LHC thoughts
There’s excellent LHC coverage everywhere. Andy has a quick round up for example, and I highly recommend HastheLHCdestroyedtheEarth.com as the best response to the lack of catastrophe. Stuart, meanwhile, has found humour in the online logbooks of one of the experiments…
I was recently interviewed by a researcher trying to figure out what influences people to become scientists, and was slightly flummoxed by the discovery that it was hard to come up with a coherent story. What I do remember is a series of specific incidents which made an impression - and one of those was particle physics’ greatest acheivements of the 1990s.
I was still at school when the final confirmation of the existence of the top quark was announced. I’d just got to the stage where I was reading enough popular science to understand what a quark was, but it’s not as if I’d been waiting for the top quark to make an appearance. Yet it made a huge impression.
I heard about it, you see, on the car radio while being driven to school and it was the first item on the news. It was the first moment I realised that physics was not only still progressing, but could still make discoveries that could capture the attention of the world.
That’s why the flood of stories about the LHC will be important, because all over the world that same realisation has appeared in the minds of people who are reading newspapers on the way to work (no mention in this morning’s Chicago Tribune, though - I’m travelling again) or listening to the radio or talking to people down in the pub.
I’m slightly out of touch over here, but it’s interesting that most of the coverage - from the BBC’s radio 4 extravaganza to the headlines in the papers - have led on astronomical themes (recreating the conditions of the Universe, mainly). Another reminder of the public interest in my subject - even if we don’t mind lending it to the particle physicists for a while. Actually, could we have some dark matter candidates in return?
on September 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Chris, I’ve also been interested by the heavy astronomical leaning in the coverage. I’m also very impressed with the volume of coverage they got (at least in the UK).
on September 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
It was very interesting watching the ITV News (6-30pm UK), nothing at all in the Headlines, the first item was about a new Bloodbank - which I didn’t see in today’s Times. Still they made up for half way through the programme, by having a five minute bit about it.
Perhaps a lack of coverage in the USA relates to it not being done there - still Steven Wineberg was on the radio over here. Brian Cox debated it with the president of BAAS, who wasn’t impressed with Blue Sky resarch.
As I said in one of my GZ blogs, a good example of particles colliding can be seen in a Cloud Chamber - there is one on the upper floors in the Science Museum (London) and probably in many museums around the world.
on September 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I am amazed how everyone was into this although the talk of the world coming to an end is a bit silly and that is really down to the coverage using sensationlism as a hook to get joe public to tune in. Sometimes the BBC are just the Daily Express trying to make entertainment out of fact and digging out a former pop star to present it all sorry that does not work. Euro news has a slot called No Comment just cameras in the control room at CERN you can hear the scientists and feel the expectation not daft BBC quips about impending Black Holes, not once did they mention the particle smashing does not begin until Oct 21st. Joe Public in the UK is no wiser than your average Joe in Chicago and yes the Yanks are jeleous to them it is just another Concord we succeed where they failed but hey there are no failiures in the US ask Fanny and Freddie.
on September 12th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
One reason I’m so proud of the Galaxy Zoo Forum is that we have a culture of asking and answering questions.
It took going on some other forums (for a change) to be reminded of this. I saw how people, rather than asking or answering quesitons, just sneered at each other for ignorance and made assumptions about “the other side”. A very pointless way to behave; but asking questions doesn’t often seem to be done much in real life. If you ask a question at school, that’s very selfish of you because you are distracting your 35-odd classmates from the syllabus and the day’s two learning objectives, and therefore docking points from them in th exams. And as an adult, if you ask a question of a consultancy, a shop or corporation, or the government, or your local council, you know perfectly well you’re probably going to be lied to. So people stop bothering.
I’ve been having some difficulty finding any step-by-step basic science, or questions and answers, about what is going on. I don’t think CERN’s cause is helped by headline-grabbing slogans such as “making an Alice-in-Wonderland reality” and “mini black holes”. That looks more like sorcery and brings us back to the age of witch-burning. Perfectly intelligent, reasonable, well-educated people in the office I work in are afraid that they’re going to make a black hole which will swallow us all up. But people are told this nonsense generally by people they trust - friends and relatives - who will in turn have heard it from more people they trust.
It was tragic to hear that a 16-year-old committed suicide because she thought that the world she knew was going to be destroyed before her eyes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7609631.stm
Roll on, science education. Not just facts, but calmness, logic, a sense of sharing, and enquiry.
on September 19th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
You might enjoy this, too, Chris: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html