It's the eve of something big. Something really big. In fact, it could be a big bang, or possibly a damp squib. The particle accelerator at Cern will be fired up and ready to roll tomorrow. Along a tube some 27 kms long, two particles will be shot at almost the speed of light towards each other. The data that is gathered will hopefully tell us something about what happened in the first one billionth of a second after the Big Bang.
And that's as far as my knowledge goes. I always regret not pursuing Physics beyond O-Level but I didn't have the Maths, and you need the Maths. Nevertheless, I continue to have an armchair interest in Science, to the point where I'm genuinely excited about what might be discovered after tomorrow. My worry is that it won't deliver the hype that's been generated, predominately by the press. My other worry is that if nothing significant is discovered then all that money will have been for nought: some £5 billion as far as I'm aware. Now I realise that 5 billion is the cost of a couple of weeks in Iraq, and even if Cern produces nothing it will be a thousand times better than what's been achieved via the 'war' there.
So I wait with baited breath. In response to the Daily Mail article that said we'll all die in a black hole, I'll leave posting off this month's credit card payment. Seems best.
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