I watched the latest Horizon last week (BBC 4; Thursday) which featured, Andy Parker, a bloke at CERN who's looking inside quarks – or hoping to. Andy was also trying to create micro (and mercifully very temporary) black holes inside the LHC in order to probe the idea of additional dimensions – 11 perhaps. And there was a Swiss chap who was splitting electrons into spinons, holons and orbitons. I thought that wasn't possible, electrons being fundamental and all, but it is! Weird and wonderful. This Horizon had the best graphics ever, I thought, especially when string theory came into view. Cue knitting metaphors and great unravellings. Fantastic TV.
And this was followed by Charlie Broker (BBC 2) and his mates poking considerable (and deserved) fun at Brian Cox's new role in which he modestly explains all of life (whilst collecting zillions of frequent flyer points). Almost better. I found myself wondering whether BC was fundamental, or whether he could be split up as well. All you need, it seems, is a tight beam of X-ray photons; a pity, then, that CERN's off-line ...
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