Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Just Smart Enough To Know I'm Not Smart Enough


I'm not dumb, I know that. But I'm not as smart as I'd like to be. I realize that on days like today, when scientists are pushing the boundaries of knowledge, to understand the creation of all that is.

They built this huge circular thingamajig that smashes particles to bits like a fifteen car pileup on the 95. From this, they hope to discover what started the universe, namely The Big Bang, by recreating a little bang. That's about as much of the story as I can really grasp. There are a lot of big words involved like Hadron Collider, smuans, quarks and Higgs Boson. I have no idea what any of those mean. I wish I did.

I'd love to understand more about particle physics and quantum mechanics and string theory. But I don't. I need someone to explain it to me like I was a short bus riding third grader. I can tell you who got kicked off Big Brother last night but that isn't exactly going to explain the origin of man. (The de-evolution of man, maybe.)

So in Europe, a whole bunch of scientists are high-fiving each other because they got a proton, which I can't even see, to race around this tube with all these magnets and gizmos and whatchamacallits recording every bit of data they can think of so they can explain what made everything everything. And I feel stupid. I got A's in all my science classes in high school and college - okay, except sophomore Biology, I got a B, but I was being harassed by imbecilic teenage boys who kept putting dissected frog parts in my purse.

I want to understand what all the fuss is about. Maybe I can get a book... d'ya think they make "Particle Physics for Dummies"?

4 comments:

Jonathon Bryant said...

Hey, why worry about that stuff!! I figure let the smart people deal with that and invent knew things and come up with new theories and we can just sit back, relax, and enjoy whatever it is that they have to offer us next. -JON

Maura said...

OK, I will not be having you say you are not smart enough, young lady! You are not only smart, you are brilliant! Think about it. You are home with your family, whom you love dearly and who loves you dearly. You get to cuddle with Java whenever you want. You are chasing your writing dreams which, once realized, will provide hours of entertainment and pleasure for others.

And what are these wacky lab guys doing? Locking themselves up in a lab with a bunch of other wacky lab guys trying to get protons to spin around in an effort to prove a theory that, once proven, will do NOTHING but spark an even huger controversy between the evolutionists and the creationists. It's not like if they figure this out they will cure cancer or something.

And let's not forget that, as you stated, you can't even SEE the protons. Can anyone say flea circus? :)

If they spent half as much time trying to figure out a way to eliminate world hunger as they do making up these big words that mean something to only a handful of people, Ethiopians would look like Jabba the Hut.

I think these guys will probably prove the Big Bang theory. But so what? I am all for scientific research and discoveries, but I prefer it to be something that will be helpful to the future of mankind. Maybe there will be some kind of future use for this information, but I don't see what it could be.

So don't let those lab guys intimidate you! The origin of man is a way interesting topic but I'm pretty sure we learned enough about it in high school to get by on for now. What these guys are doing is overkill.

dyann hunter said...

Just read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. If it's the novel I'm thinking about, they explain a similar device pretty darn well. I understood it, and I'm mathmatically and scientifically challenged.

Shae said...

I read Angels and Demons years ago, wasn't it about the Pope? I'll have to re-read it...

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