Hi Friends,
As promised, I am back and this time with a bang….BIG BANG!!
For the last couple of days, media has been going gaga over Big Bang. I became curious when my family back in India called and asked me how this Big Bang is going to affect us… Then, I went through media reports and spoke with colleagues and friends.
These are some of the questions/comments/fears which took me by surprise ….
- Are we gonna die??? Is the doomsday coming??
- This money could have been better spent.
- This kind of science is too risky for surprises and possible reactions.
- Why can’t we focus on our planet and leave the “secrets” of the Universe to God?
- People and the planet we live are suffering enough. Why take unnecessary chances? Who needs to know?
- We just care about food, shelter, education, a safe place to live, employment, and a healthy planet.
- Selfish scientists!
- Wasn’t the hydrogen bomb enough?
- We really are a self destructive species.
- It's not right to mess with Mother Nature.
- People are starving in this World - can billions of dollars be spent on some stupid experiment?
I am not going to answer these questions/comments/fears and I am certainly not a scientist to explain Big Bang theory. I just want to throw some light (shoot some protons…) on why we should not worry about this experiment.
First of all, I don’t like the name given to the project – Big Bang. Big Bang is a theory that explained the evolution of Universe some fourteen million years ago. This project is just a pilot scale model of that Big Bang and I feel that the project should be named “Small Bang” or even better “Micro Bang.” Wow… that allayed half of the fears I mentioned above and made the hearts lighter….right!!
Well, I went to CERN’s website (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/) and was overwhelmed with the kind of experiments these scientists were conducting. Even though media hyped negatively about the Big Bang (particularly in India), I was glad that they did that. It made everyone curious to know what it is and reminded us that the field of science is still wide open for innovations and explorations. If all of us can enjoy the innovations of science and technology, such as cell phones, laptops, cars….etc. why are we against this experiment?
Few months back, I read about finding ice on Mars and possible existence of water on that planet. Few weeks back, I read about glaciers near North Pole breaking down due to global warming. Don’t you think that we may find answers to these questions through this Big Bang experiment? Don’t you think that if the secrets of evolution are revealed, we will be able to create a better world? Don’t you think that we can find reasons for some of the natural calamities, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and stop them? The more I think about this, the more I think about the existence of God. I always thought that there exists a supernatural Power behind the creation. And, don’t you think that we are about to discover that Power through this experiment. Who knows! The expectations are infinite.
Few are arguing that when people in World are dying of hunger, it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars on these experiments. Suppose one billion people were served with food for one day with one billions dollars. What happens the next day? Are those one billion people not hungry the next day or the day after? I feel that people should be served with knowledge so that they can get their own food. Well, where does the knowledge come from? Yes… these kinds of experiments will be the source of our future knowledge. (sharing knowledge is better than sharing food)
I think that this is a highly-controlled scientific experiment that would not bring a catastrophic end. I wish the CERN team a great success.
Love,
Nash.
