Big Bang Rebooted
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is ready to give the Large Hadron Collider another run after last year’s complications. The $10 billion project is designed to tightly compact two beams of protons into hairline shapes by 1,624 large superconducting magnets, some 50 ft long. The proton beams will whiz in opposite directions through a 17-mile circular tunnel at nearly the speed of light until they are forced to collide. The goal of the groundbreaking project is to shed light on the understanding of the subatomic makeup of matter and the universe. Scientists, contributing from all corners of the globe, hope the fragments that come off the collisions will expose- on a tiny scale- what happened in the micro seconds following the so-called Big Bang.
Smaller room-temperature colliders have been experimented with for decades, but CERN’s super-sophisticated equipment houses liquid helium, used to keep the collider at a temperature colder than outer space. The collider was damaged in the first run by an electric arc that caused six tons of helium to leak out, overpowering the relief valves and adding extensive damage to the machine last year.
Regarding this delicate, expensive machine, Catherine Westfall, an American collider historian says,
“These state-of-the-art accelerator projects are one-of-a-kind devices that push the envelope. I do not for a second think the LHC is too complicated to work, that it won't work, or that it is not worth the investment. It will open new frontiers and bring us new knowledge--there is absolutely no doubt about that."
So if you awake to find yourself in a new, extraordinary dimension this weekend, there is a chance CERN’s ‘Big Bang’ machine did more then it intended to; either that or your roommates spiked you with LSD while you slept.
Image: "Atlas" by Ethan Hein on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.
- 11-20-09
- Kyle Davis's blog
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Another possibility?
Sounds a lot more like something called "tunnel vision".
Hopefully the answers to other things are in there too, cause justifying a project like this seems a real stretch that doesn't seem to have a lot of relevance for the current collective conditions of the world today.
And no, not a bash on science. An observation about the ongoing imbalance between concept and reality, about the distribution of resources and energy while the basic needs of "the people" are, again, made less than secondary.
How much longer can this strain between our polarities as a species be sustained? How much further can we get from each other? Is care too demanding? How is it that "fringe elements" like this get the funding while the starving and homeless don't? How many excuses have to be made?
I'd like to suggest, very unscientifically, that the collective, focused intent of the world's people (notice who belongs to who here) could open doorways through time and space, in ways no technology ever could, and could do far more than that too.
For now, I guess I'll just hope for something so incredible that it humbles us enough to see what's right before us, and within us.
agreed
Couldn't have said it better
Couldn't have said it better myself! Our priorities as a society seem a bit off...
http://www.theemotionmachine.com
"For now, I guess I'll just
"For now, I guess I'll just hope..."
"Why do we waste our time and resources on such trivial things?"
"Our priorities as a society seem a bit off... "
I hear you...
... but at the same time this kind of project fills me with a sense of what we are capable of and the human capacity to seek the truth.
Just building the Collider has actually generated a range of technological breakthroughs, which may well beneoft all kinds of people. Also it has led to the training of new scientists and engineers who may well make future contributions to the world.
Understanding the way the basic structure of reality works could have a profound effect on areas such as the generation of energy. Science generates technology, for good or ill. If no scientific research research had been done, the Internet would not exist and we couldn't be sharing these thoughts now.
There are, and I find this astonishing, a hundred and eleven nations collaborating on this project. Collaboration not for any political or personal gain but humanity's search for understanding of this amazing universe. Such extensive international collaboration is incredibly rare especially in a world so riven by conflict.
Nothing is true that forces one to exclude.
Albert Camus
Light and Darkness
If it were not for medical and agricultural technology millions more would die of disease and starvation. If it were not for technical globalism the Earth’s peoples would not now be connected and communicating as stated by Jeff. If it were not for advances in the theoretical technologies that led to machines such as the LHC our understanding of matter would still reflect that espoused by Newton who envisioned a clockwork universe of disconnected parts devoid of intrinsic intelligence.
I do not wish to return to the days of Descartes when animals screamed in horror and pain as he dissected them alive because he denied that they felt any pain at all.
We are entering a world where it is becoming clear that each component of matter is an intelligent holon (a whole part within another whole part); that there are nothing but intelligent holons, all the way up and all the way down. Such an acknowledgement, driven to reality by theoretical technology, is helping to awaken human consciousness. We need more consciousness, therefore more theoretical technology, and the quicker the better.
When the race between the light of technology, and the darkness of technology is won, and human consciousness awakens to a sufficient degree, it will be clear that the way to the light was through the clouded haze of it’s own shadow element.
...But it isn’t the brilliance of technology itself that causes the shadow, it is the darkness within consensus consciousness that prevents the light of technology from demonstrating its true brilliance.
You summed that up quite beautifully...
Thanks, Leon. I thought your comment described our current situation very poetically: I believe the evolution of our species depends upon a synching up of technological breakthroughs with a widespread expansion of consciousness--it's like making bread, there has to be just the right combination of ingredients in order to make the dough rise.
peace,
jp
ha