AND YOU THINK YOU'VE GOT PROBLEMS

This is the Large Hadron Collider. It is located 330 feet underground on the French-Swiss border. It makes subatomic particles go really fast and, like, crash into each other, sort of like a giant pinball machine, if you can imagine a pinball machine where the balls are
.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001" thick.

A bunch of scientists are are going to start up the pinball machine this summer, and play a few rounds of Space Attack and Jupiter Lady and Foto Finish. This will involve accelerating various mesons, muons, and morons to speeds approaching that of light, then making them crash into each other. (It's kind of a guy thing.)

Among those professionally involved in the project, there exists a minority opinion that may be summarized as follows:

Stop.

Stop Now.

Before you destroy the entire world.

*

The idea is that the Collider will cause the subatomic particles to crash into each other with such force that the collisions may cause mini black holes. Ordinarily, these little buggers are of no concern, since they tend to whiz by at a good clip. The trouble is, if you make mini-black holes under the earth, they might hang around and glom onto each other like bits of bubble bath suds in a tub, growing bigger and bigger until they cause a problem, such as the destruction of the planet.

There are several ways this could come about. If the black hole is small, the planet could be slurped through it and come out really long and skinny. If it's a big black hole--that is, if it sort of tears the fabric of space-time wide open and we go drifting through it--we might not know anything was wrong at all. This is because we'd have no way to compare our present state with the earlier one. You could wake up next to George Clooney or Diane Lane and think, "The thrill is gone."

The most likely scenario, however, if the worst happens, is that we'll simply disappear with a sort of a popping sound and that will be it. Stick your index finger into your mouth, inflate your cheeks, and then flip your finger out of your mouth and you'll get the idea.

Most of the scientists types there say this is all a lot of nonsense. They can't wait to crank up this giant pinball machine. They will start it some time in July. The thing is so huge that it won't be running full speed until September.

That's when the games will begin.

All I have to say on the subject is this:

Somebody better be really handy with the flippers.