The Weekly Fare . . .June 3, 2004

God Bless the Europeans
(And All Mad Scientists Everywhere)

Dad-burn those Europeans . . . they just can't leave well enough alone . . .

First they upset the balance of things by funding guys like Christopher Columbus who, despite the fact that all was generally well in both Europe and North America, felt like he had to go wondering off to prove the world was a bit more rounder than not.

Ol' Chris had his detractors at the time, but who's to say he didn't succeed? He wound up bringing all manner of invention to the Native Americans (albeit along with a few other small nuances of advanced capitalism like the flu and typhoid) and in return brought back some corn and the very exciting news that he had planted a flag in the queen's honor on a sandy beach a very great distance away. Seems like a decent return on what was then a rather sizable investment. So what if he had the wrong continent? How was he to know? It all worked out didn't it?

Well, kind of. The Queen soon found herself embroiled in some rather nasty little territorial "issues" that would require the further investment of several hundred thousand men and not a few more dollars, but it was all in the name of exploration, conquest and driving the other guy (England at that point) out of business.

Sound familiar? Who says the ongoing subsidy of "Airbus" isn't fair? Don't the executives at Boeing understand? It's tradition! What's a couple of billion when you're trying to start a little aircraft assembly business?

Which brings me to our dear allies' latest exploration effort - namely the EU's new "Large Hadron Particle Collider."

Now I don't know about you, but when I read words like that, describing some unknown substance that is getting ready to be smashed to smithereens by a bunch of guys with an endless supply of cash at their disposal, I get a wee bit uncomfortable. The last I heard, the scientists at Los Alamos never could guarantee poor Harry Truman that the first nuclear fission experiment wouldn't set off a chain reaction that would ultimately leave our planet looking like a burned up marshmallow dripping off a stick.

So, uh, pardon me for being the inquisitive one, but what's this "Hadron" gonna do?

Well, according to the latest news reports the statistics are "mind-boggling." Once the Europeans fire-up their little seventeen mile long, underground gizmo (second in Euros spent only to the Chunnel) they'll be able to whip these particles to a velocity just under the speed of light and then smash them together like a couple of "beamers" on the autobahn.

Except these "Hadrons" (Isn't that a cute little Korean econo-car?) don't have air bags and when they hit at just short of 300 million meters per second they'll create a temperature estimated to be about one billion times that found at the core of the sun.
ONE BILLION TIMES THE CORE OF THE SUN???

That'll put some steam in your genie.

I'm no astro-physicist myself, but I've got to wonder just what that temperature is going to do to that fancy popgun they've just built. Is there a material around capable of handling a roman candle like that? Talk about a "one hit wonder." But again, what's a couple of billion clams when you get to be the first to shoot? (We've got a big ol' particle shooter ourselves - we just can't get permission to fire it yet. The NRA's slacking off a bit don't you think?)

But here's the even better part. The scientists over there in Europa think this thing will also create conditions similar to what existed one billionth of a second after the "Big Bang" - as in the moment when the Creator said "let there be light." Now, I'm no theologian either, but I can't help but point out that at that particular juncture we humans hadn't been formed just yet. And my guess is that there was a pretty strong reason for the Creator to have followed the sequence he did.

But what do I know? I hadn't even heard of the "God particle" until now.

The "God particle," according to the same published report, is a heretofore-undiscovered little smidgeon of matter that gives all things their "mass." Sir Isaac Newton himself predicted the existence of such a thing and since his time it has been one of the many "Holy Grails" of physics - assumed to exist, but absent from detection or qualitative proof. That sounds to me like it might have something to do with faith, but don't tell these scientists that . . . Some of them might not be able to sleep at night.

It is also hoped that the first (and by logic, last) collision generated by this pea shooter will shed some light on our old friend "dark matter" - which is all that stuff out there that makes up an estimated 95 percent of the universe but we just can't see it yet . . . stuff.

Is that not embarrassing? A couple of thousand years under our belt and several hundred more of "enlightenment" and we can't even "see," much yet prove, much less intelligently discuss 95 percent of what we "don't necessarily know" is even there?

Yikes! And we trust these guys with 10 Billion clams and a "pretty good idea" of what they're doing?

Well, the Queen trusted Columbus with just about the same. And maybe that's enough . . .

Maybe.

May God continue to guide the big winds that blow and the particles that go.