Grand Unification — Angela Brett at the CERN Alumni Vienna meetup, 28 November 2019
Channel: Angela Brett
Date: 03/10/2020

I've performed this physics-pun-filled poem about CERN a few times before (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ-l6mr1dW0hnS1-GnsBFhDwyywytNCK9) but I may never get a better audience for it than this: the CERN Alumni (https://alumni.cern) meetup in Vienna on US Thanksgiving 2019 (I know it was Thanksgiving, because I had to leave immediately after this to go to my second ever Thanksgiving dinner.) I'm glad I got up the courage to suggest it, even though I worried that the three glasses of wine I'd had by then might make me forget the words. Many thanks to Rachel Bray for recording this and sending me the file. #CERNAlumni

I wrote this poem while at a talk by a previous director-general of CERN, while I had Tom Smith's song 'A Boy and His Frog' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1beiyGAQAoI) in my head. Much of it can be sung to that tune, though it doesn't have the same structure.

The words:

You might think that we’re just doing science
With a hadron collider so large.
But we’ve built this electric alliance
to give weight to our positive charge.

Take researchers from every nation,
Let the humans within them collide.
We will find the grand unification
when we see we’re all on the same side.

And with ev’ry race, tongue and religion
we’ll find how to give all the world mass.
If we’d all interact just a smidgen
with the openness through which we pass

we’d see life’s ups and downs become charming and strange,
when we face them head on, and what’s more,
seeking beauty and truth we can make a big change
with small change from the purses of war.

Take the light at the end of the tunnel,
and ensure it goes all the way round,
to illuminate more than the sun’ll,
and enlighten with what we have found:

When you’ve unresolved matters, understanding runs thin;
you face too many forces to name,
if you cut out the din, and put energy in,
it turns out that we’re all just the same.

The blog post about it: https://angelastic.com/2008/10/05/nine-of-clubs-grand-unification/

Some more of my CERN-related videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8034607FDE425BF6