The end of the world?

(Photograph from CERN web site) Today, September 10, 2008, in Geneva Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, threw its first proton in a 9 billion dollar, 17 mile, clock-wise circle. It’s a physicists dream toy race track with a really, REALLY technical thumb button to make it go. The next step is to make a proton go counter-clockwise. But making protons go in circles really isn’t interesting and definitely not worth the money spent. And what fun would this race track be without some collision? So, after a little tuning and a few more tests, physicist will make two lead protons go in opposite directions, as close to the speed of light as possible, and have them collide in the middle. I can hear it now, “Dr. Bob, why don’t you paint your proton blue? I’m painting mine red with teeth!” The purpose of the collision is to simulate the microsecond after the Big Bang, the physical process which we believe created the earth, to better understand how matter and planets are made. This collision is expected to be so intense that some scientists believe it has the potential of creating a black hole, which, in turn, might devour the earth. Now I understand why they want to do it. Who could resist?

I congratulate the European nuclear research scientists on their new accomplishment, and I hope we gain valuable scientific discovery from this. This project has been many years in the making, undergone a lot of criticism about its value versus the expense, and has a very interesting danger factor. If the goals of this project are met, we might discover additional dimensions, create anti-matter, and will certainly take our scientific studies to a new level. This project is the result of scientists who never stopped thinking BIG and believing in their abilities. Although I have no clue about the likelihood they will accidently create an earth-eating black hole, I personally believe CERN when they say that won’t happen. We’ll probably develop shiny space travel ships and intimidate the darker side of other life-friendly planets before we develop our first dangerous black hole. For now I say let em fly!!

Want to know more? Check out http://public.web.cern.ch/public/