Saying Good-bye to Socks, Planet

Friday, September 12, 2008

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Saying Good-bye to Socks, Planet

By J’AMY PACHECO

Okay, let me get this straight.

Somebody, somewhere questioned the existence of something called a Higgs boson. This question raised an insatiable curiosity among scientists that, as I understand it, ultimately led to the expenditure of bazillions of dollars for construction of a big round thing in Europe.

This big round thing has been in the news all week as the responsible brainiacs from all over the world fire it up to find out if they can get proton beams to smash into each other with enough speed and force that it will either produce this Higgs boson particle, or bring an end to life as we know it.

It’s called a particle accelerator, and uses beams and magnets and all the liquid helium on the planet to perform the world’s most ambitious – and, according to some, possibly last – science fair project.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that not one of the 8,000 physicists who participated in the creation of the Large Hadron Collider has ever done their own laundry. The reason I say this is because it’s been my experience that putting objects into a round thing that spins really fast never ends well.

A washing machine is a scary thing. Like the LHC, it seems harmless enough and with good purpose. But put it to use, and BAM! Kleenex tissues disintegrate. Buttons fly off. Bright colors bleed into other garments.

And it’s no secret that sock after sock disappears, leaving no trace or explanation.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find out the LHC is a giant washing machine. I don’t want to end up like a sock floating lost and alone in the farthest corner of the place no man has gone before.

One description of a particle accelerator compares it to an “ordinary CRT television set.” I don’t know about that – I never lost a sock to the television, although I’m pretty sure it’s to blame for the loss of a significant number of my brain cells.

Maybe my mistrust of the thing stems from the fact that I don’t understand why it’s important. Maybe the guys in charge need to get a public relations person who speaks the language of us television watchers. Because when I try to learn about the LHC, here’s the kind of thing I find:

“It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. In addition to the Higgs boson, other particles predicted by possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced at the LHC.”

It’s either brilliant science, or a lame attempt by physicist geeks to get girls. Trouble is, I’m not sure which is correct.

You could call me paranoid, but if you’d been with me when the LHC was fired up, you’d know why I’m afraid. Very afraid.

See, the day they turned on the LHC over in Europe, my relatively new cell phone went – to use a technical term – wack.

The problems started simply; the device kept putting itself on speaker phone, then switching back. The net result was that I had no expectation of telephone privacy, and lost approximately 25 percent of the hearing in my right ear.

Next, it started repeatedly displaying the send and receive icons, despite the fact that nothing was being sent or received. It stopped ringing when calls came in, and refused to reveal the identities of callers whose calls I’d missed. When I tried to make a call, the phone brought up the text message screen. When I attempted to dial my voice mail, it prompted me to enter my password again, and again, and again until I threatened to put it under my car and roll back and forth over it.

The final insult came when I gave up on the phone and dropped it on the front seat of my car. It turned on the speaker phone, and started dialing all by itself.

I can’t tell you how much I wanted that phone, and how much I now hate it. Nor can I tell you if any of my phone problems – which haven’t gone away – are originating at the border between Switzerland and France. I feel sort of like a caveman throwing rocks at the moon.

Now, if the colliding protons in Europe open up a big black hole, I won’t be able to call for help. On the bright side, I may find out where all my missing socks have gone…