E-Mail from the office of Dr Gödel, Leader of the SPTRH project (Smashing Particles Together Really Hard), CERN, Switzerland.
Hallo Mary!
Well, I have the most exciting news to report! Although our Large Hadron Collider is still officially out of commission (the super-cooled helium leakage caused a very considerable amount of damage), we have already repaired enough to be able to run some system tests. During the repair work we managed to slip your modifications into the circuitry design without the Project Administrator noticing (he's the Big Cheese, and he's Swiss, so he is a Swiss Big Cheese with holes all through him! This is a Swiss joke.) During the official closure we are of course running the collider on the quiet to make sure that everything is working before the grand switching-on ceremony. We don't want anything unexpected happening on the big day, do we? I must repeat that your modifications are the work of genius! I don't know how you find time to take an interest in the fundamental organisation of the universe as well as caring for a husband and two children. And you even could write out all the specifications in German! (Although it took us a little time to decipher your handwriting, we don't learn the Spitzschrift any more). English housewives must be even better organised than the Swiss Army! (This is another Swiss joke.)
Not only is the particle accelerator working at over 1 000% efficiency, allowing us to create particles which travel faster than the speed of light, but now we can get your BBC1 television station here 100 metres underground! The young postdoctoral interns are very excited to watch the British science fiction and fantasy programmes "The Sarah Jane Adventures" and "Merlin". They have rearranged the shift patterns so we can all stop to watch them!
Funnily enough though, the episodes are being shown all out of order. Either the production of faster-than-light particles is warping the local space-time, or the employees of the British Broadcasting Corporation have had too many gin and tonics and do not know what day it is. Perhaps we should send them a CERN calendar?
Alice is very interested in James' school project and says she would like to do something similar. Another international scientific collaboration is born!
I am glad that you are so fond of our Swiss Apple Pie. Next e-mail I shall send you some more Swiss cake recipes which you can try when you are taking a break from physics!
Bis bald, Deine Lieserl.
