Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Whoopi-Do We Are Still Here


The world's biggest physics experiment has succeeded in its first major test as a beam of protons was successfully fired all the way around a 17-mile tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border. From the AP

You might have caught a bit about the event on the evening news when there was talk that it could possibly cause our planet to implode into a black hole. Something like that—I am not a physics person. Well, it obviously didn’t, and the “end of the worlders” can go back to worrying.

Here in my new hometown of Batavia, we know a thing or two about energy. Batavia was once home to windmill manufacturers and we have windmills all over the place. But the biggest and finest claim for the City of Energy is Fermilab, named for Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, one of the most highly regarded physicists of the atomic age.

I reckon they’re smashing atoms and accelerating and colliding them as well, and so far everything here in Batavia seems to be just fine, and I am sure they will be fine in Geneva (Switzerland, not Illinois' Geneva which is just up the road from Batavia) too. Ahhh! We have escaped another “Chicken Little” scare.

6 comments:

Marshamlow said...

Where you scared about Y2K? The end of the world, the end of the world.

Sarge Charlie said...

This could have happened in Texas, our congress decided it was of no value. I was in the manufacturing business and we were building high voltage capacitors for the "Super Collider" I wonder what would have happened with the space program if we had the present crop of great thinkers in the 1960's.

Tim Clevenger said...

Of course, having an interest in physics, I knew the worry was mostly fooey - but there was that tiny part of me that kept an eye on the science news channel and another to the south. Had there been an 'oops', we would've felt and seen it before you. I believe a 'whew' is in order. ;)

Sheila said...

Marsha, I didn't worry about Y2K and didn't worry about this either.

Sarge, I don't know where the big thinkers are these days. We could surely use some.

Tim, Glad you are a bit relieved. I think the media love to rile us up and aren't happy if we aren't worried about some "threat."

Jackie said...

Now that we have almost run out of electricity we are also looking at having windmills in some areas, great idea in these days of global warming.

Not a physics type myself was always maths and chemistry.

Will be interesting in 2018 when most the old soothsayers all over the world predicted the end of the world LOL.

Rick Rockhill said...

WHEW! Thank goodness.