9.30.2011

Large Hadron Collider

by Daniel Hudo


The Large Hadron Collider

Guided by magnets colder than the space
between the stars, zipping through the circular tunnel
from Switzerland into France and back,
        under sheep pastures, the foothills of the Juras, the TGV,
  and the restaurants and cafés at Ferney-Voltaire and Saint-Genis,
the beam of protons races twenty-seven kilometers around,
eleven thousand times per second

while its twin races
       twenty-seven kilometers
the other way,

eleven thousand times per second
zipping through the circular tunnel
under the cafés and restaurants at Saint-Genis and Ferney-Voltaire,
the TGV, the foothills of the Juras, the sheep pastures
from Switzerland into France and back
until the two beams meet

head on

in a collision violent enough for us to wonder
if this is what the universe was like
an instant after the Big Bang –

long before the formation of planets or stars or galaxies,
long before matter itself mattered.

And then what?

Around the tunnel, built like sunken cathedrals,
what will the detectors glimpse in the holy fire?

New particles that pop into existence and spiral away,
like the elusive Higgs boson that holds the secret
to matter acquiring mass --

Evidence that we live in a universe of broken symmetries,
the way a dinner table is symmetric until someone
chooses the first wine glass –

That ours is a shadow world of higher dimensions --
That the laws of physics can be unified
like siblings separated at birth?

What can you see in the fireworks if you look hard enough?
What can you see at night – any night – when you look deep
into the cold space between the stars?