The Big Bang, Love and The Snail

I was genuinely worried about the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider at 8.30 this morning. At about 8.15 I gathered my children to my knee, held them close, and reminded them how much I loved them, just in case they'd forgotten since the dozen times I tell them dusing the course of any average day.

At 8.30 precisely, I listened to the switching on on the Today programme, and then realised that the particle streams wouldn't be colliding today anyway - we have some time left before the Earth is consumed by an ever expanding black hole created when they actually do acheive collisions between prtons in the weeks to come. Hopefully the scientists can be trusted, and their assurances that no harm will come of their creation will be true. The problem is, scientists have often been proved untrustworthy, and I have a feeling that harm will come. Not in the shape of a Black Hole, but I find it hard to believe that Governments, even European ones, would put the billions into the experiment that they have without an ulterior motive. I think that whatever is found in that infernal machine below the Alps will at some point in the future be turned into weopory, just as the wonders of the atom swiftly turned into the horrors of Hiroshima. A Higgs Boson Blaster, or something. And even if that was not the case, there is still the almost criminal waste of available scientific funds which should surely be diverted to the prevention of climate change or the saving of human lives in the poorest societies.

I'm not anti-science. I love technology, much of which is a waste of genius. Why invent and create the Nintendo Wii, when we haven't yet mastered the solar panel? We seem ever able to divert our minds to the trivial. I would like an affordable 20 megapixel camera soon, though. So I am not anti-science. I love a good discovery. I detest the anti-intellectual stupidity of the likes of Sarah Palin, who can come to a position of potentially global power while still believing things that 99% of European children have grown out of by the time they turn ten. But I do think that there is more to learn in the real, physical, visible world that will help us to be a better global society, things that science should concentrate on before delving into areas that will tell us interesting things, but will really help no-one.

So. After the world didn't end, I wandered down the alley behind the chip shops and photographed some hearts, as well as the decay of this truly grotty part of Swanage. As an accompanying image I tried to photograph a snail, too. My hand was shaking (a result of too much wine last night) and the darned thing was too quick for me. The pictures are shaky and blurred. But while I was watching the snail I was also thinking about the collision of things, in the physical world. Two human beings meet and their hearts collide, and nobody can say what the outcome will be. The most important outcome will remain forever hidden, in the spirit and soul of the beings themselves, a place that scientists can never, ever look, and some may not even believe in.

Why a speeding snail should have brought that to mind, I really couldn't say.