A Different Drummer

The geek within me was almost uncontrollably turned on by these wonderful photos of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, which will soon start accelerating atoms to just below the speed of light, racing them around a 27 kilometer tunnel cooled to absolute zero, then smashing them down into their sub-sub-atomic components and looking at them.

As a pure, audacious feat of human potential, the LHC is probably the most significant achievement since reaching the moon. It comes at a perfect time - when people around the world are losing faith in institutions and our ability to navigate a tricky future, the world's smartest people are about to pull of a feat of literally unimaginable complexity. The reward will be clues to nothing less than how it is the universe came into existence, and what it is made out of on a fundamental level.

That is seriously cool - as cool as the space program, as cool as DNA, as cool as the internet. I need to go and hug a scientist.

In tribute, I offer one supercollider to another: Large Hadron Collider, let me introduce you to "supercollider", the lovely brand spanking new Radiohead song that I was lucky enough to see performed last month in Amsterdam.




Supercollider
Twisted and broken
Particles scatter
Brought in from the sun
Swimming up stream, before the heavens crack open
Thin pixelations, coming up from the dust

In a blue light
In a green light
In a half-life
In an odd light

I’m a brain stem flip-flopping
I’m a pulse wave hot-stepping
I put the shadows back into the boxes
I am open
I am welcome
For a fraction of a second
I have jettisoned my illusions
I have dislodged my depressions
I put the shadows back into the boxes.
I put the shadows back into the boxes.