Wednesday, March 05, 2008

after the bang, feather, pigeon

A circular tunnel, 17 miles tunnel long and 1o ft wide, has been completed under the French Swiss border with the sole purpose of crashing sub-atomic particles into one another, at just below the speed of light. It is the largest particle accelerator ever built.The objective is to try to recreate the conditions that occurred within seconds of the explosion, which kicked off the universe more than 13 billion years ago. That the people, who devised the experiment and perceived the need for it, are themselves products of the explosion to which they and everything else, sun, moon, earth and stars, owe their existence, is thought-provoking and not a little moving.

A soft, white feather, wedged into the base of an unopened bud, waves in the wind - a strange surrender.

A pigeon, pecking at a sandwich-crust in the gutter, without bothering to use its wings, hops out of the way of a car on to the pavement, and returns to finish its meal when the car has passed.

No comments: