Hi. I write comedy columns and this is my first blog. Hope you enjoy it.

The End is Nigh – September 10th 2008 actually (CERN have announced switch on date)

By wilyoldfool

Everyone knows the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 and was computed by the most powerful computer in the universe, Deep Thought. Everyone except it seems a bunch of international scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Over the last ten years they have somehow persuaded their respective governments to shell out 3 billion pounds of taxpayers’ money to build their own version of Deep Thought, called LHC – the Large Hadron Collider. It is the latest design of particle accelerator built inside a 17-mile long doughnut shaped tunnel 100 metres beneath an alp on the French Swiss border near Geneva. In it they plan to accelerate particles to near light speed and smash them to bits in an attempt to recreate conditions at the “Big Bang.”

Many good things have resulted from CERN’s research in the past, including two Nobel prizes and the World Wide Web, invented in 1990 by scientist Tim Berners-Lee. But according to some scientific minds, and some that are not, including mine, CERN’s scientists now seem intent on Armageddon.

They believe the “Big Bang Theory” describes how our present universe began approximately 13.7 billion years ago and plan to recreate the event. I’m sure most people think the scientists know what they are doing, but I can’t help thinking the re-creation of the “Big Bang” will create… well… a big bang.

Scientific theories that claim the experiment will create black holes and swallow up the planet have been dismissed by CERN, but there are other theories that have never been disproved, including one of my own, that in an earlier universe 13.7 billion years ago, the last words ever spoken were, “Ok, all seems well. You can switch it on now.”

When asked to explain our universe and its creation, one of the boffins was quoted as saying, “We know about four percent, but don’t even know what we don’t know of the rest,” and went on to assure the public the experiment will pose no danger.

Hmm… When I did my GCEs I seem to remember four percent was not the pass mark in any subject, and a ninety six percent lack of knowledge of your chosen subject wouldn’t get you a job frying burgers, never mind one as a scientist. But a ninety six percent lack of knowledge about our universe is of no concern to CERN.
They switched on the LHC in mid June 2008 with the first collisions planned to take place 2 months later. Call me a cowardly sceptic, but until the percentages are reversed, I would much prefer my Hadron’s uncollided thank you very much.

I would like to think the EU would carry out a risk assessment before someone presses the start button, because it will be held responsible if anything goes wrong, and the cost of claims for damages and injuries caused by a rampant black hole would be astronomic. Also, I’m no expert, but knowing insurance companies are reluctant to pay out for damages caused by acts of God, I’ll bet they are even more reluctant to pay out for damages caused by acts of mad scientists.

This is of course assuming anyone making a claim is a resident of a habitable planet somewhere in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri or beyond, because if a black hole is created, it will have devoured our entire solar system in about half a millisecond, leaving little time for Earth residents to fill out a claim form.

So, it seems possible that in mid September 2008 Earth will be the epicentre of a bang bigger than anything a Vogon spaceship’s arsenal could deliver, suffer spaghettification in a giant black hole, or nothing unusual will happen. One of CERN’s scientists summed up the latter quite nicely when asked, “And if the experiment doesn't work?”
"We will have assembled the world's most expensive piece of modern art,” he said. Let’s hope he’s right.

Copyright wilyoldfool 2008