LONDON post November 2008 (click on image to enlarge )
December 21, 2012 was the day the Mayans have predicted for the end of the world.
Western man attempted to defy the cosmic math of the ancients by flicking on a beam of subatomic particles in Geneva’s 17-mile-long circle called the Large Hadron Collider. Some doomsdayist had feared the ‘Why Machine’s proton collisions might open a black hole, which would swallow the Earth, however the experiment seemingly worked to perfection as protons orbited the circuit to re-create the moment of creation only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Scientists reviewing initial data admitted that they had no idea what the data meant, although most are interested in delving into so-called ‘dark matter’ which theoretically makes up 25% of the known universe.
Actually yesterday’s experiment was a small sampling of the collider’s potential 5 trillion electron volts.
The big test occurred that November.
The cost of this collider was $8 billion dollars or 4 days for the War in Iraq.
In 1993 the United States Congress showed its taste for the future by cancelling America’s super-collider which was projected to cost around $11 billion with a completion date in 2001.
$11 billion is about 5 days in Iraq.
But at least my shoes are safe in a US Airport.