A Proposal!

[caraig]

Before the assembled -- gamers, journalers, writers, geeks, priests and purveyors of ObCultRefs, and the like -- I would like to make a proposal.

WHEREAS September 10th, 2008 is the day on which the Large Hadron Collider is fired up for the first time at CERN; and

WHEREAS, as Half-Life has taught us so very well, any experiment involving large scientific machinery that goes beyond 'bunsen burners,' will invoke some sort of Powers Beyond Mortal Ken; therefor; and

WHEREAS, as Hollywood has taught us so very well, any scientific experiments conducted underground invariably result in Something Bad;

THUS shall 10 September 2008 be hereby declared Resonance Cascade Day. In honor of this day, the serving of lambda-shaped cake is encouraged. Unless of course there really is a resonance cascade or such. In which case the cake would be a lie.

In all seriousness, I'm curious as to what views, if any, you folks have about the LHC experiment and if it's going to spell the doom of the world, if it will open up new frontiers of SCIENCE!, or if it's Satan's stargate and instead of Half-Life we get Doom. That's a rather grim prospect. I think I'd rather have Charlie Sheen in glasses trying to save the world with a crowbar, than The Rock blasting everything in his path (albeit with reasonable tactics) with a BFG.

And just for the record, yeah, I know the first collisions of the LHC won't be until sometime after October 21st, but the dates of the collisions probably won't be published. So September 10th is as good a day as any! Plus, the RHIC has been running just fine for quite some time without causing the end of the world (as we know it) (and I feel fine) so any fears are pretty well unjustified. We haven't been made extinct from quark-gluon plasma and collapsar-like gravitational micro-anomalies yet; hadrons and the Higgs boson aren't going to suddenly finish the job. =)

Comments

[ahicks.livejournal.com]

Might I recommend we all get these T-shirts for this monumentous occaision?

http://www.splitreason.com/product/538

Also, screw the crowbar. Give me a FUBar: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/home_journal_news/4256851.html

[tekenduis.livejournal.com]

I've been reading up on this (and a fair bit of other science related stuff lately) and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with "well, it's never happened before, so it's not terribly likely to happen now" as a justification.

On the other hand, it's probably quite true. ;)

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

It broke. We have a reprieve, but in the mean time make sure your firearms are cleaned and oiled. amunition is placed in convenient stacks on tables, shelves and drawers, and that you have a melee weapon handy just in case (as well as 3 days supply of water and canned food, and a tent, for you Californians.)

Scott