Depending on who you believe, tomorrow’s start-up of the Large Hadron Collider will either herald a new era in particle physics or lead to the end of the world, if not the universe itself:
Possibly you haven’t heard about the end of the world, and by that I don’t mean Sarah Palin becoming vice-president of the United States.
I’m talking about the Large Hadron Collider.
The Large Hadron Collider is a perfectly circular 27-kilometre underground tunnel that thousands of science geeks have built along the France-Switzerland border.
It cost about $10 billion, or the amount needed to cure cancer, but the geeks felt it was more important to discover — maybe — the secret to The Theory of Everything, which they have wondered about since they were in a high school and felt that if they knew the secret to The Theory of Everything they could figure out how to get dates.
I say “maybe” they might be able to figure out the secret to The Theory of Everything because the science geeks aren’t precisely sure what is going to happen when they fire up the Large Hadron Collider this coming Wednesday.
Generally, one of three things can happen when they flip the switch and a bunch of hadrons, whatever they are, zip around the tunnel in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, crash into each other and create tiny explosions 100,000 times hotter than Charlize Theron.
Either the collisions will cause (a) the secret to The Theory of Everything to be revealed, (b) nothing, other than an embarrassed silence, or (c) the creation of a black hole that will devour the Earth.
Possibly “c” gave you pause. I know it did me.
There is the chance the world will be devoured by a black hole before the last episode of Lost airs.
In reality, the odds of that happening are pretty infinitesimal and at least one well-known physicist is looking forward of seeing the LHC prove his theories correct:
Fears that the world might end when a grand scientific experiment begins on Wednesday have given way to something less urgent: Stephen Hawking may lose $100, or gain a Nobel Prize.
Those stakes are tied to the Large Hadron Collider, which is scheduled to rev up for the first time on Wednesday at roughly 3:30 a.m. Eastern time following 13 years of planning, $8 billion in spending and immeasurable anticipation, chronicled by Dennis Overbye of The New York Times.
Dr. Hawking will be one of the many physicists watching in hopes of greeting answers to some of physics’ biggest questions when experimental data starts to stream from the collider. But he also has a dog in this fight. His 1974 theory on black holes could be experimentally proven — if the collider succeeds in creating black holes in the first place.
“If the L.H.C. were to produce little black holes, I don’t think there’s any doubt I would get a Nobel prize, if they showed the properties I predict,” Dr. Hawking told BBC Radio today. “However, I think the probability that the L.H.C. has enough energy to create black holes is less than 1 percent, so I’m not holding my breath.”
And neither, apparently, should we.
