EoW November 2008

The International Magazine for the Wire and Cable Industries

Magic in the mountains... W ith the possible – and justified – exceptions of cancer cures and space exploration (though even the latter doesn’t ignite the same enthusiasm it once did) scientific advances seem rarely to get the general media attention they deserve. What a refreshing change, then, that the first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire 27km of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider provoked radio and TV programming and acres of newsprint not confined to the usual scientific journals. CERN’s already produced some impressive technology. Established in 1954, its ENQUIRE project spawned the network we call the World Wide Web, and CERN scientists have Nobel prizes in physics for advances in computing and particle physics, but I’m sure the organisation has never received so much public attention as it did on 10 th September. About time too. Perhaps if science could generate more media excitement, then the decline in students studying (in the UK) science subjects beyond the age of fourteen (and the consequent shortage of teachers and researchers in these subjects) would begin to be addressed. Would the public’s attention have been captured to the same degree if we hadn’t been threatened that the End of the World is (or just might be) Nigh? And does it matter, if the end result is more people enthused by science and the unseen powers that move us? Professor Stephen Hawking was among the scientists and philosophers invited to explain the magic of wimps, dark matter and the hunt for the hypothetical Higgs boson. If his voice simulator can laugh out loud I’m surprised it didn’t when he was asked about the possibility of the universe disappearing into a black hole within minutes of the LHC’s activation. However, he treated the question with respect; it is, after all, a theory and it’s the proving and disproving of theories that brings about advances. Arthur C Clarke asserted that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Large Hadron Collider

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has all the ingre- dients – it even nestles inside a mountain, where all the best magic comes from. Physics is magic. We can all use a

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little magic. Gill Watson

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