Super-collider may end world Wednesday?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1838947,00.html

From the flagellants of the Middle Ages to the doomsayers of Y2K, humanity has always been prone to good old-fashioned the-end-is-nigh hysteria. The latest cause for concern: that the earth will be destroyed and the galaxy gobbled up by an ever-increasing black hole next week.

On Sept. 10, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, will switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — a $6 billion particle accelerator that will send beams of protons careening around a 17-mile underground ring, crash them into each other to re-create the immediate aftereffects of the Big Bang, and then monitor the debris in the hope of learning more about the origins and workings of the universe. Next week marks a low-power run of the circuit, and scientists hope to start smashing atoms at full power by the end of the month.

Critics of the LHC say the high-energy experiment might create a mini black hole that could expand to dangerous, Earth-eating proportions.

On Aug. 26, Professor Otto Rossler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karis University of Tubingen, filed a lawsuit against CERN with the European Court of Human Rights that argued, with no understatement, that such a scenario would violate the right to life of European citizens and pose a threat to the rule of law. Last March, two American environmentalists filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Honolulu seeking to force the U.S. government to withdraw its participation in the experiment. The lawsuits have in turn spawned several websites, chat rooms and petitions — and led to alarming headlines around the world (Britain's Sun newspaper on Sept. 1: "End of the World Due in 9 Days").

 

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/53251/

 

My mortgage payment's not due till the 14th, so I say let 'er rip.

 

My sentiments, exactly. I don't profess to begin to understand how these atoms crashing into each other are going to swallow up the planet. But I guess I can play golf Monday and Tuesday instead of going to work.

 

I'm sure I'll have to cover soccer on Tuesday now!

 

Oh, goody! Another illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator!

No sense clicking on the politics board, now. All a moot point, baby.

 

Well, the illiduium Q-35 explosive space modulator was a piece of shit.

 

In charge of tomorrow's deeds.

 

Bring it on.

Yeah everyone will die, but damn would it be a cool way to go out.

 

Would we know it was coming or would we vaporize?

 

Note to self: get laid this weekend.

 

Fixed