First, good news everybody! The LHC is operational again! That article is actually way more specific than I thought it would be. It focuses on the purpose and hopeful outcomes of the experiments to be performed. It’s worth a read-though. And if you are interested, may I suggest The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene? Some of that stuff will blow your mind. And a lot of the book focuses on possible experimental outcomes of the LHC. See how it all ties together?
Last night reminded me of a good joke from my favorite comic of all time, Mitch Hedberg.
“I hate dreaming because when you want to sleep, you want to sleep. Dreaming is work. I’m all comfortable in my bed and next thing you know, I have to build a go-cart with my ex-landlord. I wanna have a dream of me watching myself dream.”
Last night I had a dream that I was working in a warehouse. It was tiring. Then I woke up and was really tired. And it was 5:15 in the morning, so I had to get up soon. That was really disappointing. So now I’m extremely tired, all because of a stupid dream.
Ok, this is getting ridiculous. I’ll give you the run-down. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a super-huge particle accelerator that cost about $10 billion to make. It’s the biggest accelerator ever built and scientists hope that, once operational, it will allow them to recreate conditions immediately after the big bang. They are also hoping to discover the ever elusive Higgs Boson. This is a massive, theorized, elementary particle that could explain why objects have mass. The reason it hasn’t been found yet? E=mc². Since the particle is so (relatively) massive, it takes a ton of energy to create. The LHC may be able to obtain those energies and give us more clues to the very nature of the universe.
It hasn’t worked so far.
There have been a series of problems since September of last year. This prompted an article in the NY Times.
A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
This is an actual theory. The article goes on to claim that God hates the Higgs Boson, so he is avoiding its discovery. The LHC is sending particles back in time to destroy itself! Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s sending birds! Last week, a bird dropped a piece of baguette onto the LCH, causing a short circuit. Apparently the bird was French, hence the baguette. Best thing to come out of this? References to Star Wars and Monty Python. And this comment:
“This was the higgs boson particle coming back in time disguised as a bird in order to prevent its own creation. Expect more of the incidents.”
