As the time remaining until the first true LHC experiment passes at a snail’s pace, the physicists in charge with the whole process are threatened to be killed by people who, in turn, fear for their lives.
There's little common knowledge regarding the LHC and physics in general. People generally think physics is too complicated and too unimportant for them, but when some physicist wannabes claim it can endanger their lives, they suddenly become experts and threats against real scientists are being issued.
A short reminder: LHC (the Large Hadron Collider) is a huge particle accelerator built by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1998 (almost 2 decades after the idea for it originally appeared), on an average 100 m under the border between Switzerland and France. It is comprised of 2 adjacent enormous beam pipes contained in a circular concrete tunnel with a circumference of 27 km (17 miles) and a diameter of 3.8 m.
Following some successful tests, on September 10th the first full-length beam will be circulated through the collider. The real, dreadful experiment that everyone seems to fear today, although very few understand what it's all about, is set to take place on October 21st. This will consist of colliding 2 particle beams traveling in opposite directions at the speed of light. The purpose of the endeavor is to recreate the conditions existent for the first milliseconds after the Big Bang, in order to finally obtain data on dark matter, dark energy and the Higgs boson (the God Particle). Dark matter hypothetically forms most of the mass of the universe. Opposed to gravity, dark energy is the force that pushes galaxies and other large celestial bodies away from each other, causing the universe to expand. The Higgs boson is the only particle of the standard model of physics that hasn't been observed yet and it is believed to hold matter together and to provide mass to all the other particles.
Negativists believe this experiment will result in the creation of an increasing black hole that will suck in the entire Earth (or even universe, some say). As fear increases, more and more scientific sources try to calm people down. As such, the History Channel has scheduled a show called "The next Big Bang" hosted by David E. Kaplan (professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, a particle theorist at Johns Hopkins) in order to deal with some false hypotheses that cause such fears.
Basically, the main idea behind all this appeasing movement relies on presenting facts as reasons for which the experiment can't go wrong. Besides the less comprehensive scientific explanations, before conceiving scenarios for the apocalypse (again), people should take into consideration some concrete premises. The project developed the biggest machine in all history which has cost more than $10 billion up to the current phase. It has been created by and it involves some of the most brilliant minds in physics, summing up more than 10.000 scientists (equivalent to the pyramids in workers) from about 75 countries (some say even more). It was built to be the device that can push physics further by certifying or changing the standard model and make epochal discoveries. Hopefully, this is enough for the readers of this article to be anxious rather than fearful when it comes to the outcome of the tests in October. See you after the experiment!
