You know a science story is big when an experiment gets first or second billing on the main evening news—and it’s not even a slow news day. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and running as I write and as far as I can tell I’m still here, so it looks like the doomsayers were a little premature. Unless I’m writing this piece from the far side of the singularity of a black hole in a parallel universe.

The LHC is an huge experiment (a snip at $10 billion) to explore the very small and very energetic sub-atomic world to verify, amongst other things, if the Higgs Boson really exists. That will be a monumental triumph for science and the human spirit. I have always been fascinated by particle physics, despite by academic background in the Humanities and I will be following the progress at CERN with great interest. I am particularly pleased too because free software will be at the heart of this colossal human endeavour. GNU/Linux has been, is and will continue to power CERN’s efforts. This is a wonderful opportunity to tell the world that Windows doesn’t rule the roost.