DUBLIN REACTION:WHEN IT comes to particle physics, timing is everything. Blink and you'll miss it a billion times over. The start of the great Cern experiment was missed by the assembled gathering at the Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin yesterday morning.
The beam of protons had careered at almost the speed of light from the first section of the Large Hadron Collider to the second and the scientists at Cern in Geneva were already whooping and congratulating each other by the time it was apparent in Dublin.
"We're going to have to fake this a little bit," said Leo Enright, broadcaster and science enthusiast, before leading the crowd in a belated cheer for the television camera.
The live broadcast at the Science Gallery almost did not happen. It was due to be beamed by satellite from Cern, but there were problems with the feed.
An attempt to link up with Cern through the internet also proved to be unsuccessful. "The world and its mother is trying to get on. Everybody is showing too much interest," said UCD scientist Dr Ronan McNulty expressing a sentiment you don't hear to often when it comes to particle physics.
Eventually, the gallery hooked up with RTÉ's live web broadcast. It was Enright, the chairman of the Government's Discover Science and Engineering programme, who provided the compelling narrative, using some vivid analogies to explain the arcane nature of the history-making events happening in Switzerland.
Cern was like a 21st century version of Newgrange, he said, built to understand the things we don't understand. The scientists were taking the beam of protons from one chamber to another like opening the locks on the Royal Canal.
Cern was like an M50 circling the whole of Dublin. "We're now at the Phoenix Park and we're going to Dublin airport," he said. Though the whole process went more smoothly than most had imagined, there were a few hitches. "This is nuclear physics, it is difficult," acknowledged Enright.
The audience at the Science Gallery ranged from the merely curious to the chosen few who understood exactly what is going on. They included the Trinity College team led by Dr Stephen Childs, which is designing software to transmit the huge amount of data to computers worldwide. Also there were James Keaveney (24), Stephen Farry (21) and Dermot Moran (23), PhD students from the UCD Particle Physics Group, led by Dr McNulty, who will analyse the data coming from the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider Beauty), one of the particle detectors at Cern.
They look too young to comprehend the meaning of the universe, but then Einstein was only 26 when he discovered the theory of relativity.
Although some commentators had predicted that Cern might herald the end of the world, the only big bang was the gentle thud of champagne corks when the beam finally made a full circuit of the collider. It was only 9.30am, and particle physics is supposed to be boring.
