Wednesday, scientists will fire up the large hadron collider. In case you hadn’t heard of it, the Wiki:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
The LHC is the world’s largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator.[1] It is funded and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.
The LHC could potentially reveal the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson. Nicknamed the “God Particle,” the Higgs Boson gives things mass and could complete the Standard Model of particle physics. Hawking has $100 they don’t find it.
That said, scientists are rather hoping for something less expected. We could see an invalidation of string theory, emergence of a so-called “11th dimension,” or any number of curveballs to the assumptions of physics.
But us silly social scientists don’t understand this stuff anyway. To us, it’s just the end of the world. So drop a beat because it could be your last. On the bright side, lots of scientists are having terror sex tonight. Like Woody Allen says in Play it Again, Sam:
Allan: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday?
…Just something to chew on as you wait for the Large Hadron Collider to wipe out your college loans.
Terror sex? Hmmmm. I am reading “Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures” right now. It’s an account of three young UN staffers’ experiences in missions in Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Liberia, and I’m not sure how I feel about it as a whole just yet. The name is somewhat misleading, but it does include some very graphic accounts of UN staffers gettin’ it on as things blow up in the distance.