Last night on the Science Channel someone defined science in terms of "finding out what we don't know" on a programme about the Large Hadron Collider
The first thing that struck me was the absolutely marvellous English understatement. (OK, that's superficial of me, but I am, first and foremost, a wordgeek!)
In my opinion, the "Large" Hadron Collider might be large enough and ambitious enough to qualify for inclusion in the list of new engineering wonders of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fJ6PMfnz2E
It's all about the Big Bang, energy, mass, dark holes, Einstein's most famous equation E=mc2 , and the difficulty of seeing back in time to the Big Bang because when the Big Bang happened (if it happened) there were no stars, so there's no ancient light to follow.
The second thought to hit me was the proposition that two subatomic particles collided with great force. I visualized these colliding particles as "Good" and "Evil".
This morning, as I sat in Church, it came to me to wonder, "Suppose God clapped His hands?" So I googled "God clapped" and discovered with some relief that this notion has already occurred to several extremely learned people, who've published their ideas in places I wouldn't normally look.
While looking around youtube, hoping to find out what happened in November 2007 when the LHC was --apparently-- intended to be turned on, I learned that the Higgs particle has been called "The God Particle".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fg16j5hbvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9feXeL-3XA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQYXMqEwRxc&feature=related
Another youtube clip describes the LHC as "Satan's Stargate" which seems a wicked cool tag!
Apologies for so many links in this blog, but I hope you are as fascinated as I am with some of this material.
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
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I love that "God clapped His hands" metaphor. I've actually never heard it before. I also like contemplating the idea that when the first chapter of Genesis says light was the first thing that was created, "light" could be interpreted from our contemporary perspective as referring to the Big Bang.
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