Is it the end of the world yet?
The Large Hadron Collider will be turned on today. Will it help physicists figure out how the universe began, or will it create a black hole and eradicate the earth? The first Global Catastrophic Risks Conference assessed the threat from the particle accelerator, as well as asteroid collisions, gamma ray bursts from supernovas, man-made nanobots replicating out of control, and everything connected to Google “waking up” and taking over the world. According to James Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, “The argument that I found convincing was that the nature of the risks of the Hadron Collider creating a catastrophe was on the same level at which you’re driving down the road and having your car spontaneously turn into a horse through simple quantum fluctuation.” (That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes and aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid.)
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 10th, 2008 at 12:39
Stephen Hawking has made a bet that they won’t find the Higgs. If he’s right then that thing has got to be the biggest waste of money since the Maginot Line.
September 10th, 2008 at 20:43
looks like Mr Hawking is 100 pounds richer.
September 10th, 2008 at 23:56
Reminds me of Carl Sagan’s Contact with the whole project thing goin on and the whole world awaiting how it all turns out to be. Maybe in the end Stephen Hawking will be bursting into a fit of evil laughter. Gee!
September 11th, 2008 at 07:33
Speaking of end-of-the-world scenarios, you guys may want to see if you can catch the new JJ Abrams-produced series called Fringe. It debuted on Fox last night. For those that were into The X-Files, this should be familiar territory–FBI agents in the dark about a vast conspiracy involving corporations that have “higher than Top Secret” security clearances, experiments with unwitting major populations as test subjects, etc. Good start for the show so far.