energy, what it is. We need to see if there are any answers within the proton.

That's how life-changingly important these Mega-experiments may be.

[You might also compare my old philosophy article at A656787]

Jab

If the 'new physics' means that bumble bees will then be able to fly theoretically as well as actually, it will have been money well spent.

I understand that they also hope to find out what 'mass' really is. I have long been confused by the connection between obesity and liturgy.

to us all

Pedantic - you know the bumble-bee stuff is a myth. Or aeroplanes can't fly either. And isn't this stuff a little trivial in the circumstances?

Pierce is more to the point - I presume he's referrring to the chance (helpfully denied by the scientists) that the experiment could start a new universe or create a black hole that would suck us in:

I don't believe there's much chance as we can't replicate the origin, only a couple of billionths of a second near the origin (so many millions/billions of essential things could happen in that time).

Jab

ps:

OK, sorry Pedantic. Bit of a sense of humour bypass there.

Jab

I only knew about the start up because of xkdc and I had already been sorta following this thread.

there were scientists scared it might form a small black hole and swallow the earth - Ha! I've had one in my wallet for years, so what's new