Interlude U

  Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, French-Swiss border, Erd simulation

  Year 2008 of the Current Era (local time)

  A group of particle physicists stand before a computer screen watching the latest collision results. Two beams had been initiated on each side of the complex and then accelerated by magnetic fields around a curve before being brough to a heads-on collision course. As the particle beams smashed into one another, the debris from the collision scattered across the area and was registered by various sensory equipment. When the scientists studied this residue, a feeling of exaltation started spreading among them as they observed that one of the particles appeared to differ substantially from anything they had ever seen before, while approximating the theoretical specifications of the long-hypothesized Higgs boson. Had these scientists instead concerned themselves with the more conventional debris that had scattered across the opposite wall, drawing lines between the points that fell with a certain distance from each other and interpreting the result as Arabic letters, the following message would appear: “You propose to assist such a venture in which way precisely?”

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