Colliding worlds

After 15 years of construction work the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has started to accelerate each of two contra-rotating beams of protons to just under the speed of light. The point of all this (and of the 10 billion euro cost) is to try to recreate the presumed conditions in the first trillionth of a second after the ‘big bang'. This will be done by smashing the two beams of protons together. A direct hit will produce an unimaginably high temperature which will destroy the protons themselves. It will turn them back into pure energy. As the temperature then reduces there should be a re-creation of all the intermediate stages which preceded the coming into existence of those protons 13.7 billion years ago at the dawn of the universe. Or so it is hoped. The point is that no-one really knows what will happen. It is a big experiment. There are a number of theories to explain the sub-atomic world, but none of them so far are actually borne out by experimental data. In order to explain the very existence of mass, the theories posit the existence of the so far never detected ‘Higgs boson' (with its flip side, the Higgs field). Such particles should finally be seen in the aftermath of this ‘small bang'. If not, the theories are dead in the water. But none of the theories we have go on to explain the macro world - the world we can see, with its gravitational pull. We do not have the so-called grand unified theory of matter which is the holy grail of physics. Not even Einstein could crack the problem. It has become even worse since his day because observations of deep space now tell us both that there is insufficient observable matter (i.e. mass) to hold the galaxies together and also that the galaxies are flying apart at too great a velocity to be explained by current gravitational theory. Rather than tweak the gravitational constant, some physicists have proposed the existence of ‘dark mass' and its counterpart ‘dark energy' to explain what is going on. What are they? Nobody knows, because they are undetectable by current methods. They are only at present a conjecture to deal with an anomaly. But it is hoped that the LHC will ultimately tell us this and everything else about matter as it replays before our very eyes what happened when particles started to condense out of what had been, until then, simply pure energy. So then, we live in exciting times. But it seems that not all of us share that excitement. There is the obvious question of cost. What is the point of spending so much money to find out the answers to questions that most people do not have the ability to understand or think relevant? But then most people do not understand that without quantum theory, which no-one really understands, apart from a relatively few mathematicians on our planet, we would not have the semi-conductors (electron tunnelling) or hard disc drives (read-write heads using ‘giant magnetoresistance') needed to run our computers. Neither would we for instance be able to make progress with increasing the output from solar cells.  No, I am not thinking of that. What I am thinking of is the contrast between, on the one hand, the open-minded wish of the scientists involved in the CERN experiment to test their theories, if necessary to destruction, in order to be able to explain how the world works and, on the other hand, that other global phenomenon of the last few weeks - the closed mind of Sarah Palin. The candidate to be the vice-president, as well as being a self-declared pit bull with lipstick, is also a creationist. She is someone who would not therefore know the meaning of having an open mind, of looking for explanations of what goes on around us. After all, the good book tells us all we need to know. It tells us for instance in Genesis chapter 1 vs 11 to 19 that plants were growing and producing seeds and that trees were bearing fruit on the third day. That of course was just before the fourth day, when the sun finally appeared in the sky ‘to give light upon the earth' and so, a day too late, enabled photosynthesis actually to take place. She and her friends would no doubt completely disagree with the matter of fact programme I saw on the television the other day relating to fossils: for creationists, the various prehistoric eras never existed. The fossils are just God's little joke. Neither does she think that there is anything in the warnings of the scientific world when they say that there is about a 95% probability that man is causing global warming and that as a consequence we need to curtail our CO2 producing activities. Maybe that's because it's so cold in Alaska that global warming sounds attractive.. And so we have a potential leader of the free world who makes George Bush look almost intelligent and even liberal in his views - at least he has finally accepted the basic global-warming argument. So if I believed in a god, I would even now be on my knees praying for long life for John McCain. We'll just have to hope for his sake that God herself isn't a hockey mom. I wouldn't give much for McCain's chances if she is.

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