End Of The World Begins Wednesday
September 7, 2008 by James
Filed under Tech Gadgets

That’s right folks, say your prayers, hug your kids, get one last hurrah in with the miss’us because come Wednesday, the clock is ticking to the destruction of the world. I know, some of you are saying “What’s up with this whack job” but hear me out, the theory goes something like this. On Wednesday CERN is firing up the Large Hardron Collider to test the superconducting magnets that control the proton beams. WTF is that you ask? It’s a four billion dollar, 17 mile long tunnel where scientists are going to essentially smash atoms. Thus (according to the fatalist out there, creating “micro black holes” that destroy the world. Yeah, yeah, I know.. Huh?
The CERN collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel 150 to 500 feet under the bucolic countryside on the French-Swiss border.
Once the beam is successfully fired counterclockwise, a clockwise test will follow. Then the scientists will aim the beams at each other so that protons collide, shattering into fragments and releasing energy under the gaze of detectors filling cathedral-sized caverns at points along the tunnel.
Ok, I know, I’m being more than a little cynical about it but come on, the basic point is to “see what will happen”. Isn’t that sort of like those old Star Trek episodes where Captain Kirk asked Mr. Scott to do something crazy like mix the matter and anti-matter together or something like that? This is assuming that the project doesn’t get shut down completely due to pending law suits trying to stop it. What’s the worst that could happen? The giant magnets alter the Earth gravitational field and bring about some cataclysmic global event that Al Gore himself would be proud of or maybe a black hole forming over the Swiss countryside that sucks up everything until the world implodes.
Nah, they’re probably running Windows so it more than likely won’t even boot up. Cheers!
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