Switch it off and switch it back on again

The Large Hadron Collider is once again rotating protons in one direction.  Nice to know that the principle of fixing PCs has been extended to sub-nuclear physics.  If it still doesn't work, we're looking forward to some giant PC support engineer whacking it on one side, giving it a bit of a shake and then wandering back off to play on World of Warcraft.

The Large Hadron Collider Future Scientists Conspiracy Theory

The Sun* has undertaken a rare venture into the worlds of philosophy and fundamental science.  OK, it has the advantage of a couple of scientists with exotic names (to the Sun that is, we already know someone called Holger).  These scientists have suggested that it is not the Large Hadron Collider itself, or even God, that is preventing the doom machine from working.  No - it is scientists coming "back from the future " to protect themselves against us destroying their past.
My initial thought, that the Sun only took an interest in Hadrons for their anagram potential, I immediately condemned as unworthy.
But if they are scientists from the future, just causing electrical faults and leaks is hardly impressive.  The piece of baguette is cheekier.  I look forward to it being a beret next time, or a signed photograph of Toulouse Lautrec turning up in the place they insert the protons [insert own joke here].  Or, if they're being particularly cheeky, they could obstruct a ventilation shaft** with Richard Dawkins' epoch-making 2012 work "Why the World was made in 6 days - My Apology".

But we'll know if the theory is right if, next time they try to boot it up, they discover a De Lorean car in the collider.  Even more amusing if the future scientists materialise in the Collider, drive it round a few times, and then, having reached 88 miles an hour (which I believe is somewhat slower than will account for relativistic speeds), disappear leaving a spinning number (or, as I believe our American cousins would call it, "licence") plate.

* I would like it noted that I did not pick this piece of news up during my daily read of the aforesaid news-sheet.  I would like to give a hat-tip, as I believe it's called, to a tweet from Robin Eccles.

 **they surely must have ventilation shafts in the LHC?  If not, where do they climb to escape the aliens?

Of Quarks and Berks

Young Keith has been taking a great interest in the aims and problems of the Large Hadron Collider.  His comment that the scientists concerned obviously just aren't very practical led to a great deal of shouting around the place, and he's now gone off and built his very own "Big Bang Machine".

At first glance the Large Bozo Collider looks like two giant catapults set at approximate right angles.  Late at night when he can find willing volunteers walking back from the White Horse, Keith loads up the catapults with a Beaker Person each, and fires them across one another's path at high speeds.  Keith believes that when two Large Bozos travelling at near-relativistic speeds crash at 90 degrees, there is a chance that what will result is what is known as the "Huge Bozo".  It took some fine tuning.  Early on Keith took no account of the different inertias of differently-sized Bozos, resulting in some people landing up in the pond while Luna's progress across the Meadow was only stopped by a barbed-wire fence.  But Young Keith now reckons he has a 100% hit rate.  

So far, you will not be surprised to hear, no Huge Bozo has been observed.  Keith has come up with a number of possible explanations for this - these include:

• God is stopping the Large Bozo Collider from working until he is ready to reveal the secrets of the universe.
  
• The Large Bozo Collider is sabotaging itself from the future.  The Huge Bozo would be a particle so abhorrent to nature that even the Westboro Baptist Church wouldn't let it be a  member.  Therefore the space-time continuum itself intervenes to stop the device working.
  
• The Bozos are not reaching the speeds necessary for the quantum effects to kick in.  So he needs to buy some stronger elastic.
• The Bozos aren't large enough, and he has in fact only built a medium-sized Moron collider.

Whatever the reason for Keith's failures, the fact is we now have a number of bruised Beaker Folk wandering around the community.  Please can you all ensure you wear proper safety equipment when being loaded into the Large Bozo Collider.  In the event of the world coming to an end, it may save you from a nasty bump on the head.