The World May or May Not Come To An End Today
So some scientists are trying to destroy Earth, and I will do my best to try to explain this to you in layman terms.
Who would do such a thing?
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in French, it’s Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, which is why the acronym is CERN, instead of EONR. If you are wondering why CERN sounds so familiar, it may be because it was referenced in Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons (a really good read I might add). CERN has the world’s largest particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider, which costs 4 billion Swiss franc, that’s equivalent to $3.8 billion in US currency (amazing, our currency is worthless even in Switzerland!) By the way, $531 million of that astronomical sum was contributed to CERN by the US. Anyway, Professor Stephen Hawking described the LHC as “absolutely safe”, telling one newspaper that the experiment is vital to the survival of humanity.
What are they trying to do? They are trying to recreate, or re-enact, what happened during the “Big Bang Theory”. You know, the theory in which scientists speculate that a colossal explosion created the beginning of the universe.
Where is this going down?
In Geneva, Switzerland.
When is this supposed to happen?
It’s actually going on as we speak. The Large Hadron Collider just passed its first major tests when it fired two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring. All of that had taken place before most of had gotten out of bed (around 8:30am).
What do they expect to learn?
Physicists around the world now have the power to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure. CERN hopes to recreate conditions in the laboratory a split-second after the big bang, teaching them more about “dark matter,” antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. The LHC team also hopes to find the theoretical Higgs-Boson Particle, or the God Particle, but Professor Stephen Hawking isn’t confident that they can find it, and has bet 100 pounds they won’t.
Why do people think that this could bring about the end of the world? Some feared that the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
In case you were wondering, yes there is a collider at Fermilab, which is located just outside of Chicago. It’s not as powerful as the one CERN has, but I know it’s definitely in 2nd place. Freaked out? You should be, but don’t worry, if it happens you won’t feel a thing. Earth would be destroyed in an instant (about 1/20th of a second), simply vanishing from space, and within a few minutes, the rest of the solar system would follow. Don’t panic, yet. Since the track is 17 miles long, it will be a whole month before the protons actually collide, so you have plenty of time… to agonize over our impending doom.
Anyway, If this wasn’t a sufficient enough explanation, then maybe Kate McAlpine can explain it to you better. She’s a Michigan State University graduate at CERN, who created the Large Hadron Rap, which has over a million views on YouTube.
