On Large Hadrons Colliding

Let’s get something quite clear, shall we?

We are (probably) not going to be wiped out tomorrow.

We certainly aren’t going to be annihilated as the result of anything that happens in Switzerland, at any rate. As you may or may not be aware, scientists in Geneva are due to fire up CERN’s biggest ever project, the Large Hadron Collider. The idea behind the LHC is to recreate the conditions shortly after the Big Bang by firing some very small particles at some other very small particles, in order to make some even smaller particles; it’s essentially an $8 billion game of conkers.

Whatever way you look at it, though, there’s absolutely no reason to worry about it destroying us tomorrow. And here’s three reasons why:

1) The Large Hadron Collider is big. And protons? Protons are small. It’s going to take months to get the proton streams excited enough to even consider producing anything worthwhile (And by worthwhile, I mean potentially dangerous) by slamming into one another. Infact, it’s going to be sometime in the middle of next year, which simply means that J.J Abrams’ “Star Trek” film won’t get to see the light of day, and we can all count our blessings for that.

2) Even if the protons started moving very quickly as soon as the collider got switched on (This is physically impossible, but let’s assume the scientists said there was a naked lady proton at the end of the tunnel or something), the chances that the collisions will destroy anything other than the protons themselves are roughly 0.00005%, meaning we’re probably going to have to watch Shaun of the Dead affecting a Scottish accent after all. If you really want to get worried about an impending apocalypse, look no further than Yellowstone Park.

Yellowstone Park.

That’s right; underneath one of America’s few non-gaudy tourist attractions (Though I bet it’s filled with tacky gift shops) is a REALLY big volcano, just waiting to go off and kill us all. And the scientists say there’s a 0.15% chance that it, or another like it, will go off in our lifetime, wiping out most of the life on Earth; for those of you keeping track, that’s a whole three thousand times more likely than any microscopic black holes swallowing us up. And unlike the LHC, which some outraged right-to-lifers are trying to shut down with a court injunction, there’s absolutely nothing that we can do to stop it.

3) If both of the above scenarios combine to make sure we don’t live to see Thursday, we can all take comfort in the fact that we won’t live to hear BBC Radio 4’s Torchwood radio play, ‘Lost Souls’ tomorrow afternoon. If there’s one thing worse than having to watch John Barrowman overract, it’s having to listen to him overract. On the plus side, the only hint we’ll have of the chasm between Eve Myles’ front teeth is an occasional whistling sound when she breathes.

In short, the Large Hadron Collider can only be a good thing. I don’t understand it entirely, as I’m not a particle physicist, but if we can’t explore where we came from and who we are, then what’s the point in being here? By recreating the conditions shortly after the Big Bang, scientists could learn more now than they’ve learned in a thousand years; isn’t that worth the risk? Plus they’re referring to the Higgs Boson as ‘the God particle’; I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it sounds like if they find one, it might make some Christians cry. And who’s not willing to put their lives on the line for that?

I know I am.

~ by typeforty on September 9, 2008.