Of course, what's the fun in playing God with diabolical machines without fears and criticism? Will we create a black hole that swallows Earth? Will we, as the CNN puts it, be subject to particles that turn our planet into a hot dead clump?
"Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN -- some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC."Juvenile! Absurd!
"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.
"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.
But where would you go, David? You think your PhD will save you now?? I'm sure some smart-ass dinosaur turned to his friend and said, "There's no way that asteroid hits Earth. If I thought that was going to happen, I would be well away from here."
Seriously, no worries though. Stephen Hawking says any black holes produced in this atom-smashing fest will evaporate quickly. Vegas odds of catastrophic global apocalypse: 1/50,000,000. I don't know how you would collect that winning payout though.
I'm secretly, and now openly, hoping for a 2001: A Space Odyssey journey into the ultimate transcendent nature of humanity when they hit the switch.
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