Age sat quietly and listened intently as youth explained the
building blocks of life and what is “here?”
 |
| A view inside the Large Hadron Collider. |
A journey that began as a different way to take a “gap year”,
hesitated momentarily in Shepparton recently to explain a sliver of particle
physics.
Listening as the Shepparton born and bred, Kristian
McDonald, told a little of himself and then explored the universe, the one we
can see, and then, his speciality, the one we can’t, were about 30 members of
Shepparton’s University of Third Age (U3A).
Kristian, 36, an advocate of education, at any age, exposed
the wonders of modern particle physics in a two hour presentation to
inquisitive, but older minds, some of whom described what they had seen and
heard in rapturous terms.
Kristian had boldly taken an idea so broad in concept and
yet so small in reality that it can’t be seen and helped those at U3A’s “Big
Issues in Science” class understand “what is here?”
Oddly it was that very question that arose during a gap year
after first studying aerospace and modified to “why are we here?” that helped
Kristian understand that it was science that ignited his interest and spawned a
whole new life for him.
The pursuit of science, specifically the examination of the
near invisible, took him around the world to experience science in Canada and
then for a time the excitement and wonder of working at one of the world’s
leading science institutions in Germany, the Max Planck Institute.
After his brief stopover in his hometown, Kristian is now
working at the University of Sydney.
Kristian has not been to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on
the Swiss-Franco border near Geneva, but sees this nearly 30 kilometres in
circumference piece of equipment as a wonderful example of what can be achieved
when people have a common goal and so work together.
The LHC was built
in collaboration between more than 10 000 scientists and engineers from over
100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories, again from
all parts of the world.
As an example of
one of the great engineering milestones of mankind, the LHC, according to
Kristian, epitomizes what happens when people collaborate for good, rather than
behave in a confrontational manner.
Collaboration was
also apparent in the room – the combined wisdom of the U3A members matched
Kristian’s youthful knowledge and together they become a powerful resource that
balanced his vigor, enthusiasm and acute understanding of physics with the
prudence and scholarship that only age can provide.
Years of intense
study for Kristian could not be articulated or illustrated in just two hours,
but after that brief session, those listening understood more fully what is
“here”.
