| I
don’t know about any of you, but I have always been highly suspicious of research
being conducted with taxpayer money on objects none of us can see. Look at the
amount of money spent on stealth bombers….if they were invisible….how would we
know they existed in the first place? A smart contractor could just point to a
vacant field and tell the congressional committee to “Just look over there…..isn’t
that the prettiest sight you’ve ever seen?” I’m certain there are literally hundreds
of research projects going on right now in all parts of the world using huge amounts
of public money looking for things that cannot be seen.
I’d like to get
in on those funds.
In
case you don’t know, there is another project going on in Europe. This one is
called the CERN project. So far, it has cost in excess of 2.8 billion bucks. The
project is a giant particle accelerator and is built deep underground with a circumference
of about 17 miles. The scientists (thousands of them) say the subatomic particles
will travel 11,000 times around the accelerator each second when this thing gets
powered up. Incidentally, the whole thing uses more power than the city of Geneva.
I bet their electricity bill is going to be out of sight.
There are 9,300
giant magnets used in the construction. These magnets are used to cool the air
down to a chilly -519 degrees. They say they will need that sort of cooling power
since the thing is expected to heat up to a temperature 100,000 times the heat
at the core of the sun. Since I don’t know how anyone could actually measure the
heat at the core of the sun, I suppose this is a ‘guesti-mate’ as well. Perhaps
the US or someone sent an unmanned probe to check out the core temperature…..probably
would have to go at night to keep from burning up.
Anyway,
all of this money and these thousands of scientists are in search of a small particle
which has never been seen called a Higgs boson. At first I thought it was a misspelling
and it should have been a Higgs Bison, which exists at a petting zoo owned by
Oscar and Mable Higgs in Omaha, Nebraska. I don’t think they would charge 2.8
billion to look at their bison.
No, the Higgs boson has been the pet project
for over twenty years for Professor Eilam Gross of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Dr. Gross has been searching for this piece of nearly invisible matter for his
entire career. I wonder if Dr. Gross is about to retire after all these years?
I wonder if I could get a high paying job looking for something no one has ever
seen. What do these people say in staff meetings? “I know it’s there….but I can’t
find it…I guess I’ll just have to keep looking…is my annual review coming up next
week? Gosh how time flies.” His progress and evaluation report probably just says
something like… “Still nothing found…vows to keep on looking.”
But
the really scary part of this huge project is the fact that some of the scientists
are saying there is about a million to one chance that they will create a black
hole which if uncontrolled could swallow up the earth. I think the test starts
in October and if they do manage to create a giant earth swallowing black hole,
then I bet the political elections will get moved to page two of the papers. The
Democrats will call it a ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ and the Republicans will
blame it on some ‘far fetched liberal’ giveaway program. Of course the scientists
tell us not to worry since any black hole they might create would decompose in
a matter of a fraction of a second. I bet this is encouraging to anyone working
close to the machine. Probably there is some sort of liability decal on the machine
that says something like “ The Manufacturer of this machine is not responsible
for any person or persons who gets sucked into any black hole no matter how small
or large. You must be at least five feet tall to operate this piece of machinery.”
Oh, yes and another thing they pointed out is the fact that these tiny black holes,
which they haven’t seen or even know are able to be created are very unstable,
extremely hot and could explode. I bet the folks living in the farmhouse on the
ground above the control room haven’t received this news.
So
here we have it, thousands of highly paid people working on a machine that might,
just might create a situation that could end the world as we know it, but as they
say…the odds are against it. I think I could do the job much cheaper in my garage
and not take a chance on endangering the entire world.
Think of something
we could be looking for that we can’t see and couldn’t prove existed in the first
place. I’ll be trying to find out what kind of grant money we can apply for. Should
be enough for the two of us for the next few years.
©
Peary Perry
Letters
From North America
August 27, 2008 column
Syndicated weekly in 80 newspapers
Comments go
to pperry@austin.rr.com |
