Who said particle physics and Art were two different things? On August 7, 2010, more than 200 amateur photographers from around the world had the rare opportunity to experience state-of-the-art accelerators and detectors in all of their complexity and beauty as part of the first Particle Physics Photowalk. And I wish I could have experienced it too. Now online voting is open and you can cast your vote for your favorite three photographs by October 8. What is your favorite? If you want to vote you have to hurry, there is only one day left.
Now at CERN. American artist Josef Krisotofoletti used a cherry-picker lift and a collection of vibrant paints to turn the building’s rectangular face and side into a three-dimensional mural representing ATLAS, the largest detector at the Large Hadron Collider. You can see the result here and it indeed looks great. Krisotofoletti said during his time at CERN, he was thrilled to see his childhood hero, Stephen Hawking, give a lecture on the origin of the universe.
A lecture by Stephen Hawking? Some people are lucky! There are so many questions I would like to ask him. He recently told CNN about his new book ‘The Grand Design’: “Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary.” He also said about the M-theory I briefly mentioned in this post, that if he could travel through time -which he said is theoretically possible- he would go to the future to “find if M-theory is indeed a theory of everything“. So would I!
