So in like, a few hours, the world's largest particle accelerator will be turned on AND critics and crazies alike claim that this could create a GIANT BLACK HOLE thus ending life as we know it.
Actually, doomsday predictions aside, this gadget (not really a gadget at all as it takes up 17 miles of space under the French and Swiss borders) is actually pretty cool:
"Experts say the collider has the potential to confirm theories about questions that physicists have been working on for decades including the possible existence of extra dimensions. They also hope to find a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, which has never been detected, but would help explain why matter has mass.
The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot "soup" of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question.
Since this is exploratory science, the collider may uncover surprises that contradict prevailing theories, but which are just as interesting, said Joseph Lykken, theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory."
Heh. I am strangely apathetic about this whole end of the world scenario (but totally psyched about the experiment, because, YAY SCIENCE) and if I weren't so apathetic I would think it was kind of awesome. I mean, come on people, death by black hole suckage has got to be one of the top ten most rad ways to go. I stand by my statement.
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