"You know a science story is big when an experiment gets first
or second billing on the main evening news—and it’s not
even a slow news day. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and
running as I write and as far as I can tell I’m still here,
so it looks like the doomsayers were a little premature. Unless
I’m writing this piece from the far side of the singularity
of a black hole in a parallel universe.
"The LHC is an huge experiment (a snip at $10 billion) to
explore the very small and very energetic sub-atomic world to
verify, amongst other things, if the Higgs Boson really exists.
That will be a monumental triumph for science and the human spirit.
I have always been fascinated by particle physics, despite by
academic background in the Humanities and I will be following the
progress at CERN with great interest. I am particularly pleased too
because free software will be at the heart of this colossal human
endeavour. GNU/Linux has been, is and will continue to power
CERN’s efforts. This is a wonderful opportunity to tell the
world that Windows doesn’t rule the roost."
