It’s not rocket science. Well, unless it actually is.
It was a typical Monday evening after a typical Monday day. I was prepared to head home to my regular pattern for unwinding of late: a glass of wine and clip after clip of classic Whose Line Is It Anyway on Youtube, my brain happily feasting on inane garble and the stress of the day slowly becoming background noise.
This evening, however, another option presented itself – accompanying a friend to the Hertzberg Memorial Public Lecture: Rolf Heuer presents “The search of a deeper understanding of our universe at the Large Hadron Collider: The world’s largest particle accelerator.”
*blinks*
*rubs eyes*
Uh, sure.
Nothing like a good dose of particle physics to put it all in perspective.
Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, was the Guest Speaker for the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress hosted this year by MUN. He and his crude Powerpoint presentation captivated me. Riveted by randomly formatted figures, complex formulas, and best of all, Comic Sans (highlighted yellow!), I fell into into a weird state that was somewhere between panic – thinking I’d completely lost the ability to process the English language (when did it become possible to spell words with numbers??) – and hypnosis, a fascination in realizing I was totally completely 100% out of my element.
I learned that 70% of the universe is mysterious “dark energy” (any surprises there though?).
That no matter what, the chances of LHC not discovering any new physics is “approximately impossible.”
And this word: alphmagneticspectrometer.
Most of all, I learned that thousands of physicists, theorists, experimenters, engineers, and computer scientists can work together to capture 15 Petabytes of invisible data from 7 teraelectronvolts of energy passing through a 27 km long underground ring. Try project managing that…
My point?
Every now and then, get out of your head and into someone else’s. It’ll put a whole new spin on your world.
Or, it’ll send your head into a spin. Good substitute for a wine buzz either way…
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3 Responses to “It’s not rocket science. Well, unless it actually is.”
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Great reminder!
I don’t have a clue what you are talking about but it just goes to show that the 25 dollar words the that these people who think they are in the know through around for people to think they are important should come down to earth some time and see how simple life really is.
I know when they get in my cab and start talking about a subject I just shake my head and when they get out it I think to myself that these guys get payed for this stuff and wonder how they get by in the real world and what are they teaching.
@Keith – I suspect life is simple for some people and not so much for others.
I find it fascinating, and though I don’t understand the specifics it’s pretty incredible the potential of the LHC.