If dinosaurs had spacecraft...
- By Richard Branson -
- Mar 06, 2013
Fortunate to sit next to Professor Brian Cox out in the bush under the stars in South Africa. Looking up at the sky, Brian quoted fellow revered scientist Carl Sagan: "If the dinosaurs had spacecraft they could have saved themselves."
The last time we'd seen Brian was in Madagascar when we were studying the extraordinary aye aye lemur, which you can see in the photo.
We got talking about CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland that is home to the Large Hadron Collider. I hadn't realised that it had originally been set up after the Second World War by a group of pioneering scientists from a dozen nations to study atomic physics for non-military, non-commercial purposes.
Interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web at CERN. When he submitted his blueprint for what would become one of the most important innovations of all time, his boss wrote on the cover: "Vague, but exciting." Fortunately for all, a sceptical boss does not deter people and Tim carried on his work.
By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group
