Ted Rall for April 05, 2008
April 03, 2008
April 07, 2008
Transcript:
The Swiss "large hadron collider" will smash protons to create the energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the big bang. The collider might produce a tiny black hole that could swallow the earth, or a "strangelet" that would convert our planet to a dead lump. Nice going, Ace! All 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the earth have ceased to exist. Jerk. What if it happens? Gov. Tom Kean will convene a blue-ribbon panel to meet in the cosmic void to investigate. We're already drafting subpoenas. The commission will publish a report for intelligent life forms, should they eventually evolve, to read. The black hole commission report. Also, there will be movie and graphic novel spin-offs of the book. It'll be totally cool.
derrelldurrett Premium Member about 16 years ago
I Love Ted Rall’s work. But the simple fact is that Nature has conducted this experiment repeatedly every day in virtually every segment of the universe since its inception (the notion that the conditions “last existed” a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang is just a touch misleading– it’s more accurate to say that the conditions that will be created in the LHC last predominated in the universe a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, which is completely different).
We’re still here, the Moon’s still there, as is Mars, etc.
We’re not going to die. At least not from rogue miniature black holes that don’t obey Hawking radiation nor from strangelets.
Really.