Bad news on the Large Hadron Collider front: a short circuit could delay its scheduled restart, which would have happened right about now, for “days or even weeks,” according to BBC News.<!–more–>
Now, while this is mostly par for the course, some people are actually relieved that the LHC’s reboot has been delayed. Why? Well, because some believe running the collider at double the power could lead to an “extinction level event” or, worse, open up a portal to Hell.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard doomsday theories surrounding the LHC. Not only were concerns raised back in 2008, but in 2012 one woman took her case to court in an attempt to shut down the entire operation, in fear that the particle accelerator would create a black hole and swallow the Earth!
But maybe that black hole business isn’t too far off. According to Phys.org (referencing a recently published study), “the key to finding parallel universes may come from detecting miniature black holes at a certain energy level. The detection of the mini black holes would indicate the existence of extra dimensions, which would support string theory and related models that predict the existence of extra dimensions as well as parallel universes.”
Now, if you know me, you know where my mind goes when I hear about CERN and the creation of “miniature black holes.” That’s right; John Titor, Internet time traveler extraordinaire. Although, to be fair, Faizal clarifies in the same article that they’re not talking about parallel universes in the context of Many-worlds, but rather universes in extra dimensions. We’ll see.
As for the doomsday scenarios, those will always be in the air. About this time last year, concerns were raised over the upgrade of another super collider, Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Realistic Heavy Ion Collider. In that case, certain “experts” warned of the creation of black holes and killer strangelets, which could hypothetically turn Earth into a giant blob of “strange matter.” This, as far as I can tell, didn’t happen.
Regarding the “gates of Hell,” I believe the fear, from what I’ve read, is that the discovery of these “parallel universes” will open a portal allowing dark entities to enter our world, similar to what I discussed in another post? Apparently, those fears are still present.
At any rate, whenever CERN’s LHC does restart, it will do so with double its previous energy. What will we discover then?
