The Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, is not working. It’s reasonable to ask after fifteen years and big pot of money, why? How could this happen? Biggest brains in the world.  Lot of enthusiasm for banging some particles together and locating that elusive Higgs Boson particle. I for one rarely get a good night’s sleep pondering just how to explain the difference between the massless photon which mediates electromagnetism and the massive W and Z Bosons which mediate the weak force. CERN was going to provide the answer for us and let us all get some rest.

Why is this giant piece of engineering not working?

Anyone who’s ever renovated knows exactly how this went down.

 I’m seeing an electrician  tradie pulling up on the border of Switzerland in a black Maloo Holden Ute. Dog in the back. 2Day FM blaring out of the front.

“G’day, mate, I’m here to quote on the Hadron. Gotta see Gustav? Oh , G’d day Gustav, yeah I’m your sparkie. Sorry I’m a bit late, surf was up. Anyway, what are you lookin’ for here?

Right, you want the place wired up? What’s your budget?

Fifteen billion? Yeah, I dunno if we can do for that. Anyway, let’s have a look, and hope the chippies haven’t stuffed it up and we can still get you some voltage in here.”

Gustav then would have walked around with Steve the electrician and pointed out where he would like the power points in order to provide electricity so two particles can bang into one another and prove the existence of the Boson particle. Bit like  banging Malcolm Turnbull into Godwin Gretch and hoping that a real email might fall out.

Steve would have nodded, and said reassuringly, “No worries, mate. Sweet. She’ll be right. Yep. Too easy. It’s all good.”

When Steve returned later to put the wiring in, he glanced at the plans, patted his dog and bunged in some power points wherever it seemed like a good idea.

Later when they switched on the collider and didn’t work, Gustav would have rung Steve and steve would have replied apologetically, “Shit, mate. Not working? That’s no good. Jeez, I dunno what that would be. You wanted seven trillion volts in the place?  Yeah, well, that’s a bit more than you need to run your toaster that’s for sure. Look, I’ll swing round when I can, and take a look. Probably not this week. Maybe after the long weekend? Sweet. See ya.”

I’m not really that down on the tradies. You should see how much I forget and stuff up in any one day. What I love is that in such a massive project, in something that would have involved so much sophisticated thinking, a bit of simple human error has crept in.

The suggestion at the moment is that the magnets that are meant to pump up the voltage were left outside for too long before being installed and so lost their strength. 

It’s the same on any building site anywhere in the world.

“Oh, mate, can’t get them in this week. See, the plumbers have got to get their stuff in, then we’ll lay the concrete and then that’s gotta dry …”

I find it reassuring. From my bathroom to the world’s most hi tech tunnel – give me a stuff up every time.