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Sep. 10th, 2008
Today has been described everywhere - here, here and here, for instance – as “big bang day”: the day they switch on the large hadron collider.
Of course, it isn’t “big bang day” – that was 13.5 billion years ago, give or take a day or two. It is however the day they switch on the machine – the LHC – which will enable physicists to test their models of – well, not the big bang, but the short time – milliseconds, apparently – after the big bang, when new particles – the new universe, even – were being created from the energy released by the big bang and the universe started its long journey to now.
I do find this very, very exciting: sure, not the actual switching on of the machine, nor the starting of the experiments (due at the weekend, I think); but the thought that, years down the line – when all the data that will be collected has been analysed and tested and hypothesised about, and more experiments done, and analysed – and our understanding of the universe is that little better.
I used to understand (or I believed I understood) all this better than I do now; but it is still exciting. The idea of accelerating a beam of protons as fast as 99.9999999% the speed of light (according to this page on the BBC, although here the BBC says it is only 99.99% of the speed of light, but I am not going to quibble about 1/1000 of a c) is genuinely thrilling; the sight of all that shiny machinery is wonderful; and the whole weirdness of it – the idea of explaining where most of the universe is, for instance – the 96% that we can’t really account for - is wonderful.
There have been some excellent pieces in the media about it all. Radio 4’s Woman’s Hours, for instance, was devoted to women’s role in science, the Independent had a whole series of fascinating articles and BBC4 had two fascinating programmes – one, “Lost Horizons: the Big Bang”, an old episode of Horizon about (you guessed it!) the Big Bang, the other, “the Big Bang Machine, featuring Prof Brian Cox explaining the LHC.
And now I have a quibble: the second of these programmes featured lots of visual effects to support the avid enthusiasm Cox put across. Lots of sequences of things exploding: rocks flying apart, huge fireballs, flames and so on. Now, I don’t know what the big bang looked like – I can imagine (light! lots of light!) – but there weren’t any rocks; there weren’t any flames; and given that the whole universe was minute (the size of an atom? Less?) and there wasn’t anyone there to see it – well, it didn’t look like anything, did it? The radiation probably wasn’t even light – nothing to “see” at all. Or perhaps it looked like everything: pure white light.
And of course we will never know!
But at least we might soon have a better idea of what followed soon after.
And of course the world didn't end! Yet...
Of course, it isn’t “big bang day” – that was 13.5 billion years ago, give or take a day or two. It is however the day they switch on the machine – the LHC – which will enable physicists to test their models of – well, not the big bang, but the short time – milliseconds, apparently – after the big bang, when new particles – the new universe, even – were being created from the energy released by the big bang and the universe started its long journey to now.
I do find this very, very exciting: sure, not the actual switching on of the machine, nor the starting of the experiments (due at the weekend, I think); but the thought that, years down the line – when all the data that will be collected has been analysed and tested and hypothesised about, and more experiments done, and analysed – and our understanding of the universe is that little better.
I used to understand (or I believed I understood) all this better than I do now; but it is still exciting. The idea of accelerating a beam of protons as fast as 99.9999999% the speed of light (according to this page on the BBC, although here the BBC says it is only 99.99% of the speed of light, but I am not going to quibble about 1/1000 of a c) is genuinely thrilling; the sight of all that shiny machinery is wonderful; and the whole weirdness of it – the idea of explaining where most of the universe is, for instance – the 96% that we can’t really account for - is wonderful.
There have been some excellent pieces in the media about it all. Radio 4’s Woman’s Hours, for instance, was devoted to women’s role in science, the Independent had a whole series of fascinating articles and BBC4 had two fascinating programmes – one, “Lost Horizons: the Big Bang”, an old episode of Horizon about (you guessed it!) the Big Bang, the other, “the Big Bang Machine, featuring Prof Brian Cox explaining the LHC.
And now I have a quibble: the second of these programmes featured lots of visual effects to support the avid enthusiasm Cox put across. Lots of sequences of things exploding: rocks flying apart, huge fireballs, flames and so on. Now, I don’t know what the big bang looked like – I can imagine (light! lots of light!) – but there weren’t any rocks; there weren’t any flames; and given that the whole universe was minute (the size of an atom? Less?) and there wasn’t anyone there to see it – well, it didn’t look like anything, did it? The radiation probably wasn’t even light – nothing to “see” at all. Or perhaps it looked like everything: pure white light.
And of course we will never know!
But at least we might soon have a better idea of what followed soon after.
And of course the world didn't end! Yet...
Today has been described everywhere - here, here and here, for instance – as “big bang day”: the day they switch on the large hadron collider.
Of course, it isn’t “big bang day” – that was 13.5 billion years ago, give or take a day or two. It is however the day they switch on the machine – the LHC – which will enable physicists to test their models of – well, not the big bang, but the short time – milliseconds, apparently – after the big bang, when new particles – the new universe, even – were being created from the energy released by the big bang and the universe started its long journey to now.
I do find this very, very exciting: sure, not the actual switching on of the machine, nor the starting of the experiments (due at the weekend, I think); but the thought that, years down the line – when all the data that will be collected has been analysed and tested and hypothesised about, and more experiments done, and analysed – and our understanding of the universe is that little better.
I used to understand (or I believed I understood) all this better than I do now; but it is still exciting. The idea of accelerating a beam of protons as fast as 99.9999999% the speed of light (according to this page on the BBC, although here the BBC says it is only 99.99% of the speed of light, but I am not going to quibble about 1/1000 of a c) is genuinely thrilling; the sight of all that shiny machinery is wonderful; and the whole weirdness of it – the idea of explaining where most of the universe is, for instance – the 96% that we can’t really account for - is wonderful.
There have been some excellent pieces in the media about it all. Radio 4’s Woman’s Hours, for instance, was devoted to women’s role in science, the Independent had a whole series of fascinating articles and BBC4 had two fascinating programmes – one, “Lost Horizons: the Big Bang”, an old episode of Horizon about (you guessed it!) the Big Bang, the other, “the Big Bang Machine, featuring Prof Brian Cox explaining the LHC.
And now I have a quibble: the second of these programmes featured lots of visual effects to support the avid enthusiasm Cox put across. Lots of sequences of things exploding: rocks flying apart, huge fireballs, flames and so on. Now, I don’t know what the big bang looked like – I can imagine (light! lots of light!) – but there weren’t any rocks; there weren’t any flames; and given that the whole universe was minute (the size of an atom? Less?) and there wasn’t anyone there to see it – well, it didn’t look like anything, did it? The radiation probably wasn’t even light – nothing to “see” at all. Or perhaps it looked like everything: pure white light.
And of course we will never know!
But at least we might soon have a better idea of what followed soon after.
And of course the world didn't end! Yet...
Of course, it isn’t “big bang day” – that was 13.5 billion years ago, give or take a day or two. It is however the day they switch on the machine – the LHC – which will enable physicists to test their models of – well, not the big bang, but the short time – milliseconds, apparently – after the big bang, when new particles – the new universe, even – were being created from the energy released by the big bang and the universe started its long journey to now.
I do find this very, very exciting: sure, not the actual switching on of the machine, nor the starting of the experiments (due at the weekend, I think); but the thought that, years down the line – when all the data that will be collected has been analysed and tested and hypothesised about, and more experiments done, and analysed – and our understanding of the universe is that little better.
I used to understand (or I believed I understood) all this better than I do now; but it is still exciting. The idea of accelerating a beam of protons as fast as 99.9999999% the speed of light (according to this page on the BBC, although here the BBC says it is only 99.99% of the speed of light, but I am not going to quibble about 1/1000 of a c) is genuinely thrilling; the sight of all that shiny machinery is wonderful; and the whole weirdness of it – the idea of explaining where most of the universe is, for instance – the 96% that we can’t really account for - is wonderful.
There have been some excellent pieces in the media about it all. Radio 4’s Woman’s Hours, for instance, was devoted to women’s role in science, the Independent had a whole series of fascinating articles and BBC4 had two fascinating programmes – one, “Lost Horizons: the Big Bang”, an old episode of Horizon about (you guessed it!) the Big Bang, the other, “the Big Bang Machine, featuring Prof Brian Cox explaining the LHC.
And now I have a quibble: the second of these programmes featured lots of visual effects to support the avid enthusiasm Cox put across. Lots of sequences of things exploding: rocks flying apart, huge fireballs, flames and so on. Now, I don’t know what the big bang looked like – I can imagine (light! lots of light!) – but there weren’t any rocks; there weren’t any flames; and given that the whole universe was minute (the size of an atom? Less?) and there wasn’t anyone there to see it – well, it didn’t look like anything, did it? The radiation probably wasn’t even light – nothing to “see” at all. Or perhaps it looked like everything: pure white light.
And of course we will never know!
But at least we might soon have a better idea of what followed soon after.
And of course the world didn't end! Yet...
Two Films About New York...
Sep. 10th, 2008 08:09 pmI’ve recently seen two movies which were about New York – more or less.
( The Dark Knight )
( Man On Wire )
( The Dark Knight )
( Man On Wire )
Two Films About New York...
Sep. 10th, 2008 08:09 pmI’ve recently seen two movies which were about New York – more or less.
( The Dark Knight )
( Man On Wire )
( The Dark Knight )
( Man On Wire )