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!
