Will The World End Tomorrow?

Fourteen years, countless debates, and ten billion dollars later, CERN's gargantuan LHC is finally ready to go and set to fire it's first beam tomorrow on 10th September 2008. Through it, scientists hold modest goals of recreating the conditions of the universe just moments after the Big Bang in order to unravel fundamental secrets of nature that has thus far eluded mankind. It's admittedly ambitious, but with a particle accelerator this big, few - if any - are doubting they will succeed.

[ Don't understand the hype or what this is all about? More information of the Large Hadron Collider and the debate surrounding it is available in this earlier article ]

Doomsday theories, on the other hand, have also become ubiquitous through all forms of media, with the scenario of the LHC creating a black hole being the most popular. In fact, the entire controversy has even spawned a new viral video that garnered a million hits simply through the animation of a Black Hole swallowing Earth. Check it out:





So will the world really end tomorrow? Actually, no. The possibility of a Microscopic Black Hole being created certainly is there - but even if one was accidentally made, it would still be far too small and too unstable to produce any effect before collapsing and disappearing within seconds. In fact, CERN has been so swamped by public concerns that they decided to directly provide the information regarding the safety issues on their website. And don't dismiss the report as one-sided propaganda either: these are solid facts which have been verified on multiple occasions by neutral watchdog communities.




Full Safety Report



An excerpt from CERN's website:

CERN: What Will Happen Tomorrow

A media centre will be established in the Globe of science and innovation. Since it is not possible for us to take everyone to the CERN Control Centre, from where the LHC is run, we will install part of the control centre infrastructure in the media centre. At all times during the day, a member of the operations team on shift will be in the Globe and on hand to explain what is happening.

The Globe is equipped with a large screen that will show the activity in the control centre, and there will be regular press conferences via video-conference link with the control centre through the day.

Through the day, visits for TV media will be arranged to the control centre. There are two vantage points from which the control centre can be observed.

Visits to the control rooms of the LHC's experiments will also be available for all media.
Requests for any of these visits should be made via this form, after accreditation process. Experts will be on hand at all locations throughout the day. No underground visits will be possible.

The first injection of a beam is scheduled for 9:30 CET, and will be preceded by a planning meeting that will be relayed to the Globe from 9:00. You are strongly encouraged to arrive at CERN before 8:30. The objective for the day is to have beam circulating in the LHC, the precise sequence of events will evolve through the day.

Watch The Live LHC Webcast Here (Video starts 10/09/2008, 07:00-17:00 GMT)

And just in case i'm wrong, it's been fun blogging for you all.