Advancement or Armageddon?
The world's most powerful physics experiment.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) cost around five billion pounds to make, and has been in construction for a good 13 years, and was not without its troubles (cost overruns, equipment and construction problems etc). It is located in a 27km (17 mile) tunnel below the French-Swiss border.
This machine is the most powerful particle collider ever to have been built; designed to crash particles together with cataclysmic force, it will recreate the conditions of the universe moments after the Big Bang.
A first low-intensity proton beam was circulated through the LHC in August, but it did not make it all the way around the ring.
Tomorrow, physicists will attempt to pass a proton beam around the entire 27km circumference of the LHC tunnel.
Eventually, two proton beams will be directed around the tunnel in opposite directions close to the speed of light (299 792 458 m/s) enabling them to complete approximately eleven thousand laps per second. Four "massive detectors" will monitor activity at the various points where the two beams cross, looking for "interesting activity".
Of course, such an event is not without hype or hysteria of some sort. While particle physics may be a subject understood and appreciated by few, the benefits of an experiment like this can be shared with everyone.
The hype surrounding "The Switch On" of the LHC of course is the ending of the world.
You don't have to look very far to find reports claiming that this machine has power enough to create a black hole large enough to end the world.
Other articles suggests that while the LHC does have an immense amount of power behind it, it would only form tiny black holes that would be extremely unstable and so collapse in on themselves within a matter of seconds.
While this story continues to worry the masses, the physicists are convinced that the LHC "will most assuredly not destroy the world".
And frankly, as daunting as it sounds, what individual would have the ability or influence to authorise the potential destruction of life, or of this planet? What individual would give authorisation to an experiment that carried such risks?
Nostradamus made no prediction of it; and every other "the world is going to end" from the last three decades has been proved wrong.
I'll let you make up your own minds on whether this project will bring about the end of the world or not. Whatever you may decide, it won't take long to find out. The LHC is due to be switched on at 3:30 AM, Eastern Time tomorrow.
