Warning: Scientific Content Ahead (sort of)

The other day, several blogs were abuzz about the possibility of reality coming to an end in the blink of an eye. Or faster. Unlike the last time, the Catholic Church was not involved. Hooray for us. At the same time, while people were taking to the streets, gnashing their teeth, tugging at their hair and fondling beating their breasts, there was a lot of "Wait, how does this thing work? What's it looking for again?"

Enter the scientist to answer these questions.

What the Large Hadron Accelerator was looking to do was to recreate the conditions that occured shortly after the Big Bang. Now, we are fairly sure we have an idea--sort of--of how things were right before the Event that Inspired Creation, however, there's a lot of things that we don't understand yet, like, how did gravity form. It's something we take advantage of every day, and yet, we have very little idea how or even why gravity is here. We know how it works, we know how to overcome it, we even have all sorts of equations to describe its interaction--the equation even has it's own constant...you know we're dealing with serious science here if a constant is involved.

So, here's the deal. At the Beginning of It All, everything in the universe--you, me, horses, Saturn, the Crab Nebula, Boba Fett--we were all crushed into a tiny little space in the middle of nowhere. Except, you and me, we weren't. In fact, our atoms and molecules even weren't. We were just energy. And the space we were moving around in? Take a pencil, sharpen it as sharp as you can get it, and barely touch it to a piece of paper. See that dot? Shrink by about a thousand. That's how big all the matter in the entire universe was when it was crammed together.

I made this allegory over at Falwless' blog, and I'll repeat it here and expand upon it. Think back to college. Think back to your typical dorm party. Everyone in the dorm is there, right? Plus, lots of others. You've got people from the next dorm, from across the quad, townies, professors who refuse to acknowledge they're not young anymore, and a keg. Everyone is crammed next to one another, hardly anyone else can fit in the room, the music is blaring, and basically all you can do is wiggle around in a sort of "dance". That's what the Universe was like prior to the Big Bang, except with a lot less egregious ass-grabbing.

Now think of the Big Bang as security showing up, busting the keg. When that happens, everyone disperses. As people are stumbling out of the room, they're drunk, lonely, horney, still looking for a good time...everything. Some people head off to couple up. Some people head back to their dorm room with some friends to keep the party going. Some people fly off by themselves, some people couple up and then get real kinky and pair off with another couple. Some people go for a walk to clear their head. Some people run around Halas Hall with "Styx Rules" scrawled across their chest in black marker. Some people get together and bang a townie named Joyce.

But, everyone goes somewhere and does something. The couples who go off and bang are akin to interstellar hydrogen. It just hangs out, doing its own thing, glowing afterwards. The people heading off to their room to start the party back up are kind of like stars forming. The people who wander off alone are sort of like dark matter--nobody knows what's up with them, but they know they're out there. The guy dashing around the dorm with Styx Rules? Yeah, he's an interstellar body, orbiting a larger body. The guys riding the train called Joyce? A planetary system.

The thing is, all of these interactions have a reason. It might be that the people (particles) are in love, or are stupid, or are brooding, or what have you. We don't know. Every person (or particle) goes off and does its own thing. Some are needy, some are Emo. The thing is, all of these interactions took place millionths or billionths of a second after the Event occured. Talk about a lack of staying power...

What the Large Hadron Collider is trying to simulate is that millionths or billionths of a second, post-Event. They're taking sub-atomic particles and accelerating them at speeds pretty close to the speed of light and letting them smash into each other, hoping that, when they do, they'll catch a glimpse of the dorm party energy that was pulsing prior to the Big Bang. With luck and further experiments, they'll be able to see how that energy interacts with itself to form the very basic foundation for matter creation (remember, matter is stuff with mass...again with the Catholic Church).

Unfortunately, some folks were worried that a black hole would open up under the French/Swiss border and swallow us whole. There was a (approximately) one-in-fifty million chance of that happening, but there was a chance nonetheless. When the media got ahold of it, they tried to incite riots. Obviously, we're safe, but I know some people are still worried that creation could be destroyed, plenary indulgence-style.

Again, enter the scientist, this time to allay your fears.

If you are one of those worried people, you can always ask the question: Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed The World Yet? Keep checking the site to allay your fears.