I'm sure most of you have heard of this new experiment running at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. It's just one of those pieces of news that you have trouble avoiding with all the hyper media attention. Black holes and the possibility of the world ending as the scientists push the button for this gigantic machine to work!
Remember the Y2K bug? yeah almost forgotten by now, but at that time there was much speculation of the possibility of the world ending, with all the computers getting confused and unimaginable chaos to follow....... but you just woke up the next morning only to find that you are still alive and you still have to make your own cup of morning tea and go to work.
Same story.
So what's this thing about this LHC experiment?
Warning: Mild Science Content!
When I put on my scientific shoes, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments are one of the most exciting things to have ever happened, right there along with the man landing on the moon.
We might finally find the answer to the age old question of how did the Universe begin and
this might sound funny but what are we made of? and also was Einstein correct?
Now the possibility of answering these questions would get any scientist jumping up and down with excitement! And that is quite understandable for these were THE questions that kept these people awake at night for centuries. And the uncovering of these answers might open up a whole new dimension literally!
So what's the big deal you may ask, we can still go on living life without knowing these gobbledygook. That's where I put on my philosophical shoes.
It's true that we don't need to know how the world began or whether relativity is correct to go about our daily lives. And besides what's all this knowledge for? ok suppose we did prove that there was a big bang and the universe is expanding and we are made out of this elusive Higgs boson and that Einstein was correct! So what? We still have to take that crowded train to work, we still have to put up with the troublesome boss and we still have to eat through our mouths.
The pursuit of all this incomprehensible knowledge is just to quench the humans thirst for curiosity.
Or is it?
Since the beginning of time humans have had this curiosity, to know who's living in the next cave, to perfect the art of hunting and to find out what's up there in the heavens. This curiosity is what has brought us to where we are now.
Most of the time when discoveries are made we don't realize it's potential straight away, it takes time to find applications. So could these experiments at the LHC be one of those that hands us the key to unlocking a door, behind which lies endless possibilities???
Only time can tell!
