The Hadron Collider in Switzerland restarts after a 2 year re-fit. The scientists are planning to double the energy from previous tests when they start particle collisions in about a months time. It has been said that the previous round of tests managed to fortify our existing understanding of the ‘standard’ model of physics, including proving the existence of the Higgs boson. There are more things that are not yet understood, such as dark energy and dark matter, that have very few theoretical predictions about them, and so the scientists don’t actually know what they are looking for. The next phase therefore is to super-power the proton beams in the hope that something unexpected and spectacular happens.
This approach to R&D and innovation holds a great appeal to me, and I was thinking of writing to CERN to see if they wouldn’t mind if I drove my VW Transporter around the Collider at a breakneck speed of 106 mph, fully equipped with our state of the art loading and storage system, only to collide with an identical VW van coming the other way. We would both have 13.5 kilometers (less the length of 2 vans) to accelerate to our rendezvous point whereupon the fruits of our design efforts could merge spectacularly with one another, a staggering 212 mph impact, pushing the theory of super-symmetry or something like that. We could then look at the video footage of the impact and see if any bright ideas jump out at us. I imagine the CERN bill for using the facilities might stretch beyond our £5K budget for the experiment so our back up plan is to use the M25 which will give us an additional 161 miles to accelerate.
We’re hoping that the experiment will give us more insight into our future vision of removable storage solutions, such mobile workbenches, parcel loading systems, leisure trays or anything else that the experiment throws at us.
Alternatively we thought we could just ask our clients if they have any requests or bright ideas for loading, and we’ll do our best to integrate them into our already splendid system. We may not have the same budget as CERN, but we’re just as committed to innovation.
