Sep 05 2008
The End of the World (Sort Of)
Has anyone else been reading about this giant particle collider they are building in Switzerland I don’t have the best grasp of astrophysics, but from what I gather, they are going to accelerate a bunch of particles and then look at them, and for some reason it will give us a good idea of what the universe looked like right after the Big Bang or something. Anyway, there is a bunch of controversy surrounding it because they don’t really know exactly what will happen when they start it up and some people, (mainly the people that listen to Coast to Coast), think it could cause a mini-black hole to open that will then destroy our world. According to a guy I listened to on NPR, who seemed to have a much better grasp of the situation than I do, this is very, very, very unlikely (impossible), but people are worried about it nonetheless. I tend to want to believe the NPR guy, although I feel like, with all the controversy, if scientists did do this, and it didn’t work out, it’s somewhat amusing to imagine what their last words/thoughts would be before they were devoured by a black hole (or however it is black holes kill):”Damn I never should have built this giant particle accelerator.”
“I should have followed my heart and majored in Theatre.”
“This black hole is very unpleasant.”
“Somewhere right now Art Bell is saying “I told you so”"
“Why was it we needed to look at accelerated particles again?”
And so on. Anyway, I thought I would toss it out there. Anyone else want to add their own? I will buy a Frappacino (TALL, don’t get greedy) for whoever has the best response!
7 responses so far
I saw a quick blurb on this on Fox News, which I am sure must be the most reliable source judging by Fox’s intellectual collection of TV shows. It grabbed my attention (possibly because some German scientist said it would bring about the apocalypse). This doomsday scientist said that we wouldn’t notice anything different at first. Then he said 4 years later, a beam of light will appear over the Indian Ocean, which will be the beginning of a series of events that is the apocalypse. So, of course, I put on my quantum physicist hat and googled the topic (Big Bang Theory worked best). A physicist wants to use a 17 mile circular tunnel particle accelerator/collider to accelerate 2 sub-atomic particles to the speed of light and then cause them to collide. Why? To prove that he is right that the Big Bang Theory did create the universe and smite all those God lovers! Mwu-hahaha (evil laugh). Which is all well and good except that my understanding of the Big Bang is that eventually everything in the universe starts to come back inward, colliding again, and creating black holes. So, travel to Europe may be a bad idea in the next year. Maybe the physicist’s comments will go something like this, “I can’t see a damn thing in here,” or “Well that can’t be good.”
Well T, seeing as you are the only person so far to enter my tall Frapacino contest, you are in the lead! Congrats
BTW, what’s the link to your blog???
http://www.fastfeetpt.wordpress.com
Some phrases that the scientists might say before being sucked into a giant black hole:
- “This is worse than that time I invented Crystal Pepsi.”
- “Crikey!” (Assuming that the scientist is actually a reincarnated Crocodile Hunter, who had foresaken crocdile hunting in favor of astrophysics.)
- “I thought you guys said this was going to cure Herpes. This does NOT look like the cure for Herpes!”
- “This is JUST like that REM song, right guys? Oh man I love that song. And seriously, what IS the frequency Kenneth, am I right? Guys?”
- “We should have used more beakers!”
- “Dude, this Black Hole better have a shitload of beer and ladies, cause the T-Man is ready to party! Woo-HOOO!”
- “Who let my cousin Ted in here?”
- “We thought he was with you. He told us you said he could accelerate some particles.”
” No I did NOT say that my 19-year old frat boy cousin Ted could accelerate some particles. Why would I say that? He’s wearing a Babe-ology T-shirt for Chrissakes.”
- “Time to accelerate the particles in my PANTS! Yeah!”
- “I really hate you Ted.”
One of the reasons for building this collider is the hope of finding the Higgs boson, the so-called God Particle, which would explain why otherwise massless particles have mass. I think that the major danger is that they will find the Anti-Christ particle instead.
“I told you we shouldn’t make it go to 11. I said 10 is strong enough, but noooo…”
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You all might also be interested in seeing the live webcam of the LHC in action. You can “view it here…”:http://cotradeco.com/posts/1173-lhc-large-hadron-collider-watch-the-live-webcam-at-cotradeco#comment_9038
But if you are *seriously* worried about black holes being created in the LHC “read the post LHC Black Holes: Worst Case Scenario at startswithabang.com”:http://startswithabang.com/?p=878
Thanks for the links Zoe! I also found this http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f58f2631cf which is very useful (NSFW)