The Large Hadron Collider
Joey Michaels on June 13th, 2008Say you’re trying to find the Higgs boson. Wait. Back up. Say that you know that matter is made of atoms. You also know the atoms are made of protons, electrons and neutrons. Furthermore, you understand that some of those things are made up of elementary particles, which is to say particles that are not made up of anything. You might have learned to call them quarks, but there are also leptons and guage bosons. You want to observe the Higgs boson because, well, it would sort of prove a whole bunch of theoretical physics.
Since you’re looking for it, you decide to build the Large Hadron Collider which goes online later this month. By “online” I mean “they start using it.” Within two months, they are going to slam particles against each other in order to find that darned, elusive Pimpernel Higgs boson. The really cool thing is when they do it, there is this remote chance that they’ll destroy the whole world. The best thing of all is that most of humanity will not only not understand what a Higgs boson is, they won’t understand what destroyed them, even if you take the time to tell them in advance.
So, let me tell you in advance, just in case it does kill us. First, there is the issue of micro black holes. These little suckers, which could theoretically be created in the LHC, could lead to total Earth accretion in as little as 50 months. “Earth accretion” is a fancy shmancy way of saying “suck up the Earth.” The second issue, which is even cooler, has to do with strangelets. These particles turn other particles into strangelets. It is possible that, by creating them, a chain reaction would start that would turn Earth into something like a strange star. While these are both unlikely scenarios, the fact that the whole world could be wiped out by something that would make a totally suck-ass Hollywood film makes me smile for some reason.
Will the Earth be destroyed? The countdown has begun.
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June 13th, 2008 at 2:35 am
When Christoph announced he was restarting Random Salad, the Large Hadron Collider was like 90% of what attracted me back.
That the promise that the VT Gallery would come back.