Mass is Energy

Since The Boy started working in television, I've been making a concentrated effort to learn more about a form of mass communication I previously pretended did not exist. Easy enough to do considering I grew up in a house without TV. Even now in the familial home, la TV is absent.

I came across this programme about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on BBC's iPlayer, a brilliant thing for me as I still don't watch TV in the traditional sense. One of the things I don't like very much about TV is that is dumbs down information for the masses, to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Admittedly, this programme does the same thing, if only out of a necessity to make incredibly complicated particle physics easily digestible for a laymen audience.

In early 2007, I met presenter Brian Cox at a lecture on dark matter given at the Dana Centre (for those of you who live in London, I highly recommend an investigation into the scientific wonder that is the Dana Centre). He's engaging, very bright, and has the ability to distil the complicated tenets of particle physics into bite-sized and easily digestible pieces. I won't bore you with all the details, but if you're at all interested in physics, cosmology, or geeky science definitely check it out - it's only on the iPlayer until Friday.

Another thing, of slightly less importance perhaps, is that it's beautifully shot and edited. I can't imagine there was a huge budget to make this so it's even more of a miracle that they managed to create an hour long show that looks lovely as well. I took lots of screen captures...