{"id":321,"date":"2008-09-09T18:16:17","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T23:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/?p=321"},"modified":"2008-09-09T19:32:16","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T00:32:16","slug":"large-hadron-collider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/posts\/2008\/09\/09\/large-hadron-collider\/","title":{"rendered":"Large Hadron Collider"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The world&#8217;s most powerful particle-accelerator, the <a href=\"http:\/\/lhc.web.cern.ch\/lhc\/\">Large Hadron Collider<\/a>, is scheduled to be switched on for the first time tomorrow.  There are assorted kooks who believe that the LHC will <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Safety_of_the_Large_Hadron_Collider\">destroy the world<\/a> in one or more of the following ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Create a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Micro_black_hole\">microscopic black hole<\/a> which will devour the Earth.<\/li>\n<li>Trigger the hypothetical <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/False_vacuum\">vacuum metastability disaster<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Create a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Strangelet\">strangelet<\/a> that will devour the Earth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The whole thing is reminiscent of the fear many years ago that the first atomic bomb test would burn the entire atmosphere of the planet.<\/p>\n<p>There another possibility that the kooks don&#8217;t seem to have considered.  The LHC may open a gateway to a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Half-Life_(video_game)\">parallel universe full of evil creatures<\/a>.<figure id=\"attachment_322\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-322\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/34481.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/34481-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"In the background... isn't that Dr. Gordon Freeman of the disastrous Black Mesa project?\" title=\"Dr. Gordon Freeman\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/34481-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/34481.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-322\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the background... isn't that Dr. Gordon Freeman of the disastrous Black Mesa project?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bigpicture\/2008\/08\/the_large_hadron_collider.html\">Here<\/a> is a page with some really amazing pictures of the LHC under construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The world&#8217;s most powerful particle-accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is scheduled to be switched on for the first time tomorrow. There are assorted kooks who believe that the LHC will destroy the world in one or more of the following ways: Create a microscopic black hole which will devour the Earth. Trigger the hypothetical vacuum [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[18,16,17],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny","category-tech","tag-doomsday","tag-half-life","tag-large-hadron-collider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}