On paper, the universe should be empty. But it's full of stars and planets and charming French villages and so on.

"A theory called supersymmetry could account for this: It states that every fundamental particle had a much more massive counterpart in the early universe. The electron might have had a hefty partner that physicists refer to as the selectron. The muon might have had the smuon. The quark might have had ... the squark. Many of those supersymmetric partners would have been unstable, but one kind may have been just stable enough to survive since the dawn of time. And those particles might, at this very second, be streaming through your body without interacting with your meat and bones. They might be dark matter.

By smashing pieces of matter together, creating energies and temperatures not seen since the universe's earliest moments, the LHC could reveal the particles and forces that wrote the rules for everything that followed. It could help answer one of the most basic questions for any sentient being in our universe: What is this place?
Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the "force." The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one's ever found it."
- national geographic article on the god particle

remind anyone of golden compass?
it's the facilities to test this kind of theory that aid 2012 fears of creating a black hole- high powered particle collision. to try to reacreate the conditions of big bang seem similar to eve partaking in the apple: she was reaching for the knowledge that god had... and the vanity of that craving according to the bible is why they were expelled from heaven. is that a simplified metaphor for the audacity of recreating big bang conditions? punishment for seeking forbidden knowledge?

so we backtrack to our most original conditions to see if we can't recreate those reactions that have brought us to where we are... i wonder if that doesn't somehow find its mirror in popular culture as we are reconsidering the stories that lead our childish, early cognitive brains and fears to where they are now as we are adults, by recreating things like "Where the Wild Things Are"... which promises to be a deep discussion about the reason and psyche of a child, which we all have been at some point in time, it is impossible to imagine that something of this nature wouldn't affect absolutely every audience who experiences it.


in other news, i really want to make gourmet truffles.