Large Hadron Collider: What the?

The project has actually been ongoing for quite some time now and it's only these past few days that it's given the spotlight.

Though the Large Hadron Collider is far from what you'd call a gadget, for purposes of discussion (and because I want to join in on the bandwagon) I'm going to post a little something about the LHC. Oh and because HowStuffWorks already posted "Will the LHC Destroy the World" which I greatly enjoyed reading, I'll be looking at another topic.

Remember the Y2K bug? The threat of the Y2K bug was plausible. The threat was so real, people can taste it and then what did the people to do? Well, the skeptics made money out of it of course! Customized Y2k shirts came flying around the market as well as mugs and other merchandise.

The thing with the Large Hadron Collider is that even the scientists aren't sure of what might happen. And the description of the possible offset of the LHC proves something to be alarmed about. We won't be seeing just a small smoke here. We're talking about a black hole disrupting the balance of the Universe and possibly ending existential life. That is of course, blowing things completely out of proportion since the chances of that happening is close to nil. Strangelets, those little things they say would eat up the Earth is still largely hypothetical.

The doomsayers are funny though. They're wasting no time in spreading the scare in an effort to get something out of this. Meh. But it's amusing to see what the hype is doing to everyone's humor. It wasn't just once that I read "Large Hardon Collider" the motivational posters are all over the net.

But ultimately, what does the success of LHC mean to us? It means knowledge advancement. It's uncovering something we don't know and it's overthrowing the things we do know to make way for the truth. That's really all there is to think about it.