They’ve turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the planet hasn’t been eaten by any macroscopic black holes. Which is weird, because a bunch of idiots said that the opposite would happen and populist science has such a great track record. There’s at least a little interest in the JBlogosphere, plus an ongoing Israel angle that MR actually has a video up for:
It probably won’t turn out to be quite as exciting as a black hole swallowing up planet earth, but the world’s largest ever experiment, which kicks off on Wednesday, is still likely to take human knowledge a thrilling leap forward. Three of the 30 Israeli professors, students and technicians who have taken part in preparations for the historic launch of the gargantuan particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, are already at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) site spanning the Swiss and French borders.
MR’s fearless prediction: Hawking’s wrong on both counts. The LHC will find the Higgs boson – for which CERN has already found experimental hints – but it won’t find any exotic superpartners. In the aftermath, string theorists will be spun off to newly formed but awkwardly named “kind of applied math” departments, where they will be joined by theoretical methodologists from economics and communication.
The upside of this is that if I’m right I’m going to look great. The downside is that this post has the phrase “Hawking’s wrong,” which means it’ll probably be getting scrubbed from the backend some time in mid-2009.
References:
* Scientific progress goes ghostbusters [Soccer Dad]
* LHC – Large Hadron Collider countdown and black holes [Simply Jews]
* God from the (atom smashing) machine? [JPost]
* Most Ambitious And Delicate Physics Experiments Ever: “It’s All Israeli Development” [Video] [MR]
* Physicists firing up atom-smasher [The Age]
Previously:
* Neat – NASA Foolishly Equips Planet-Hopping Robot With Nuclear Power and Laser Beams
* Neat – Liquid Moon Mirrors
* Water On Mars!!!
