Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Mar 30th, 2008
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You’ve probably heard by now about the Large Hadron Collider, that giant and ominous-looking device buried deep between the French-Swiss border that looks entirely too much like Michael Chrichton meets Irwin Allen with Stephen Spielberg’s budget (and influenced by the particle laser from TRON, which is what I always think of when I see the picture). In a nutshell, the LHC represents a bold attempt by physicists to test some of the existing theories about the origins of matter in the universe; indeed, of the universe itself for that matter. Among other long-standing scientific mysteries, it was built to solve the questions of what exactly “dark matter†is, why some subatomic particles have mass and others do not, and the answer to that old chestnut, “What exactly happened when the Big Bang occurred?â€
By its very nature, however, it’s also stirring up a lot of controversy. Much of it can be safely classified as FUD; the chances of the LHC inadvertently creating a mini-black hole capable of drawing the entire universe into it, or turning the Earth into a large chunk of “strange matter†are so close to zero as makes no odds (one person on the LHC project likened the possibility to one person winning the lottery in each of three consecutive weeks). However, there are some very real concerns about the feasibility of the project, as well as for the safety and well-being of those involved with the project and the long-term consequences of the LHC’s activation.
And what does the modern man do when faced with a device that could, however remote the possibility, bring about an end to all things in all corners of creation? Why, what else? Lawsuits, baby!
Last Friday, a suit was filed in the US District Court in Hawaii seeking a restraining order against the LHC project that would prevent them from activating the device (currently scheduled for May) until more rigorous safety measures and testing can be done to ensure nothing wild is going to happen when it gets turned on. The case was officially assigned to a magistrate judge this past Monday, which means the proceedings will be going forward.
Whether the LHC is, as the suit alleges, a potential Doomsday device or just a trumped-up Erector set with delusions of adequacy, I just find it high-larious that its designers are being sued over the chance that it could in theory destroy the universe. The very notion of the US legal system potentially deciding the fate of all creation strikes me as something out of Douglas Adams. (Remember the philosophers who tried to shut down Deep Thought before learning it would need seven and a half million years to calculate the Ultimate Answer?) Or, worse, MAD Magazine.
Some days, all you can do is just laugh…
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Some days all you can do is hold your head in your hands and cry like a baby that just got kicked in the groin. This is ludicrous! All that’s missing is the religious nutjobs claiming that the true purpose of the LHC is to prove there is no God!
I have been waiting for a long time for the LHC to be completed, I for one don’t want the LHC stalled because some degenerate of the primordial ooze is afraid of going the way of Gimbels (however unlikely THAT is).