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PhysMath Central Blog

Monday Feb 25, 2008

Looking and laughing at the LHC

 

Listening to comedian Bill Bailey on my iPod on the way to work isn't something which would usually warrant a mention on the blog here, but today was different. Today he was talking about the Large Hadron Collider and that the fact that the experiment has such a wide spectrum of success:

"The spectrum of success for this scientific experiment ranges from 'nothing will happen' when they switch it on...

- Turn it off, turn it on again.

...or, it will create a black hole under Switzerland. That seems to me to be huge margin of error. Nothing or Apocolypse."

He goes on to speculate that if it doesn't work, scientists will get bored and put other things in it, like Maltesers and satsumas.

And to complement that thought, some great photos from the latest issue of National Geographic of the LHC. Although they refer to the Higgs as 'The God Particle', something which annoys every physicist I know.  

 

 

 

Comments:

Hehe. I love Bill Bailey.

Could you post a link to what you were listening to?

Posted by Jasper Palfree on February 25, 2008 at 02:46 PM GMT #

Sorry Jasper, no link available. It was from a CD given away at his latest tour Tinselworm. It's basically a recording of the show from that night, burnt at super high speed in the foyer and handed out to whoever wanted one.

Posted by Chris Leonard on February 25, 2008 at 03:02 PM GMT #

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