Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Why would anyone want to collide large hadrons?

Sounds as silly as a garage sale, doesn't it?

The twenty-first century presents challenges unprecedented in human history. These challenges arise due to the successes of science, engineering, technology and medicine. Current world population is 6.8 billion. Mid-century there will be 9 billion people. David King calls for a re-thinking of priorities and questions our funding for big physics and cosmology projects over funding for solar energy and new technologies for food production.

David King on Radio National's Science Show today.

In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the European Nuclear Research Centre’s Large Hadron Collider is being switched on this week, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together. Some say it the result could be the creation of a small black hole 100m under the Swiss and French alps, and perhaps the beginning of the end of the Earth.

Will it be a flop, or will it go down as one of the great moments in science? And if so, where would it rank among the other breakthroughs?

Here’s our suggestion for a top ten (albeit in no particular order), starting with the rather obscure Mendel’s Peas experiment. Never heard of it? Read on…

If we survive the next 100 years or so science is going to play a vital part in our survival. What would be your top ten of scientific advances that may take us to the next century? Some that I think should have top priority.

1. Nuclear Fusion.

Nuclear fusion, or the joining of small nuclei to make a larger nucleus, is an energy-producing process that occurs naturally in stars. Nuclear fusion creates considerably more energy and less radioactive material than nuclear fission, and generates millions of times more energy than the burning of coal. Since the 1950s, researchers have been trying to control fusion power in a contained space in order to generate electricity.

2. Make solar energy affordable.

Why is solar energy important?

Already, the sun’s contribution to human energy needs is substantial — worldwide, solar electricity generation is a growing, multibillion dollar industry. But solar’s share of the total energy market remains rather small, well below 1 percent of total energy consumption, compared with roughly 85 percent from oil, natural gas, and coal.

Those fossil fuels cannot remain the dominant sources of energy forever. Whatever the precise timetable for their depletion, oil and gas supplies will not keep up with growing energy demands

 

3. Provide access to clean water world wide.

Lack of clean water is responsible for more deaths in the world than war. About 1 out of every 6 people living today do not have adequate access to water, and more than double that number lack basic sanitation, for which water is needed. In some countries, half the population does not have access to safe drinking water, and hence is afflicted with poor health. By some estimates, each day nearly 5,000 children worldwide die from diarrhea-related diseases, a toll that would drop dramatically if sufficient water for sanitation was available.

4. Manage the nitrogen cycle.

The nitrogen cycle reflects a more intimate side of energy needs, via its central role in the production of food. It is one of the places where the chemistry of the Earth and life come together, as plants extract nitrogen from their environment, including the air, to make food. Controlling the impact of agriculture on the global cycle of nitrogen is a growing challenge for sustainable development.

5. Advance Health Infomatics.

Health and biomedical informatics encompass issues from the personal to global, ranging from thorough medical records for individual patients to sharing data about disease outbreaks among governments and international health organizations. Maintaining a healthy population in the 21st century will require systems engineering approaches to redesign care practices and integrate local, regional, national, and global health informatics networks.

On the personal level, biomedical engineers envision a new system of distributed computing tools that will collect authorized medical data about people and store it securely within a network designed to help deliver quick and efficient care.

Oooops sorry folks....

But I have it on good authority that little experiment went terribly wrong. As experiements do.

At this point in the space time thingy we are all, in fact, dead. The reality is (though I use the term loosely) the space time thingy as we knew it no longer exists.

Many will argue it does, but denial is apparently not unusual for life forms that suddenly find themselves sucked into a black hole, digested, then blown out of its arse into a whole new shooting match, or more precicely - The Scatoverse.

But we will cope. Soon we are going to slowly lose our painful recollections of our old uni-verse (god did have a sense of, er, ah, er, irony) and we will collectively free ourselves from the nasty shit. In fact it's happening as we speak, er read, er write, er breathe - whatever.

I bet few will rememeber what they did when 10 years old 33 days after their mother's birthday. Or what they were doing at 10.27am on the 14th May 1993. Or in my case what I did 15 minutes ago - the albatross adjusts quicker than humans - it's got a lot to do with brain size. If we are honest with ourselves we will recognise we have already forgotten heaps, it's just that we haven't woken up to our new reality. I suppose no one likes the idea of being dead.

But never fear, my fellow travellers, for when the post adjustment thingy has been completed we will no longer remember war or greed or hate and stuff like that. We'll just remember the stuff that feels cool - like sharing, caring, learning, having fun and making babies and making babies and...

Anyway I'm already starting to feel quite at home in this our Scatoverse - I suppose the above reflects same but never fear, for although our new verse, like the old, is full of shit - this one is (or could be) full of good shit - if we collectively want it to be.

All we have to do is change our minds - besides, what has a bunch of dead people got to lose?

Okay, as alarming as the video initially was, I really quite enjoyed it.

I think the academicians who feel that the rap video "cheapens the science and dumbs it down" should lighten up though.

Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit (Telegraph UK)

Richard:  Kimberley, I'm a bit lost.  What's your opinon? Would you write a rap to explain a theory?

Richard Tonkin: "I can't remember the last time I heard a university boasting of a philosophy department."

Oh my god, you should meet just about anyone from the Sorbonne. They never shut up about their philosophy department.

Even French high schools brag about their philosphers.

I'm hoping they land a few on Mars one day so they can tell us whether it still exists when we're not looking at it.

Did you know that the semi-conductor was invented by a committee of French doctoral students engaged in research on the semiotics of feminist poetry?

No, it wasn't.

Richard:  Bugger France.. remember the backstreets of Naples, Eliot? Or Sydney?

[vunet.com extract]

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project at Cern have been having a bit of fun recording a rap song to celebrate the start of experimentation.

The video explains what the LHC is and will do to a background beat and features white coated scientist dancing in the collision chamber. It has become a hit on YouTube, logging over 2.5 million hits in less than two weeks.

“Twenty seven kilometers, a tunnel underground, designed with a mind to send protons around,” the song goes.

"A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France, sixty nations contribute to scientific advance.”

The video was shot by Kate MacAlpine - rap name Alpinekat - who is a trainee at Cern.

Levity aside, if this galactic protoplasm is discovered, what ensues?  An ability to create food sources for Africa?  That's what  I'm getting at, John-  perhaps King is wrong and new science is the only way to correct the problems.

If  solutions to the problems don't exist, they need to be created.

The trouble is that despite our accumulated mass of knowledge there is still so much we don't know. While I'm following the new particle accelerator work with great interest, I can't remember the last time I heard a university boasting of a philosophy department.

I don't think that King has chosen the right climate to make what would normally be considered quite sensible opinions.