My brother-in-law, Orlando, husband of Jane, of the now famous "Jane's Notes" over at Catholic Mom of 10, is working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He is one of 2000 physicists from all over the world who are working on this project. When it is built, they will send protons through the proton synchrotron booster, then into the proton synchrotron itself and finally into the super proton synchrotron before being whipped into the main accelerator for their sixteen and a half mile journey (which will take them about 90 microseconds.) At the end of this, they smash into each other with a great deal of force. The experiment is A Large Ion Collider Experiment or ALICE for short. There is some souvenir merchandise - I got the calendar last year and an engraved bookmark this year.The hope is that when these particles collide, the result will give evidence of the Higgs boson, and possibly other novel particles such as strangelets, micro black holes, magnetic monopoles and supersymmetric particles.
If you are wondering what use all this is, do bear in mind that some years ago, the team needed a way of sending stuff around to different universities, regardless of what operating system people were using. So they just invented the world wide web over coffee one morning. That is a slight exaggeration but only slight. The World Wide Web is a spin-off from this work.
We do not know what practical benefits will flow from this research. Thank God pure research can still be done and especially thank God that it is not governed by the pragmatic concerns of the English. Actually, we don't always get the pragmatism right, either. As Charles Babbage, the far-sighted inventor of the Difference Engine, a 19th century forerunner of the computer once said:
Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.(Physicists of the world - apologies if I have got anything wrong in the above. It is a while since I did Physics A-level.)
PS - I did get some things wrong. See ALICE in jeopardy.
13 comments:
Oh that's what Orlando does is it? I knew he was a scientist but that's impressive!
Yes..his wife Jane 'Brodie 'is helping us a lot!
Hey just remembered Rosie's having trouble with her physics!
When I was a boy, 'O' levels inevitably included Mathematics and one Science subject.
I did Mathematics (syllabus II, meaning the easier version) and Physics-with-Chemistry, and that was quite enough, thank you !
It was a pleasure to escape into the sixth form and the world of Greek, Latin, Ancient History, etc., etc.
I'm happy to say I've not looked at a Maths or Science textbook since I was 16 years old.
Father's post and that particle accelerator thing, make me feel quite giddy.
Shows when I grew up:
First thing I thought when I looked at the pic was, "Oh, the Time Tunnel"
Cool.
Your physics is splendid - I helped to teach you!
When I worked at General dynamics one of my friends was a physicist, (we were both in the defense industry at the time) - we were talking about "things" and we were joking that for him the hardest thing was to convince other people that "X" type of formula should be used rather than "Y" -- that there were "no answers at the back of the book."
Necessity is the mother of invention! One of my favorite Far Side cartoons was the one where two guys in white lab coats were standing in front of a complicated formula, and one said to the other:
"Well, I'll be damned, time IS money!"
Karen
Oh, and your Babbage comment reminds me of an old joke:
A ship sand in the south Pacific, and amongst survivors washed up on an island were 2 Germans, 2 Frenchmen, 2 Americans, 2 Brazilians, two Japanese, 2 Swiss, 2 Chinese. 2 Irishmen and 2 Englishmen.
6 months later, the were rescued and it had transpired that in that time the Germans had built a power plant, the Frenchmen had started a vineyard, the Japanese had started up a camera factory, the Swiss had a banking system established, the Chinese had a combined laundry and restaurant, the Americans had a motion picture company, the Irish had started a pub, and the Englishmen were waiting to be introduced to each other.
Karen
Dear Fr. Tim
Thank you for including a post from the esoteric world of high energy physics. I worked on the predecessor of the Large Hadron Collidor at CERN before training to be a priest. I found that the practice of this kind of science can produce at least two wonderful effects, if one has the gift of Faith. First, it disciplines the mind in the pursuit of objective truth; second, it gives a sense of awe that is highly conducive to the worship of God.
Perhaps for both these reasons, such science seems to be in decline in our civilization, even though this decay is partially disguised for the moment. Although the LHC and its associated experiments will be extraordinary achievements when they are finished, the longer term future of physics does not seem good. In our schools in England, most of the understanding of the principles of physical phenomena, that is the 'philosophy' of physics, as well as the mathematics, has been stripped out of the curriculum. Despite, or perhaps because of this, university physics departments are shrinking. One of my former professors said to me that he is no longer able to teach the students from our schools.
Since we are still developing new machines and technology, such as the LHC, the effects of this decay are relatively hidden at present. Nevertheless, there could come a time, as in Huxley's 'Brave New World', when we merely use the products of science but the principles have been forgotten. In the broader perspective, this may be count as one of the more minor side-effects of the decline of Christian civilization. It is sad, nevertheless.
Fr. Andrew Pinsent
[DELPHI experiment, Oxford/CERN, 1987-1990]
I sincerely hope to God that what is discovered slaps physicists out of their complacency.
I don't know how long ago it was since you did your physics A-level Father but I am enraged to the point of abject frustration at the illogicality, irrationality, incongruous contrariety and contradiction inherant within modern physics.
I've given up reading the New Scientist after decades of sheer incredulity at the expounding of theories grounded upon antinomy and self-contradicting premises - Trillions have been wasted in the academic pursuits atempting to prove that which any sane individual with a modicum of reason could deduce is simply either impossible or wrong !
Take one example - gravity - the maths doesn't work, the experiments don't work, so we theorise about particles and extra minisculely thin dimensions in order to make theories which defy sanity - fit ! Something which is even more bitterly ironic when , if you confront any scientist with a fraction of authenticity , we still do not know if gravity is a push or pull force - we just presume it's a pull force???
Science over the past century seems to have been irrevocably contaminated with one thing that shouldn't have any place in science - pragmatism .
It's about time someone dragged these scientists kicking and screaming back into the classroom and taught them that 1+1=2, and that theories such as 'every time a decision is made a new universe is made' is redolent less of a sane human; but rather Wodehouse's Madeline Bassett saying every time a Pixie blows its wee nosey a baby is born !!!
We are forever denouncing the deluded unscientific nature of the New age maniacs; so in all intellectual integrity and fairness ,
when are we going to start making the same denunciations against unscientific scientists !!!
Oh my word...Even though I'm slightly (ok very..) lost by this post I'm still intrigued! I love technology and God's gift of brains! Please do keep us posted!
If drummers are allowed to call themselves musicians then I can call myself a physicist and I have to say that I don't recognise "on the side of the angels"' caricature.
Mind you, all is not well between the church and some physicists, at least. The unfortunate protests which prevented the pope from visiting La Sapienza a few weeks ago were widely publicised. What I didn't know myself until receiving the latest issue of Physics World (the magazine of the Institute of Physics) was that the protestors were physicists who apparently claimed to be offended by the church's treatment of Galileo. See http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/32463 The most prominent of these seems to be Orlando's former boss, Luciano Maiani. This is a great shame.
When first I saw the picture at the head of your post, I assumed it to be just another 'inspired' modern Catholic church building.
LOL
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