Atom Smasher Quotes

I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.

These kids today. Back then, we couldn't afford photosynthesis. We had to build oxygen from scratch with an atom smasher.

[On the practical applications of particle physics research with the Large Hadron Collider.] Sometimes the public says, 'What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I going to get better Internet reception?' Well, in some sense, yeah. ... All the wonders of quantum physics were learned basically from looking at atom-smasher technology. ... But let me let you in on a secret: We physicists are not driven to do this because of better color television. ... That's a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.

There was only one period of time when energy on this enormous scale was readily available, and that was at the instant of Creation. In fact, the hyperspace theory cannot be tested by our largest atom smashers because the theory is really a theory of Creation. Only at the instant of the Big Bang do we see the full power of the hyperspace theory coming into play. This raises the exciting possibility that the hyperspace theory may unlock the secret of the origin of the universe.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say “Russia!” to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, “How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

Let us discuss these problems in some detail. One problem is to amass enough energy to rip the fabric of space and time. The simplest way to do this is to compress an object until it becomes smaller than its "event horizon." For the sun, this means compressing it down to about 2 miles in diameter, whereupon it will collapse into a black hole. (The Sun's gravity is too weak to compress it naturally down to 2 miles, so our sun will never become a black hole, In principle, this means that anything, even you, can become a black hole if you were sufficiently compressed. This would mean compressing all the atoms of your body to smaller than subatomic distances-a feat that is beyond the capabilities of modern science.) A more practical approach would be to assemble a batter of laser beams to fire an intense beam at a specific spot. Or to build a huge atom smasher to create two beams, which would then collide with each other at fantastic energies, sufficient to create a small tear in the fabric of space-time.

The slowing down of time in high-speed travel is known as “time dilation” and is routinely taken into account in physics experiments, particularly those in which subatomic particles are accelerated in “atom smashers” such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.

Although it might often seem that we are living in the worst possible world – a prison planet or cosmic lunatic asylum, ruled over by Satan himself, or by Satanic forces – it is in fact the best possible world in the end. Why? Because it’s the only one that can deliver perfection – divinity. It’s the only one that transforms us into Gods. It does so via the most brutal and imperfect of all processes – the dialectic. The dialectic is the supreme “atom smasher”. It launches dialectical opposites at each other to generate the biggest explosions and bloodbaths possible. Over time, the cosmic carnage turns into something wondrously unexpected – conscious reason, which can then set about rationally resolving all conflicts, all dialectical differences, and thereby create an Omega Point of perfection. The dialectic involves unconscious reason struggling to become conscious, and it does so through the most brute force of means: the opposition of logical opposites, which is of course a highly rational process, if you rationally reflect upon it!

Let me show you. To know the truth, all you have to do is close your eyes.’ ‘It’s that easy?’ I laughed. ‘Yes. All you have to do is close your eyes. We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.’ My