- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
From New Scientist 'Feedback':
LHC for sale
THE switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, on 10 September generated a large number of stories on the internet. Nigel Bailey points us to one of the more surprising of these - the announcement on Ebay of the successful sale of an LHC constructed in a garden in Voe, the Shetland Islands, UK.
At www.lhcforsale.notlong.com, "David" says: "I was building this in my back garden. I had dug a tunnel 100 feet down and joined it up to the local sewerage pipe which runs for 27 kilometres around the village. I was hoping to start the experiment this morning but due to being beat by the Swiss I no longer need this Item. This Item is untested and should only be installed by a qualified electrician." The announcement is followed by a warning: "The seller will not be responsible if this is not correctly installed as there is a risk of black holes appearing and a possible end to the world."
The Ebay page about the sale includes a number of questions about David's LHC, and his replies. An example is: "Q: I think Size may be an issue... Do you think if I reverse the polarity, I might be able to fold it in on itself for storage in a handy pocket dimension?" "A: I'm not sure. I once had a pacamac coat that did that but I was very young and never liked wearing it. David."
Sadly for readers who did not know of this once-in-a-lifetime offer, bidding has now closed. The winning bid for the item - which, intriguingly, is provided with a "revised description" that makes it look remarkably like an ordinary desktop PC - was £8050.
Tired physicists
MEANWHILE, attempts by the media to explain what that other LHC was trying to do frequently foundered as journalists ventured into the unfamiliar terrain of particle physics theory. Occasionally, though, as Jean Matthews notes, they inadvertently hit on some home truths, as when the BBC's Radio Times described the search for the Higgs boson: "Physicists have been looking for the Higgs particle ever since [1964], but have been unable to find it because they have not had enough energy." We suspect that many weary physicists would endorse this view.
http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns ... 762.300_fb