So long, and thanks for all the fish

So it seems that as I write, the Large Hadron Collider has been turned on, and so far, the Earth has not become the centre of a new black hole. Which I think is nice. Although in some perverse way, also slightly disappointing. Although the vast majority of physicists seemed to think the doomsayers have no idea what they're talking about (or as Wikpedia puts it, "the consensus in the scientific community is that there is no basis for any conceivable threat from the LHC particle collisions"), I'm sure that for a lot of them, the small "mad" section that is contained within the brain of every scientist was secretly hoping something crazy would happen. I mean when you've get down to it, they've built something that looks like this:

...and furthermore, like this also:


Just look at it! It's awesome. Finally, boring old plain science produces a device worthy of science fiction. And so sure, all the scientists working on the project claim to be excited about new opportunities to learn about elemental particles, the essential nature of the universe, etc., but I'll bet dollars (or 6.4 billion euros) to donuts that what even Stephen Hawking himself is really excited about is the small possibility of this puppy tearing a new one in the fabric of existence. Just you try and tell me you can't see the headcrabs from Half-Life bouncing out of an unearthly green glow at the end of that thing, or maybe a few cacodemons from Doom floating through to liven up a Friday night in Geneva no end.

No interdimensional beings so far it seems though, although apparently particles don't start getting properly smashed into each other good, like (another great aspect of this thing is that they spent 6.4 billiobn euros on a machine for smashing stuff) until October 21st. Even then according to the Prophets of Doom, we're not dead just then, either:

One of them, Professor Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar – a mass of energy fuelled by black holes – inside the Earth.

‘Nothing will happen for at least four years,’ he said. ‘Then someone will spot a light ray coming out of the Indian Ocean during the night and no one will be able to explain it.

‘A few weeks later, we will see a similar beam of particles coming out of the soil on the other side of the planet. Then we will know there is a little quasar inside the planet.’

And so the theory goes that the Earth is slowly eaten away over months or a couple of years (although why does the ray of light show up first in the Indian Ocean, exactly? That seems awfully...specific. But will probably be a boon to local squid fishermen). Fun times those for all to be sure, but especially for the scientists that dreamed up and worked on the Hadron Collider:

"Uh...yeeeeeeeeah. Sorry about that, you know, destroying the planet and all, everyone. If it's any consolation, we've learned tonnes of new stuff about the nature of the universe, and junk. Oh, it isn't any consolation? Ah. Riiiiiiiiight."

Interestingly, 4 years from now would take us through to...2012. Hmmm. I guess this is very much one of those times where we want "the consensus of the scientific community" to be spot on, as opposed to one of those times it was dead wrong. Fingers crossed then. In the meantime we've got 4 good years of talented eloquent ludicrously wealthy authors working the sexy sci-fi stylings of the real-life plain-science Hadron Collider into their ludicrously-over-the-top and yet somehow annoyingly page-turning pulp fiction books (and subsequent movie versions thereof) to look forward to.

Next time: Nazi UFOs. Possibly.