Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider was finally turned on after 14 years of development and labor. Even for a layman like me, this event has got me all worked up and for good reason. Without going into specifics (which I couldn't do even if I wanted to), the LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator, designed to crash two proton beams traveling at immense speeds into each other. Why? To recreate our universe right after the Big Bang. This in turn will allow scientists to try to find answers for some exciting, elusive questions that have plagued mankind for so long, including;
- what makes gravity so much weaker when compared to the other three fundamental forces; electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction
- confirming or denying the existence of the Higgs boson or "God Particle"
- why matter seems to have such an edge over antimatter and where this violation of symmetry comes from
- getting a closer, more thorough look at the nature of dark matter and dark energy
- the existence of extra dimensions and our ability to "see" them
As you can see, discoveries in any of these fields could yield some exciting results, even for us Eddie Punchclocks and Sally Housecoats!
In addition to these admittedly intangible benefits, the LHC could spur new technological breakthroughs as well. As was the case with the LEP (the LHC's predecessor) and it's role in bringing the world wide web to the masses, so too can the LHC popularize "the Grid", a private fiber-optic network that is being employed by the scientists at CERN. It is said to be 10,000 times faster than our standard cable internet framework. Just imagine those lag-free sessions of CS this could afford us! Or the amount of porn we could download in the blink of an eye! I tell you, it's enough to make a man giddy.
However, as is sadly often the case with scientific wonders and breakthroughs, religious zealots find it necessary to do everything in their power to stop progress. The LHC and it's various affiliates and manufacturers have been fighting legal battles ever since the program was conceived. Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how the LHC could destroy our entire universe, either thanks to microscopic black holes (which indeed are a possible by-product of the experiments) that somehow manage to grow in size and swallow us whole, or because strangelets or strange matter are introduced with catastrophic consequences. Some have even hypothesized that terrorists could create terrible weapons of mass destruction from stolen antimatter created at the facility. So far, all of this has been proven to be false. Microscopic black holes don't just grown in size, whether you water them or not. Strangelets have not been created the entire time the RHIC has been in service and scientists dismiss any such fears related to the LHC. And finally, to create and contain antimatter in large enough quantities to actually weaponize it would not only bankrupt the G8, but the entire planet. I don't think we need to worry about Osama having that kind of scratch hidden away in any of his caves.
Even so, many have readied themselves for the apocalypse. In India, a deeply religious and superstitious country, tens of thousands have flocked to places of worship. Sadly, one young Indian girl even went as far as to commit suicide, for fear of getting caught in the End Times (which in itself is strange, since you're basically killing yourself to save yourself from death in the event of an apocalypse).
So far, I have been quick to dismiss these prophecies and rumors as nothing more than eschatological ravings of people taking a certain book too seriously. However, this morning I discovered a rather disturbing picture published by CERN, from the first test run of the LHC.
As this picture clearly shows, Gordon Freeman has been spotted conducting tests with the LHC. As we all know, this can only mean one thing; an imminent Xen invasion.
This is Monco, declaring the end is nigh, from his secluded bunker somewhere in the frozen tundra of Lapland.
Run...