The Large Hadron Collider
Updated Mon, Nov 10, 2008 by Coyote
Tomorrow they're throwing the switch on the Large Hadron Collider that they built on the border between Switzerland and France. This amazes and astounds me on levels that I cannot even begin to express because I honestly had no idea that Switzerland and France actually shared a border.
But man does THAT explain a lot.
For those of you who have no idea what a Large Hadron Collider is, keep reading and I'll explain to you why this is an event of great historical importance. For those of you who DO know what a Large Hadron Collider is, you really want to stop reading now because the doggy doo is about to piled on with a steam shovel.
The Large Hadron Collider is a normal Hadron Collider, but very very large - hence the name. It was built off of designs for the 9000 series heuristically programmed algorithmic computer, but to a much larger scale in order to facilitate all of the functions and theories presented.
How large is large you might ask?
How about SEVENTEEN MILES in length?
That's right, it is seventeen miles long and constructed in a secret underground complex so classified that I can't even find the phone number of the place on Google. We're talking See-cure-uh-TEE.
And for good reason.
The Large Hadron Collider (Known from here out as the LHC, unless I forget and type it out) was designed to produce the Higgs Boson - a hypothetical particle named after late scientist Jonathan Quayle Higgins III. Creation of this particle and bringing it from theory to reality will help us understand how the universe was created, and exactly what took place during the "big bang" besides just, ya know, a big bang.
However creation of such a monumental device doesn't come without its share of naysayers and bleeding heart tree huggers who want it shut down before we accidentally destroy "everything". While firing this puppy up and crossing the streams could possibly shed light into the creation of the cosmos and the birth of matter itself, it does admittedly have one or two theoretical drawbacks that has the bunny kissers up in arms.
Things like:
* Time Travel - And I'm not even making this part up. By powering on this puppy, it has been theorized that we could actually tear a hole in the time/space continuum and unlock the secrets of time travel itself. And while this is HIGHLY unlikely and just a theory, I'd like to point out that this entire machine was BUILT on a theory to produce a theoretical particle. So how far fetched is this really?
"It just isn't going to happen." Laughs Physicist Samuel Beckett. "Talk about leaping to conclusions."
Still, how cool would it be for them to fire up this thing and out pops a T-Rex?
Answer: Pretty frigging cool.
* We'll open up a mini-black hole - And of course by "We'll" I mean "Some scientist dudes" because there is no way in HELL that they'd let me near this thing with a 10 meter cattle prod. The giggling would be a dead give away I'm sure, but come on: If there is one device in the UNIVERSE that is going to suck me into an alternate universe, it's the Large Hadron Collider.
But I digress.
Out of all of the possibilities and theories that could arise, this is the most probable and likely. But even if a mini-black hole IS created?
"According to the generally accepted theory, these subatomic black holes will poof away in .000000000000000000000000001 seconds."
Which does nothing to sooth me in the LEAST.
I mean, I admit that I know dick-one about space and black holes and subatomic particles, but what I do know I've gleaned from years of watching the Sci-Fi channel and so when it comes to black holes .000000000000000000000000001 seconds is a reeeeaaaaally long time. That's at LEAST sucking up a stapler, or a stray scientist or SOMETHING.
* Total Protonic Reversal - Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
...
Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip.
* They forget to hook up the Digital Online Linguistics Leveler - Face it, the thing is SEVENTEEN MILES LONG. It's full of heavy equipment and pipes and Collider thingies that far outweigh the scrawny arms of any scientist.
So who built it?
Contractors of course. GOVERNMENT contractors. So chances are that somewhere along that stretch of seventeen miles there is a bad cable, loose bolt, or set of wires sitting on top of an old issue of Time Magazine, and that just spells disaster.
Or, above all else - it spells out the one thing that would make me piss myself with amusement. Namely:
* Nothing Happens - Absolutely nothing. Scientific progress goes 'boink'.
Of course even if this does doesn't happen, (HA, double negatives are my bitch) we'll never know because there are like three people who will be able to tell.
And there is no WAY they'll admit that it didn't work.
They'll switch it on and it'll hum and glow and look very much like it's ready to obliterate Alderaan, and then it'll just go 'boink' and power down. Everyone will be standing around confused because no one actually knows what was supposed to happen and then one of the three guys who knows that it failed will just jump in the air excitedly and scream "Yes! WE DID IT!". Then everyone ELSE will start celebrating because even though they have no clue that it didn't work, they don't want OTHER people to know that they have no clue that it didn't work.
"Yes! We smashed the F*** out of those particles! WHO IS YOUR SUBATOMIC DADDY NOW ELECTRON?!? UNGH! Double up UNGH UNGH!"
Then they'll run over to a microscope to "confirm" that they did indeed smash the snot out of something that no one else can see and even if they did look it could just be a booger on the lens and they'd have no clue.
But whatever the result, know that I'll be happy.
If nothing bad happens then my life will go on as normal and I'll wake up in my bed and believe whatever I want to believe.
If we open up a dinosaur spewing rift to the world of spider people, well - Richard Grieco has been training for that for YEARS so we'll all be safe. And if the world ends, it'll happen so fast that I won't even be able to perceive it.
So regardless to the panic around this thing, there is nothing at all to worry about. Hell they've probably already tested it and besides from noticing that I'm suddenly left handed, it hasn't effected me in the le...
...heeeey...waaaaaiiiiit.
-Coyote
-
ReviewsMon, Feb 13, 2012Ethec
-
Zone Info, GuidesMon, Feb 13, 2012Halfshell
-
Basics, GuidesMon, Feb 13, 2012Ethec
-
Basics, FAQ, Misc Guides, GuidesSun, Feb 12, 2012Space Junkie
-
Features, OpinionsSun, Feb 12, 2012Saia
-
FeaturesMon, Feb 13, 2012Mem
-
Features, OpinionsMon, Feb 13, 2012Messiah
-
Basics, Class Info, Item Guides, Misc Guides, Zone Info, GuidesFri, Feb 10, 2012Space Junkie
-
Features, OpinionsFri, Feb 10, 2012Saia
-
NewsFri, Feb 10, 2012Martuk
Good post Coyote. It will be like the closing scenes of the movie Contact.
S, I know it wouldn't actually take anything out and shutdown. I just had fun imagining France blowing up and people jockeying for territory. This had to have been built over in Europe, because if it was built in the U.S. environmentalist and every other special interest group would be like you can't do that, and then go ahead and grease the palms of ALL members of congress to make sure it never got out of the design phase.
Wenchy brings up an interesting point.. It's 17 miles long.. Into which country is it 'firing'? I mean could you imagine being in on that conference...
Swiss "firss yu takz da gun, anz yu pointz it to da French BORQUE BORQUE BORQUE"
French "Ahh, wee wee, you Swiss are brilliant, but not so far brilliant as our Inspector Clouseau"
Americans (threw squinty eyes Pres Bush speaks) "So, what you are, um, saying here, is that, um, its like a really big nuculear thing a ma bob that ramificates the process of, um.. black holed-ness, and we might see God. So, its a giant Coke Snorter?"
Coyote "Yes master, I vill flip the switch."
Swiss "flippty fliptty flip... "
And so on..
BOOM!
That is all
So if there is a catastrophic failure and say the whole thing blows up....Could it take out France? I don't want it taking out Switzerland cause i like the chocolate.
Oh an before anyone goes Wenchy, if it had a catastrophic failure and can do what they think it can do (recreate the big bang theory), than more than France is gone. I realize that, but blowing up France sounds better than, you know annihilation, that and Bithy's Boom kinda covered it.
Thanks for this informative and in depth report. I'll cancel my RSS feeds from the British Library and NASA now.
I cant believe you didnt make more of Big Bang.
How big is Uranus btw??
*giggles*
I can see it now... God is up there, smoking a joint, and he says to himself, "Oh, wait, wait, wait, I got an idea... I'll make this thing work. Yea. That would be cool. Oh, wait. I should warn them first. Ok, 11th commandment: Thou shalt not presseth the Big Red Button which voids the Warranty on Your Universe"
Family Guy did a great theory that god lit a big one rip and out popped the universe.
Dreadswench Says:
September 9th, 2008 at 8:04 am
So if there is a catastrophic failure and say the whole thing blows up….Could it take out France? I don’t want it taking out Switzerland cause i like the chocolate.
__________
Failure will lead to nothing but the whole shebang shutting itself down. But success could eventually lead to technologies that would allow us to take out France without taking out Switzerland. Consider it step one of a multi-phase project, the eventual goal of which is to annihilate the French without threatening Swiss chocolate, German beer, or Belgian ... um, waffles.
Seriously, the Large Hadron Collider is nothing to worry about. All the doomcrying is coming from fringe crackpots and the perpetually-outraged hippie types who protest pretty much anything that they don't understand. Remember the nutjobs who wanted to stop the Cassini Mission to Saturn because they were afraid it would rain chunks of plutonium across Africa? It's pretty much the same nutjobs who are afraid of the LHC.
S
Black holes are neither black nor holes. Discuss.
But what if D-O-G reallys spells "cat"? Creeepy, huh?
Reference's to HAL and Magnum PI.. and thats just in the first portion of the blog...
Ok, back to reading
Psibr with the GOOD eye. Nice.
I threw in a ton of them for giggles. See how many you get.
Oh, and I totally read the title wrong.. I was like.. Large WHAT Collision!!!
Just got too the Ghostbusters reference for what happens when you cross the beams.. "at the speed of light" and the DOLL.. nice, very nice.
Okay, there a zillion references to movies and comics and geeks in there, but there are expressly seven tongue in cheek pop culture pokings.
Well, I got 4 of them...
I can't believe no one caught the Quantum Leap reference.
Total Protonic Reversal is another Ghostbuster's reference, does that count?
Now, you know that it's inital design was to create the matter that belongs inside of a flux capacitor. This is the first step!
But just in case it doesn't work properly, I would like to start shipping people over there now. "Hey, would you like to see France?"
I totally did it before you: http://veaudaux.livejournal.com/17515.html (Cracked.com totally did it better than either of us)
I've got 6 of them....
How did everyone miss the Matrix reference??
I'll just mention the few that haven't been said yet. Like Jonathan Quayle Higgins III from Scooby Doo and Samuel Beckett making a "leap", and nobody said anything about Lost in Space where "the monkey flips the switch"
Was I the only one to pick up on the RHPS reference?
"could actually tear a hole in the time/space continuum and unlock the secrets of time travel itself"
This reminds me somehow of one of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Unfortunately Adams died in 2001, but I think had he lived, he would most likely find your observations fascinating Coyote. Either that or he'd sue you for plagiarism. hehe
Super sekrit it is.. listed in the Geneva phone book, lol. (Online)
There's also a searchable directory of staff phone numbers online. More than I can say fot, ooh, TTH. What have YOU lot got to hide, eh? Yeah, you too, RadarX. Just what HAVE you been building at weekends? Hmmm?
OK, joshing apart. Wednesday is just the big switch on day, tehy're not going to try and end the world, sorry, recreate the beginning of time until mid-October. On which day a great big chunk of Switxerland will slide back like an eyelid and we'll direct a deadly energy beam right at Alderaan...
True.
/nods
Welp I can say I got the Higgens one, the crossed streams, boink, total protonic reversal, but I must say I missed the becket quote even when his name was in the text *sigh*
All I can say is I hope it makes really big twinkie . . . care to share it with me Jen?
Of course Bithy dear. You are so thoughtful!
*Snuggle hugs Bithy*
Dude, if you're going to post a spoiler of tonight's episode of Eureka, then say SPOILER at the top.
Cynic, Eureka already has three Hadron Colliders. They don't work the way their supposed to, but they make great cotton candy!
First of all, this is bad. Sandor has NO IDEA what he's talking about, he's just a gov't mouthpiece sent here to make us not worry that they're about to destroy the universe by making another one.
Wow... chew on that for a bit. What if the big bang has NOTHING to do with everything being pulled together over a massive period of time and then re-exploding but, through a quirky wrinkle of fate, is the result of us firing off this collider. And since it can possibly affect time as well, causes us to relive the birth of the universe up to this day over and over and over.... like a weird Eisenstein version of Groundhog Day.
That explains my deja vu.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
very funny
*snerk*
hadron