God-Made Caves and Man-Made Caves

Spending a day almost entirely underground was a welcome relief for my maltreated skin that's been protecting me on all day outdoor adventures involving water, wind, sweat and sand. (Don't worry mom, I reapply, and have an empty sunblock to prove it.)

Jordan, Jamie and I drove to L'Orrebbe limestone caves created by the largest underground river in central Europe. I'd considered cycling the 73 K there because I was so interested in the caves but after ascending an 8 mile, 8% grade hill on the way there I was glad for the car and happily spent some money on gas( 7 dollars a gallon here, but about the same price per mile due to smaller cars.)

The cave was magnificent. The limestone structures that had taken thousands of years to form resembled ox bowed rivers, glacier flows, the Nile Delta, jellyfish and more. The patterns in nature repeat in all sizes underground in limestone.

Jordan is an avowed atheist working on his Ph.D in physics and he remarked in a mocking tone "Doesn't the beauty just make you believe God exists?"
We debated if the beautiful structures and our ability to appreciate them had perfectly reasonable scientific explanations like seeping groundwater that flows in the same patterns whether it is carrying dirt from a river, forming ice cycles on a roof, or limestone underground.

We didn't resolve the issue of the creation of the cave but we were all awestruck by its beauty.

After the cave that water or God created we visited CERN, arguably the most important scientific project in the world. The particle accelerator is housed in a tunnel 27 miles long hundreds of feet below the ground. The particle detector is housed in a huge man-made cavern underneath the corn fields of Saint Genis Pouilley.
Jordan used his card swipe to grant us access to the building where we put on helmets for our spelunking adventure to the depths of the experiment. As we passed his card through the turnstile three times he joked that his boss would ask him tomorrow why he entered three times in two minutes.
He asked us if we'd prefer the stairs or elevator. I usually choose stairs but he herded us into a huge industrial lift and when the door opened only seconds later and I looked up at 20 flights of stairs I realized he was only kidding.
The cavern was filled with hundreds of computers, huge rooms with people working just as if they were in an office on the surface. After pretending to scan our eyes in a retina detecting machine that wouldn't be in use until the experiment was turned on we entered the giant cavern where the detector was housed. The red, blues, yellows and silvers of the huge cylindrical detector were as amazing as the cave we'd seen earlier that day. These were clearly man-made in the pursuit of knowledge of the first few seconds after the big bang. Jordan explained his work and pointed to the parts he had helped wire. When the experiment is ready to turn on in the next year they will be searching for the Higgs particle in an attempt to simplify the mathematics necessary to create a universal equation that can explain all forces of nature. Jordan hopes to prove the existence of a new force.

We pass a Styrofoam sign labeled "on switch" next to a emergency shut off in case of a "black hole." At least the scientists have a sense of humor about the controversy created by a layman's fear that a black hole created by colliding particles would suck in the earth.

Experiencing the project as it was on the verge of turning on and possibly expanding our knowledge of the universe was an amazing opportunity worth the entire trip to Geneva. We giddily walked past the "no visitor" signs feeling very fortunate that we knew someone working on the project. There were certainly no tourist shops in sight.