Ben Gilliland on the LHC's legacy
"Not so long ago, in a school not so far away, physics was the most dreaded of the sciences. None of the scientific triumvirate was 'cool' but at least in biology you could cut up frogs and in chemistry you could do exciting things with lithium and water."
- Ben Gilliland, writing in the London Metro
In today's issue of London's free commuter daily, journalist Gilliland suggests that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has single-handedly propelled physics – "the least cool of not-at-all-cool subjects" – into the top spot. The presence of the giant accelerator beneath the Franco-Swiss border in general, and the search for the Higgs boson in particular, he writes, have managed to finagle words like "particles" and "colliders" into everyday pub conversation. The entire piece, including the first of a two-part feature about the next generation of accelerators, is available after registration from the digital edition.