The Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest Hadron Collider ever built. No, wait. That makes the name sound wrong. The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest thing ever built. They chose to just call it large because if it leaves this world intact, they might build a bigger one. I think they might as well have called it the Biggest Hadron Collider, because it takes 3 spots in the top 5 possibilities for the total destruction of humanity.

Briefly, the Large Hadron Collider is a big, circular tunnel under parts of Switzerland and France, and scientists plan to slam protons and ions head-on at insane speeds just to see what will happen. These collisions of tiny little particles don't sound very threatening, even at speeds of around a billion kilometers per hour, but they predict very big bangs. Yes, when I said "big bang", I meant the theory of the creation of the universe, and I didn't pluralize it by accident.



It doesn't just end there. Scientists also hope to find out more (anything) relating to dark matter and dark energy (a hypothetical energy that contributes to the expansion of the universe). This takes us down to a quantum level, where those annoying particles do weird stuff while we're not looking. So far, we haven't been able to observe dark matter very well, but maybe our friend the Large Hadron Collider will change things for us. There is a theory, however, that when dark energy is observed, it will collapse and create our very own black hole on Earth- sucking the whole universe in with it. Damn!

Some more great knowledge that the Large Hadron Collider might give us if it leaves us alive is evidence of the other 7 dimesions (making a total of 11), anti-gravity technology, and time travel (which will also very likely end the world and the universe as we know it). I don't know about you, but this Large Hadron Collider is starting to sound very sexy. Let me throw some numbers at you.

27: The circumference of the LHC in kilometers.
16.8: Same as above, for Americans (in miles).
99.99: Percent of Lightspeed that the particles will go boink.
1.9: Temperature in Kelvin. That's colder than in space.
10,860: Tons of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium needed to make it that cold.
6: Billions of dollars it cost to build.



Fortunately for us (humans and all other life on the planet and universe), the Large Hadron Collider had some magnet problems and they had to postpone all their experiments. They won't be able to take it online until 2008. Shit, that's now. The reason we're all still alive is most likely because they've only started testing the equipment at less than one fifth capacity. Full universal destruction is just around the corner. The guys at CERN are anticipating full power particle slams around 2009 or 2010.

If you're all still alive, not sucked into any micro-black hole, drop a line here every now and then. Let us know you're still alive and well.