2 November 2009

Peaches Geldof's shaky grasp of science

Well done Marina Hyde for picking up on Peaches Geldof's shaky grasp of science in the Guardian last week. Not only did Ms Geldof manage to equate quantum physics and the Big Bang with scientology, as Hyde points out, she also claimed that at the Large Hadron Collider "they" (being "the scientists", I guess) are "trying to make a black hole".

Um. I'm not a physicist, but I don't think they're actually trying to make a black hole - or at least, that's not the main aim. The main aim, as Geek Dad rightly points out, is to find the Higg's boson - the subatomic particle, that, if identified, would help fill in the gaps in the Standard Model of the atom.

Unfortunately, presenter Fearne Cotton wasn't equipped to point out her mistakes. Which is fair enough, being a TV presenter and all.

I'm not saying you can't be interested in this stuff if you're not a scientist. But it did seem as though Peaches was far too concerned with showing off her "weird" personality and, presumably, "weird" interests - oh it's so weird to be interested in physics - that she forgot to look up the details.

Given the influence of celebrity, it's vaguely worrying.

1 comment:

Graham said...

I love how she says she cares about it and is "really interested" in it, yet has the wrong end of the stick completely. But then again, Scientology...I'm not sure if that's even on the 'religion stick'.

Ordinarily, if a 'celeb' was that misguided and was aiming to influence people I'd be a little worried. I'm not overly worried, mainly beacuse anyone who puts Peaches Geldof atop their influential ladder for such matters has more pressing things to be concerned about than the LHC and suchlike; chief among which is why they have Peaches Geldof perched on top of any sort of influential ladder at all!

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