Go To Confession

The Large Hadron Collider is the most expensive civil scientific experiment ever conducted. Its purpose is to learn more about the elemental properties of matter through close observation of the conditions that scientists believe existed right after the Big Bang. The machine covers 27 kilometers in France.

It's way too technical for me, but what I understand of it is that two beams of protons will be whipped at each other at near light-speed. When they collide, it's supposed to create what everybody is referring to as "mini black holes" which will have amazing physical properties.

It was turned on today, and the basic initial tests went well (which means they know the protons move in the right directions). The first actual collisions will probably occur early next week.

Some people are saying that creating a gravity well, even a "mini" one, is a bad thing. There's a slight chance that the planet will get schlorped into oblivion, like a mosquito next to a shop-vac hose. Or, thanks to the quirks of Einstein's theory of relativity, we might survive it just fine from our own perspective, even though to the rest of the universe it will have looked like we vanished. Or maybe nothing will happen and some cool new scientific discoveries will be made. Who knows?

But I do plan on going for confession this week.
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