In Geneva It's A Go

In today's really big news, or rather small news, the Large Hadron Collider finally starting smacking protons together today.

Two beams of protons were sent hurtling in opposite directions toward each other in a 17-mile tunnel below the Swiss-French border — the coldest place in the universe at slightly above absolute zero.

"Coldest place in the universe"? Please. And how would we know that, Mr. Journalist?

This is a 10 billion dollar project. No one's really sure what will come out of it. They will tell you that they are testing hypotheses, and that's true, but what they are mainly doing is setting up a whole new class of high-energy observations.

Every time we smash tiny things together faster, we are hugely surprised by what happens.

Some of the stuff you hear in learned lectures
turns out to be the thinnest of conjectures.