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"?
