Stubby

LHC or the Large hadron collider might answer many childish questions. Many scientific truths are hidden behind questions asked by children. Those very questions that are ridiculed by adults and young brains are left unanswered.

When I was young, we stayed in a bungalow in Gandhinagar, Adyar in Chennai. A architect (Mr. Prem Kumar) stayed in a room top of us. I visited him. I was thrilled by the measuring instruments and drawing tools he used. He was the guy who introduced to me the taste of Maggi. A taste that’s keeping thrilled till today. He makes that dish in really nice way. And the boost he give me tastes good too. I once asked him “what will happen if I hit you with a hammer?”, he said “blood will come out”, I dint want to stop there. “What will happen if I continue hitting?”, it went till he said “I will become skeleton”.

I was not convinced, I asked “What will happen if I trash your skeleton?”, Instead of saying it will get broken he said “it will get small”. So I continued my quest, his skeleton became smaller and smaller and he said it will disappear. “What will happen if I keep hitting your disappeared skeleton?” asked I. Either he didn’t answer me or he shuued me away, I don’t remember exactly . Thinking that he is an idiot (now he is very successful architect) I stopped.

Large Hardron Collider Schematic

So what will happen if we keep on smashing things? that’s what the LHC is going to answer. They are smashing protons in it, trying to find elementary particles that make an atom. If we are lucky, we can get enough data to answer almost all questions we have about this universe.

The moral of this blog is: if a child asks a question and if you don’t know the answer, try to find it and try to answer. Who knows your simple words can prove decisive and could turn it into a excellent scientist.

Now I have a neighbor who’s son asks me same kind of things to me. When I look at him, its like looking back in time and seeing myself. When he pops into my home I never fail to confuse and irritate him by giving false answers to his questions. Some times he does not speak because he wants peace, any way I start by asking him some stupid thing to confuse him. He is going to land in Chennai on 28th of this month. Revenge will be sweet 🙂