Something like, perhaps, the fact that the same institute that birthed the LHC also birthed the technology allowing you the reader, wherever in the world you are sitting at this very moment, to be perusing these words that I have written possibly only moments before?  Or that you can send pictures or text to me from the other side of the world and I'll see it within seconds if I happen to be at the computer?

The internet as a global resource, what we know as the WorldWideWeb (that famous ‘www' at the beginning of most URLs) started with physics at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in 1990 and spread to the mainstream. ‘The Grid', a new superfast internet being developed alongside the LHC to share its data, will have started with physics at CERN 18 years later and is also destined to eventually become mainstream.  The same minds that bring about leading edge physics experiments like the Hadron Collider are those that that less than 20 years ago brought about the idea of using hypertext as a single information network to connect between computers in remote locations to share scientific data.  That one server at CERN in 1990 became 26 servers worldwide in 1992 and 200 in 1993, in which year the first version of Mosaic was released that would make the WWW available to anyone with PCs or Macintoshes.  The rest is history, one that none of today's children could imagine having ever been otherwise. 

So is CERN now remaking history?  For starters you have the LHC, which has some people proud and awe-inspired at mankind's technological brilliance while it has others worried that this will be the end of the universe, or at least that part of it we happen to inhabit.  Some see it as a trip ‘down the rabbit hole' where physics can change the whole perception and ‘nature' of reality, whole worlds of magical new dimensions, perceptions, definitions of what ‘is'.  Others see it as a trip ‘down the black hole' into which we could be sucked and all our world with us, a non-world of exceedingly unmagical nothingness. 

However, even if you don't believe the science or the scientists for whatever reason, or happen to be one of those who is titillated by fear and drama that would be ruined by too many rational facts, there is one simple consideration which I think everyone can understand:  The scientific community involved with CERN (including a team of 50 Israeli scientists, among others) has put everything it is and every resource it has on the line regarding this project, including their own lives and those of their loved ones.  So I don't think they're going to make the kind of mistakes that would result in us all getting vacuumed into space (or no-space, as the case may be).  Black holes are not on their agenda, any more than they were when the original Big Bang happened or when cosmic rays routinely hit the moon with much more energy than the controversial ‘atom smasher' produces.  Apart from which, if anyone wishes to be Israel-centric, it might be noted that Israeli technology systems, among the most advanced in the world, are being used in the project. 

Fear of the unknown is common, and fear of science seems to be even more so, probably because the unknown affects its means as well as its ends.  Enrico Fermi, when testing the first nuclear reactor in 1943 at the University of Chicago, had to deal with fears that the new invention would ignite all the nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere. His sense of humour had him taking bets at the test site on whether the world would end or not.  Eilat-Today has not yet heard whether the CERN scientists are taking bets on that same issue these 65 years later...

For those who wonder what the logic is in racing beams of protons around a circular tunnel in opposite directions so that they can collide with a big bang when they meet, well the Big Bang (reconstruction thereof) is in fact the point.  An even more specific point that would warm the cockles of the scientists' hearts would be finding evidence confirming the existence of the Higgs Boson, a particle predicted by theoretical physics in 1964 by Peter Higgs.  Nicknamed ‘the God particle' (to atheist Higgs' disgust), this wee beastie is thought to be what holds matter together and could help explain how matter possesses mass.

Moving from the more universal interest of a device to recreate the process of creating (or destroying, for the doom-sayers among us) a universe, we come to the more specific interest of anyone reading an internet website.  A very specific interest for Eilat-Today, as our very existence is thanks to the technology invented at CERN.  CERN may be remaking internet history as well.  Having globalised the original internet, its scientists have been working on a new version of internet called ‘The Grid', built on dedicated fibre optic cables and using routing networks that keep its traffic separate from phone lines and already-trafficked routes.  This new project, with over 50,000 servers and connecting CERN to 11 centres worldwide, is far faster than existing networks, as much as 10,000 times faster than modern broadband connections (!).  The Grid is intended for tracking data from the big-bang project, but will also be made available to some additional researchers and ultimately to the public at large, replacing the current internet.  It should be able to offer anything from HD video telephony (be veddy, veddy cautious when answering the phone in bed) to transmission of holographic images (ah, I always wondered what the other side of that whats-its looked like).  The Grid is due to be activated when the Hadron particle collider is activated, on what is being called Red Button Day. 

The term ‘Red Button' suggests overweening importance with global implications, which indeed both projects - the LHC and the Grid - possess:  they are achieving speeds beyond those known or possibly even theorised a few short years ago in their respective fields; they are changing the nature of reality as we presently know and experience it; and both have far-reaching implications on both society as a whole and on our daily lives that neither the scientists nor the public have probably completely conceived of as yet.

Hence we can conclude that Google, as one of today's internet leaders (and Eilat-Today with rather more humble aspirations) does indeed have a connection to the symbol it chose to display, beyond that of simply acknowledging a day or event many people around the world were aware of and observing.  It may be noted that the initial test of the LHC involved proton beams racing in only one direction.  The two-way system is anticipated to be launched in October, from what we understand.  So you still have time to place your bets on the end of the world.

Haaretz article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1019983.html, apparently based on Science Daily article at http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/l8467689-cern/

Doomsday fears: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/n10466366-cern-doomsday/

CERN: LHC and general:  http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

Internet history: http://info.cern.ch/ (URL is that of the world's first-ever web-server)