Talk about Perspective!

The Atlas Project building at CERN. This is one of four big projects at CERN. 3000 scientists work here alone!

Today we went to CERN. I suggested it to Sue and the boys, because I'm reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. Also because I thought it would make my Dad happy, he had a good time there with Mum, on one of their visits.

So, CERN is the home of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest series of science experiments in history, basically looking at where we come from, and what we're made of, and how all this happened. (CERN is also the birthplace of the world wide web, but that's another story). This place is packed with theoretical physicists looking at, amongst other things, atoms: particles so small that a million of them laid side to side would be the width of a human hair. And the particles that make up those atoms, and what happened in the 10 to the -11th power (can't figure out how to type that properly....) of a second after the big bang, 13.7 or so billion years ago! These scientists spend their whole careers thinking about a fraction, of a fraction of a second, 13 billion years ago!

Wait a sec..... the other day we were in Lausanne at the Cathedral (built between 1170 and 1275 in large part, more stuff was added in 1536). Those stonemasons took their entire lives to build something they, or their sons and daughters would never see completed. And the point of that great building was to look into where we come from and so forth.....

So it got me to thinking, again. 

Lausanne Cathedral

Religion? It's asking very similar questions, as the CERN scientists: who made all this? Where do we come from? These are mysteries we can only answer through Faith. Physicists? Same thing! How can we possibly know what happened in that split second, but to ask questions, try to prove them, and hope not to be proven wrong. Certainly there's a little faith wrapped up in all those formulae.

My favourite quote was in a video, in one of the displays: one of the scientists was asked what happens if he's wrong. His reply was something like: "being wrong means we don't know anything! We celebrate that because we have much more to learn". I'm heavily paraphrasing, but the crux was that these men and women are searching for knowledge, not answers. 
Mysteries excite them! 

I love that. Hope for failure, eliminate that one possibility and try another way! 

Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world."

Good one! 

Einstein also said (it was on the wall at CERN): The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science"

Oh Albert you're slaying me....