We at Lux congratulate the scientists from the CERN Particle Physics center in Europe for successfully erecting the Large Hadron Collider. At a cost of ten billion dollars, the LHC represents the most expensive and most ambitious attempt that mankind has made to peer into the origins and mechanisms of the universe. Over the next few years, look forward to a series of barely-comprehensible, yet fascinating stories to be dumbed-down and reported to us as a human interest story by astonished-sounding local news anchors.
People being people, though, not everyone is happy about this new peek at the fabric of reality. A contingent of The Concerned has become more and more vocal, insisting that this will lead to the end of the world. The naysayers are an interesting mix of folks—the usual handful of contrarian scientists who gather a bit of the spotlight by providing ‘opposing viewpoints,’ has been amplified by the Easily Scared…the same folks who have basements full of eight year old MREs left over from when the world ended on January 1, 2000.
Mix those folks in with the anti-science contingent (I’m talking to YOU, Kansas, and to YOU, Florida) and you get a vocal bunch of torch-bearing villagers who are up in arms about the “European Time Machine” and its attempts to unravel the mysteries of the Big Bang.
Will The Concerned and the Easily Scared stop the Large Hadron Collider? It’s doubtful. Are they right that it could spell the end of the universe (as we know it)? Also doubtful. Just in case, though, It’s probably a good idea to check in from time to time with a fantastically useful site, “Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?”
Ben Thompson 9.10.08
