I'm celebrating the New Year by looking back on times when we all thought the world would end.
Enjoy this piece about the scientifically-plausible destruction we worried would be wrought right before the Large Hadron Collider came online.
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Enjoy this piece about the scientifically-plausible destruction we worried would be wrought right before the Large Hadron Collider came online.
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I’m sure you’ve all heard about the collapse of the financial market, but I’m sorry to report that may be the least of our problems. If you haven’t heard the distressing news by now, I recommend you sit down immediately before reading the next sentence. (Seriously, grab a seat.)
According to some of the most brilliant scientific minds, the world might actually end in a matter of months.
I kid you not. Here’s why. Scientists in Europe (of course) have built an underground machine shaped like a racetrack that is almost 17 miles long and straddles the border between France and Switzerland. The scientists built this machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, in order to re-create what they think the world was like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. It is now the world’s largest atom-smasher.
So, aside from the comical effects of repeating the phrase “atom smasher” over and over again, why did the scientists build this machine? It’s quite simple. The LHC will help to better our (meaning their) understanding of how the universe works.
Unfortunately, in their attempt to better their understanding of how the universe works, they might accidentally obliterate it.
According to some of the most brilliant scientific minds, the world might actually end in a matter of months.
I kid you not. Here’s why. Scientists in Europe (of course) have built an underground machine shaped like a racetrack that is almost 17 miles long and straddles the border between France and Switzerland. The scientists built this machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, in order to re-create what they think the world was like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. It is now the world’s largest atom-smasher.
So, aside from the comical effects of repeating the phrase “atom smasher” over and over again, why did the scientists build this machine? It’s quite simple. The LHC will help to better our (meaning their) understanding of how the universe works.
Unfortunately, in their attempt to better their understanding of how the universe works, they might accidentally obliterate it.
How, you ask? Well, I’m not exactly sure, because all of the research I did yielded a lot of jargon-filled articles with big words like “lattice modules” and “betatron.”
I did manage to gather this much: when the Large Hadron Collider gets turned on, a beam of protons will get sent around the underground racetrack at speeds so fast they would make Superman drool.
Then, if this beam of protons makes its way around the track, the scientists will then crank it up a notch and send a gajillion more protons around the underground racetrack and accelerate them “to energies of seven trillion electron volts,” and then – here’s the kicker – “smash them together.”
To put it in terms we can fathom, the Large Hadron Collider is the scientific equivalent of the amplifier in Spinal Tap that goes up to eleven – it’s a groundbreaking machine that everyone thinks is cool, but doesn’t quite understand. Fun, right?
Not so fast, Nigel. All of this innovative smashing together of protons could spell doomsday for Earth. The Debbie Downers of the scientific community have speculated that smashing protons together at such colossally high speeds could produce a dangerous black hole that would suck up everything around it, thus ending the world. Granted, that’s a worst-case scenario.
But still, it’s an unsettling concept, and one that is not completely out of the realm of possibility. Even the Collider’s director, Dr. Pier Oddone, admits as much. “We don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Now before we all go nuts and start navel-gazing at the Meaning of It All, let’s think this through. Black holes could be good thing. They could be just what we need to end global warming, for example. Since the scientists control the environment that produces them, they can engineer the black holes to suck up all the bad stuff in our atmosphere, like pollution. They could be like the highly-intelligent vacuum cleaner in Spaceballs. Think of how clean we could get our ozone layer! It’ll be brilliant!
On the other hand, this LHC experiment could go a different way. Instead of creating black holes and sucking up the universe, another group of scientists are optimistic that this will prompt the discovery of extra dimensions.
Yes, that’s right, extra dimensions. Follow me on this: When the protons collide within the LHC at those high speeds, there’s a chance that they’ll produce debris that may be jettisoned out of our familiar spatial dimensions and “crammed into the others,” as professor Brian Greene puts it. The scientists would know that the debris was pushed into another dimension because they would be able to detect a loss in energy in the remaining proton debris.
I have to say, this is totally awesome. Imagine what we’d find in those other dimensions, the treasures of our civilization that just up and disappeared for no apparent reason. Slap bracelets. The rest of Los del Rios’ recording career. The market value of all of those stocks that just plunged. Where did all of those go?
They weren’t lost, they were just placed in another dimension. Surely that explanation will assuage investors’ fears.
And then, of course, there are the socks. Think about it. All of those socks you lose in the dryer when you do laundry have to end up somewhere. They probably end up in these other dimensions, along with the family heirloom necklace that mysteriously went missing on that trip to California and your beloved sweatshirt from second grade that says “Where’s the beach?”
Come to think of it, discovering our socks in these alternate dimensions might just be the ticket America needs to get itself out of its financial crisis. With all of the socks we recover from these other dimensions, we’ll never need to buy socks again. That means we can use the money we would have spent on socks and invest it back into the stock market. That will stimulate the economy in a way the stimulus packages could only dream of.
We can shake the mud off of the whole national financial system, clean it up, and set it on its feet again. All thanks to those extra dimensions!
And you thought science wasn’t practical.
Then again, the world might just implode. But scientists tell us that probably won’t happen until the fall. In the meantime, though, keep a close eye on those socks.
* additional reporting for this humor column provided by Jim Burns
I did manage to gather this much: when the Large Hadron Collider gets turned on, a beam of protons will get sent around the underground racetrack at speeds so fast they would make Superman drool.
Then, if this beam of protons makes its way around the track, the scientists will then crank it up a notch and send a gajillion more protons around the underground racetrack and accelerate them “to energies of seven trillion electron volts,” and then – here’s the kicker – “smash them together.”
To put it in terms we can fathom, the Large Hadron Collider is the scientific equivalent of the amplifier in Spinal Tap that goes up to eleven – it’s a groundbreaking machine that everyone thinks is cool, but doesn’t quite understand. Fun, right?
Not so fast, Nigel. All of this innovative smashing together of protons could spell doomsday for Earth. The Debbie Downers of the scientific community have speculated that smashing protons together at such colossally high speeds could produce a dangerous black hole that would suck up everything around it, thus ending the world. Granted, that’s a worst-case scenario.
But still, it’s an unsettling concept, and one that is not completely out of the realm of possibility. Even the Collider’s director, Dr. Pier Oddone, admits as much. “We don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Now before we all go nuts and start navel-gazing at the Meaning of It All, let’s think this through. Black holes could be good thing. They could be just what we need to end global warming, for example. Since the scientists control the environment that produces them, they can engineer the black holes to suck up all the bad stuff in our atmosphere, like pollution. They could be like the highly-intelligent vacuum cleaner in Spaceballs. Think of how clean we could get our ozone layer! It’ll be brilliant!
On the other hand, this LHC experiment could go a different way. Instead of creating black holes and sucking up the universe, another group of scientists are optimistic that this will prompt the discovery of extra dimensions.
Yes, that’s right, extra dimensions. Follow me on this: When the protons collide within the LHC at those high speeds, there’s a chance that they’ll produce debris that may be jettisoned out of our familiar spatial dimensions and “crammed into the others,” as professor Brian Greene puts it. The scientists would know that the debris was pushed into another dimension because they would be able to detect a loss in energy in the remaining proton debris.
I have to say, this is totally awesome. Imagine what we’d find in those other dimensions, the treasures of our civilization that just up and disappeared for no apparent reason. Slap bracelets. The rest of Los del Rios’ recording career. The market value of all of those stocks that just plunged. Where did all of those go?
They weren’t lost, they were just placed in another dimension. Surely that explanation will assuage investors’ fears.
And then, of course, there are the socks. Think about it. All of those socks you lose in the dryer when you do laundry have to end up somewhere. They probably end up in these other dimensions, along with the family heirloom necklace that mysteriously went missing on that trip to California and your beloved sweatshirt from second grade that says “Where’s the beach?”
Come to think of it, discovering our socks in these alternate dimensions might just be the ticket America needs to get itself out of its financial crisis. With all of the socks we recover from these other dimensions, we’ll never need to buy socks again. That means we can use the money we would have spent on socks and invest it back into the stock market. That will stimulate the economy in a way the stimulus packages could only dream of.
We can shake the mud off of the whole national financial system, clean it up, and set it on its feet again. All thanks to those extra dimensions!
And you thought science wasn’t practical.
Then again, the world might just implode. But scientists tell us that probably won’t happen until the fall. In the meantime, though, keep a close eye on those socks.
* additional reporting for this humor column provided by Jim Burns
