A lot of things going to happen this week. Apple will announce it’s brand new iPod and may be a new iTunes 8.0 on the 9th. Sony plans to release more information on its official Malaysian PS3 launch. I’ll be going to AsterConference 2008, a series of conference in Asia dedicated to the world of Asterisk, the world most popular open source telephony software. And I also need to get my baju Raya from the tailor.
All that wont matter anymore, because on the September 10th, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, will turn on the switch to it’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). No doubt it is the most expensive and biggest physics experiment ever carried out by mankind. There is a reason why they call it the ‘Large Hadron Collider’ and not a ‘Small Hadron Collider’.
The Large Hadron Collider, is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. The word ‘Proton’ here refers to subatomic particles, not our national car manufacturer, we already know what happens when that ‘Proton’ collides, most of the time, it causes massive traffic jams on both side of the road.
The Large Hadron Collider is a huge facility, comprising of a circular-tunnel with multiple loops, stretching for 27 km underground between France and Switzerland.
Scientists all around the world build the LHC in order to observe high energy particles colliding. Physicists are using the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang. With this observation, scientists hopes to find answers to some of the fundamental questions in physics.
No, “why the chicken cross the road?” is not one of the questions.
There are however, negative press regarding the LHC. Some people thinks that when these high energy subatomic particles collied it will create a tear in the fabric of space and time thus creating a Black Hole sucking all of earth, the moon, the sun and all of the known universe to a vortex of impending doom.
Such ideas had the Daily Mail (UK) and other tabloids publishing stories with titles like, “Are we all going to die next Wednesday?”
Silly journalist, if you would have done more research, such as reading CERN’s website for example, you would know that on the 10th of September, CERN is just going attempt to circulate a particle beam through the LHC.
The so called ‘Big-Bang’ high-energy collisions are planned to take place later on, 21st October 2008. That is when we all will die.
The ‘Big-Bang’ Black Hole scenario is nothing but a theory. I have another theory instead. I think the collision will resulted in a discovery of a new source of power known as the ‘antimatter‘. This ‘antimatter’ will become a limitless source of power.
As with nuclear power, this antimatter could become a destructive weapon. Then a legendary secret society known as the Illuminati will steal a canister containing a quarter of a gram of antimatter, and place it under the Vatican City. In their plans to blow up the Vatican City, they leave clues all around Rome for a Harvard symbologist professor and some smart chick to follow.
This would make a good bestseller novel, don’t you think so?
All jokes aside, I think LHC is harmless. The force of two particles colliding might just be nothing much then the force of two mosquito colliding. Then again I’ve never seen mosquito collide, who knows what would happen.
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