Forrest Gump to the rescue of the Large Hadron Collider: The world’s favourite fathead meets the world’s dumbest machine?

(LHC: Large Hadron Chocolates, anyone…?)

Now, here’s a bit of baffling news…:

“Tom Hanks, the actor and star of Forrest Gump, will turn on the Large Hadron Collider, designed to recreate the ‘Big Bang’, when it is finally repaired. Hanks was approached about the move while filming his latest film Angels and Demons in which he plays a Harvard University academic investigating a plot to annihilate the Vatican with 0.25 grams of antimatter stolen from Cern.”

I’m not sure what to make of this.

Did the LHC people choose Hanks simply because he played a scientist in one movie? That would be slightly moronic - which, in itself, would be quite appropriate, when you consider the history of the LHC, which is the Forrest Gump of all scientific endeavours (minus the box of chocolates.)

Or did they select him because they liked the idea of wiping out the Vatican, as a kind of belated revenge on Rome, perhaps, for its treatment of Galileo?

The mind boggles. Normally, I am a huge fan of scientists and I’m always willing to celebrate even the most obscure bit of research but I really don’t get this star struck behaviour, vis-à-vis one of the most tedious thespians Hollywood ever spawned.

Still, I might be doing the LHC scientists injustice. Maybe they have the same kind of loathing for Tom Hanks (and Dan Brown projects) that all decent people surely must have.

So, perhaps they suspect that something will, again, go disastrously wrong when they try to switch on the machine - and maybe these scientists reasoned that if, in a worst case scenario, the Collider did explode, it would, at least, take Tom Hanks with it.

Which would, arguably, be worth the cost of another £20 million or so.