CERN And Liverpool University
We were then treated to a lecture, about how Liverpool University fitted into the CERN firmament. Here’s some pictures that I took.
I think I should have made a video.
I can’t find a decent tome about how CERN and Liverpool University started their collaboration, so if anybody has one, send me a link, as the history of science fascinates me. That has led me to two of my heroes being Lise Meitner and Rosalind Franklin.
Nuclear physics at Liverpool dates back to the 1930s, when James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron, was appointed professor. The story of his research at Liverpool and the building of the cyclotron there is described here.
One phrase stands out from the talk. I think it was Sir Howard Newby, the University Vice-Chancellor, who said.
Research is global.
This is so true and it is why places like CERN must exist.
On My Way To CERN
CERN is reached from the centre of Geneva by a number 18 tram, which ends its journey at the site. You can either pick this up at the main station or as I did at Bel-Air, which is a major tram interchange at the foot of the old town.
It was all very simple and civilised and took under thirty minutes.
A Visit To CERN
On Friday, I left the cold of London for hopefully better climes in Geneva.
The purpose of the visit was to go to CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research. The invite came from the Alumni Relations people at my old University of Liverpool. It was a full weekend, so I’m going to post things as they turn up. To give a taster of this visit, I’m posting this picture.
A Visit To CERN
This shows me in front of the CMS experiment. It is being rebuilt at the moment.
The picture was taken about a hundred metres underground the French countryside. That was a long climb back. But they did have a lift, which was cosy for the twenty-five or so in each party.
Richard Feynman
I’d never heard of Richard Feynman, before tonight, when BBC2 had a program about his work on the Enquiry into the Challenger Disaster and a profile of his life. Wikipedia says this about the report on Challenger.
He warned in his appendix to the commission’s report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
It’s a wonderful quote and all politicians should have it tattooed on their bottom.
A New Superwheat
You’d think as a coeliac, I would not be in favour of the new superwheat developed at Cambridge as reported on the BBC.
British scientists say they have developed a new type of wheat which could increase productivity by 30%.
The Cambridge-based National Institute of Agricultural Botany has combined an ancient ancestor of wheat with a modern variety to produce a new strain.
But I think this is a victory for traditional high-class science. As I understand it, after hearing the scientist on the radio, the combining of the two plants was done using the sort of methods, that have been used for years. Albeit with some clever seed incubation. No direct manipulation of the genes was involved.
So as this could give a yield increase of 30%, what would happen if these methods were applied to the other staple crops of the world.
Sadly, the problem is that, the Cambridge route doesn’t make any money for the big corporations of this world, who feel that the GM route is much more profitable.
I am not totally against GM, but it has to be used ethically and where it is demonstrated that it the only way to create an important product, such as a new cancer drug.
Who Said This? – The Answer
Margaret Thatcher!
An article by Charles Clover, who would probably be described as an environmentalist, wrote the article in the Sunday Times entitled, “If only we still had Thatcher, the scientist and mother of cleaner energy”.
Or read this one in the Guardian or this one in the Independent.
But whatever, you say about Margaret Thatcher, she was a trained scientist and worked as one. Name another Prime Minister or President of any country, with those qualifications!
Who Said This?
This quotation is published in today’s Sunday Times.
It is possible that . . . we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself
So who said it?
I’ll give you a clue, in that it was said in an address to the Royal Society, by someone who was tutored at Oxford University, by the Nobel Prize winner; Dorothy Hodgkin.
Was it an environmentalist like Lord Melchett or Jonathan Porritt, a scientist like David Bellamy or a politician like Al Gore or Caroline Lucas?
The answer is in today’s Sunday Times in an absolute must-read article.
I will post later, who said it.
In Search Of Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner is one of my heroes and as she was born in Vienna, I had to see if I could find her birthplace. She was supposedly born at 27, Kaiser Josef Strasse according to a web site I found.
This was the nearest I could find.
In Search Of Lise Meitner
I would assume that the house has been knocked down.
I’ve just looked from my home computer and I was looking in the wrong place.
I really should have taken it with me or searched for an Internet cafe.
The Joy Of Global Warming
Bjorn Lomborg likes to provoke and this article in the Sunday Times certainly does. He starts the article like this.
As I fly into a snow-bound Britain, I realise that you might be asking where global warming has gone as you shiver in the coldest March for 50 years and wonder what you will do if gas has to be rationed. I have been involved in the climate debate for more than a decade, but I am still amazed at how wrong we get it. Let us try to restart our thinking on global warming.
Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made, but our policies have failed predictably and spectacularly.
He then goes on to say that Kyoto has failed.
But he does produce a solution that could be a win-win situation for everyone.
He says that we should spend money on research!
He is right!
Just look what has happened to products like computers because money has been spent on research!
I have heard some wacky ideas to generate energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions over the last few years. Some of them might just be the things we do to save the planet.
But then engineers and scientists have a track record in digging us out of the holes that politicians and others have got us into.
Where for instance would Britain be today without the genius of Henry Royce, Lord Hives, RJ Mitchell, Alan Blumlein, Alan Turing and Sydney Camm. Under a Nazi jackboot perhaps?
But they and others answered Churchill’s plea and gave the country the tools to finish the job.
A similar massive effort today on a world-wide basis would I believe solve the problems of global warming and create a world fit for our descendents.
The same approach could be used on all of the major problems of the world like cancer, providing clean water, housing and food production.
Is This The Next Antibiotic?
Read any paper or web site this morning and the doom-sayers are saying that growing resistance to antibiotics is a big risk to us all. Read about it here on the BBC web site.
The BBC News tonight did talk about a company called Phico. I looked at their web site and although I know little of pharmaceuticals, I do feel that this company may have the look of another success out of Cambridge.
Let’s hope that for everyone’s sake, they’ve got it right!
Note that, because of the backing of the Wellcome Trust, they shouldn’t be lacking in resources.
The Anonymous Widower 