particle man, particle man

I've been watching TED talks in the mornings--a way to feel informed, and not out of the loop, since i am still actively trying to avoid reading the news. this morning's was Brian Cox, who was labeled on the TED site as the "rock star" of physicists. His talk was from last year, about the Large Hadron Collider, which was I was fascinated by when it was in the news. Mostly because there was this hilarious and scary quote from one of the scientists on the project who said "I don't think the world will end when we switch it on." (Cue sinister movie music: dunh, dunh, dunh.)

This talk is a bit confusing, because my brain, despite the 13.7 billion years its had to develop into something more than it is, does not compute alot of the physics--even explained "simply" as he tried to do in this short lecture. But at about 13 minutes, he starts talking about the stuff that fascinates me: what happened a billionth of a second after the universe began. cool.

Click here to spend 14 minutes pondering the universe....