Large Hadron Collider and the slow lane

Riding my bike and working as a custodian gives me lots of time to ponder questions like "where did the universe come from?"

March 30th was that historic day of first proton collisions in Hadron at 7 TeV.

It's interesting to follow the news and watch some of the videos from Cern Lab as they celebrate this event. Brings back childhood memories of the TV when Apollo astronauts first landed on the moon.

Nice to see scientists all over the world cooperating on something that provides more grist for pondering of cosmic questions. Much better than using their technical minds for waging war. Also more interesting than building shopping malls.

World universities turn out lots of educated minds and at times it seems like there's a glut of educated people for the job market.

After the Soviet Union crumbled, there was a scramble to try and find gainful employment for lots of physicists to keep them from having to find work in more destructive fields such as oil funded terrorist mills of the Middle East.

Keeping the Soyuz space flights going helps. One took off today for the International Space Station; for instance.

Some people grumble that these scientific efforts take lots of energy.

They do use energy, but not anywhere near as much as billions of people all over the world trying to live the "typical USA drive everywhere lifestyle." Look at the millions of "show boat homes" all over the place.

It seems like people don't want life to be mundane. If we start living in smaller places and use less energy, life does present the hazard of becoming more boring; especially if people start suffering withdrawal pains from previous lifestyles of driving and jetting around the world.

Pondering cosmic questions, by just reading interesting things on the Internet, can put more spice into our lives, even if we don't all live in showboat homes.

It's like a spiritual quest, wondering what's being discovered next about the laws of physics and the origins of the universe. One doesn't have to have lots of money, or be something more than "just a custodian" to enjoy that.