Cartoon Pen & Watercolour Copyright 2008 Jean Burman
HAVE A LISTEN!
Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine – Simon & Garfunkel
(funny how the lyrics work as well today as they did back then – grin)
Had it not been that the Large Hadron Collider was shut down last week… (and remains out of commission still)… we might have been forgiven for thinking that scientists had this week successfully created the first ever black hole with their new fangled contraption!
A black hole so deep and so dark and so unstable that it had successfully sucked a bunch of the world’s largest banks, institutions and corporations into the empty ugly void of financial “deep space”. A black hole of such gargantuan proportions that every man woman and child on the planet will not escape the “gravity” of it.
Alas… unable to blame the Collider (because it has already broken down)… we are forced to cast around for another villain. And what we see is something way more sinister. There at the helm of the mother ship… set on a doomsday course to oblivion… sits a bunch of egocentric greedy individuals whose free-range money grabbing actions have served to rewrite the pages of history with the blood of all those who trusted them to deliver up their dream of a better situation.
Worse still they were acting with impunity.
The fact that it has all gone badly wrong… was (and I dare say, still is)… of little consequence to the perpetrators.
Self regulation? Yeah right. No regulation? Oooo yeah even better!
Well what in the heck did we expect? Every mother out there could tell you… give a kid an inch and they will take a mile. And there is no reason to expect that growing TALLER will change a thing! (grin)
Loss of confidence in financial markets will have far reaching consequences… reverberating far beyond the US domestic market. Whether we like it or not we are in the midst of a global economic crisis. Everyone everywhere will suffer in some way. The US bailout may not successfully avert the inevitable… but it might shore up confidence just long enough to stabilise the markets for a short time until something can be worked out.
However without significant regulatory change the climate of corruption will continue to exist. What happened before will happen again. The challenge now (indeed the obligation) for politicians of every stripe is to get off their political high horse… and ensure that it can’t. This is not the time for politicking and political point scoring.
So far… no black holes… no implosions of the planet… no end of the world… no swallowing of the earth into the infinite black void. So far. But it’s early days yet. And if the hackers have their way… as they did on Friday… who knows what the final outcome might be?
But getting back to the issue of boys and their toys (oops… I meant physics)
As the world turned last Wednesday night… physicists from around the globe (some of them in their pyjamas – others sipping champagne) waited and watched as the world’s largest particle accelerator… the Large Hadron Collider (LHC for short)… was switched on for the very first time.
The atmosphere of expectation could have been measured against humankind’s long awaited first steps on the moon back in 1969. And this ambitious experiment may eventually prove to be even more significant and impactful than that.
It will be anywhere between a week and several months before the first protons collide somewhere along the LHC’s 27 kilometre length. And then… apparently… all will be revealed.
Questions like:
1. Where did we really come from… and why?
2. What really happened in the moments after the Big Bang?
3. Are there more dimensions than the three we have grown somewhat accustomed to?
(Let’s face it… as a visual artist with a vested interest in the two dimensional… I simply must know what challenges lie ahead for we artists living and working in the parallel world! chuckles)
Hey… come to think of it… these physicists could have saved themselves a truckload of time and money by looking to the art world for an answer to this one. Picasso for one… lived and worked in the parallel world… as did Jackson Pollock… and Salvador Dali to name but a few. Each had a unique and individual perspective on the world. All lived in the parallel world and reported back (pretty accurately) what they saw! Pretty scarey really.
4. Do black holes exist… and how can we manufacture one?
The experts need look no further than the literary world for the skinny on this one. Way back in 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote… “the MASS of men lead lives of quiet desperation” Now there’s a guy who knew a MASSive black hole when he saw one!
5. Will the elusive God particle be found… explaining once and for all “how matter has mass”? (Something I’m sure most of us have been wondering about for much of our lives… grin)
The question of whether matter has mass… or mass has matter… or whether it matters at all if mass has matter… or matter has mass… (or whatever – sheesh)… is now something for physicists and their financial backers to ponder over and agonise about in the years to come.
What horrors this new technology might unleash are as yet unknown… although we have been given “many and varied relatively vague assurances that the experiment is ENTIRELY safe”. It was rather concerning then… when leading physicist in charge of the project Dr Lyn Evans (Evans the Atom to his friends) in all the confusion on the control room floor didn’t quite know (and had to ask his equally confused team)… “who’s going to remove the TDI” (the TDI? What TDI? Um – what in the heck is a TDI?) to allow the beam to flow through into the LHC.
Okay that’s about as clear as mud… so watch the video here and see for yourself.
NB. Scroll through until around about the middle if you’re not the type who enjoys watching grass grow.
For the man/woman in the street… truth is… it doesn’t matter. The matter of mass is all done and dusted. The Large Hadron Collider is here to stay… along with genetic engineering of crops and destruction of the food chain… in vitro genetic pre-selection of people… and the indiscriminate dissemination of nuclear warheads by irresponsible, morally corrupt despots. Like it or lump it… (one lump or two?)… it’s a BRAVE … if somewhat stupid… NEW WORLD.
“But”… you might exclaim… “no-one consulted me!”
So what’s new? Information is released on a need to know basis. You didn’t need to know. Did you?
It’s all mind over matter anyway.
They don’t mind and… quite frankly… you don’t “matter”
