How many of you were told as children that if you dug a hole through to the other side of the world (and your parents may have started you on the task as mine did) that you’d come out in China? Well, I’ve just checked that out, and darned if my parents are not totally discredited and I will never ever believe anything else they say. From our back yard, you see we just missed Australia’s west coast–a long swim for a tired digger.
See the Google Map function called “Map Tunnelling” and as you’d expect if you think about it, from anywhere in the northern hemisphere, you’ll come out in the southern ocean somewhere. So much for emerging from my hole and seeing curious yellow people in cone-shaped hats and rickshaws. And my, how our national stereotypes have changed, now that I think about it.
AND….If you’re interested (I haven’t found many people who seem to be, which puzzles me) the largest, most complex, most expensive science experiment in human history (and some few think it may be the LAST) will be underway in–see the countdown timer–four days and 17 hours as of this writing. Structurally, the Large Hadron Collider (not in our back yard) is the equivalent of building an eight story high 17 mile ‘round International Space Station underground.
Let’s just call it what it is: the Lesser Big Bang Machine. The pictures are awesome. You look at all those hundreds of thousands of connections, switches and dials and thousands of miles of cable and think could anything possibly go wrong? Nah. We’ve never had any unforeseen human or mechanical error in our space program, for instance.
Stumble it!
8 responses so far ↓
1 susan // Aug 3, 2008 at 6:47 am
Goodness me! That’s somethin’ ain’t it? Thank you for the point-to; I hadn’t heard about this topside.
2 fred // Aug 3, 2008 at 7:23 am
Good overall understanding of this machinery and it’s purpose can be had at http://snipurl.com/2u4d7 [www_sciencenews_org]
3 fred // Aug 3, 2008 at 7:35 am
And several videos and maps here:
http://snipurl.com/39yv5 [rj3sp_blogspot_com]
4 Cop Car // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:22 am
Fred–And there have been no undetectable errors in the software, either!
5 Cop Car // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:29 am
On a serious note, our local university (from which I hold 1.5 degrees in physics) hired a new professor, who did some post-doc work at CERN, to head our physics department. These are exciting times in physics!
6 Via Negativa // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:41 am
[…] Fragments from Floyd Let’s just call it what it is: the Lesser Big Bang Machine. The pictures are awesome. You look at all those hundreds of thousands of connections, switches and dials and thousands of miles of cable and think could anything possibly go wrong? —- […]
7 Dave // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:43 am
A bit of a shock to see the lhcountdown.com site using the same blog template I used to have at via negativa. Yikes.
8 Kathy // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Thanks for the link, Fred. The photos were stunning. I am more surprised at this being a creation of Europe’s and not ours than I am at what they have created. Is this just the first among many signs that our star is descending?
I’ll be proud of their accomplishment anyway. And I guess just because the location is Europe doesn’t mean that US scientists didn’t play a large role.
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