Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed The Earth?

Well?

Physics = awesome

I’m genuinely excited by the LHC at CERN. Tomorrow, after several years in the making, with zillions of scientists and dozens of countries working in peaceful cooperation, the biggest science project on the planet is switched on.

There’s a lot of things that accompany this momentous occasion. A physics nerd rap for one

what is more awesome than nerds pulling hip-hop shapes?

Is it Radio 4’s Big Bang day?

A special torchwood for radio episode?

Amazing photos of the monster machine?

A chance to help the scientists crunch their data?

All of these things are great.

What I love about the project, aside from the harmonious global cooperation, is that it’s an experiment that has no real purpose other than the pure quest for knowledge. Nowadays where every piece of research has to be justified, to reassure the money men that it provide humans with useful stuff like wealth or health, this is an experiment that will directly result in none of those things. Instead it’ll further our understanding of life, the universe and everything and perhaps help answer the biggest question of all: how is this odd thing known as existence here at all? Mysterious stuff like The Higgs Boson, further dimensions, mini black holes, unknown particles, things that are just notions in the minds of the cleverest theoretical physicists may be soon proved (or disproved) by experiment. Wow. I wonder what the great minds of the past like Newton, Einstein, Schroedinger, or Adams would have thought of it.