Ellesmere, Day 33.

A brief look at particle physics........

But first a picture of some icicles.

Atoms as we all know are extremely small, so small in fact that if there were five hundred thousand of them lined up on parade they could hide behind a single human hair.

Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this.....

Now, in your minds eye, imagine a single atom to be the size of a party balloon, not a red or green one but one you can see into.

Then, looking in, you could see an infinitesimally small dot in the centre, this is the nucleus - a fly in a cathedral gives some idea of scale - orbiting this nucleus and flitting in and out of view are particles.

Are you still there?

Scientists, for the last decade or so, have been building huge machines ( The Hadron Collider being one ) to accelerate these particles to near light speed and smash (collide) them into other particles and observe the results. This supposedly gives them an insight as to the Big Bang Theory and the creation of the universe as we know it.

Wake up!

The Nay Sayers and doom mongers were soon coming from the woodwork citing the end of the world with the creation of a new universe or a black hole or dark (anti) matter should they succeed in their quest. If you are reading this that has not happened........yet.

One other effect mooted is that the explosion could interfere with our current time line and produce the "Groundhog Day" whereby we would all live the same day over and over again without realising it.

Ellesmere, Da

Here, hang on a minute, I get the strangest feeling that I have typed that many times before. OOerrrr.

Until next time..............

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