The Big Bang is back, and that too with a bang. Only, this time, God chose to get it outsourced! So, scientists at CERN (apparently, the C has no meaning in the silly acronym, coined by the french after all) on the Franco-Swiss border have successfully given mass to particles at high speeds, which will surely allow them to create a Higg's Boson (don't ask me what is that! there's Google for God's sake.) and someday, recreate conditions, under control of course, that were prevailing immediately after the original Big Bang, a handiwork of the God, if history is not to be believed. So much for the jargon. on to the point...
Two things of great interest to field of nuclear physics have happened in the recent days. The one I wrote about, in the weird introduction above and the other a rather politically twisted tale of two (or more ?) countries. US and India put themselves on a fast track to get the 123 deal sanctioned, ratified and... be done with. It has taken the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh a vote of confidence on the floor of the house and some sleeping pills, to come as far as he has. But, looks like the will of our man will he see him through. I say 'Our man' because I for one, support the deal, whatever way it comes, to whatever degree India might have to submit to the US demands and give up on its so called 'Sovereignty'. We need fuel for the future people, and that, is not going to come from burning coal in chimneys or building dams on flood enraged rivers, all of us know that well. And so does Uncle Sam, when it gives in to some of India's demands, and drops some clauses on the security front, because, in today's world, no country needs to drop a nuclear bomb on someone else, so why would it waste its time testing one?

And yet, the seemingly harmless deal has seen more protests and concerns, than a silly experiment, which threatens to blow up the world and send it into a black hole. (I don't say the silly assumption is really true, but it is a possibility, all the same.) Why do want to risk the whole humanity for, just for the sake of experiencing first-hand, how it must have felt before humanity existed? The black whole might not have eaten us up, but the repercussions are there to be seen. A girl in India's Madhya Pradesh state consumed insecticide and poisoned herself to death, for the fear of being eaten up by a black hole. The media (and the Indian media, I know, is pathetic at reporting facts!) did screw up the whole thing with its rather exaggerated description of the worst case scenario, that got, to the poor child. But, then, the people conducting the silly experiment are not to be blamed any less. After all, it was an attempt at going back to where we apparently, came from, a 3 2 1 - to India's 1 2 3 deal with the US, which is more of a step in the forward direction, towards a greener and energetically more secure tomorrow.

Still, there are as many handshakes and an greetings on their way for the scientists at CERN, as their are brickbats and protests, both in the country and world over, for Indian diplomats trying to secure their country's future. So much for the world's queer ways...