Well under most normal circumstances you wouldn’t normally be reading up on this stuff but their latest experiment, to recreate the conditions right after the “Big Bang”, could have some quite adverse side affects. Black Holes, which some people are claiming could destroy the earth. Nice !

Er… OK…

CERN comprises of 20 member states, of which the United Kindgom is one, all playing a part in the development of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) a $6billon “experiment”, which looks like something straight out of Stargate SG-1.

They are hoping that by using the 27Km circumference particle accelerator located some 100m underground they can smash particle’s together to re-create a very elusive particle. The Higgs Boson, so crucial to the understanding of the universe that it has been dubbed “The God Particle”. As one scientist simply stated “It is what makes stuff stuff…”.

However some scientist’s are expressing concerns over the possible side affects of this experiment. Tiny black holes. Stating that if these black hole’s fail to decay the consequences are unfathomable.

It all sounds rather scary and take’s some digging around to actually find any information on it. So when is this experiment scheduled to take place ? Well the official CERN press release sites November 2007 as a possible start date. So I guess we’ll see if a bunch of 20 European scientists get it right in December, they even wrote a 20 page document detailing ” … no basis for any conceivable threat.”

I mean the World Wide Web works…. right ?

Update : New start-up scheduled for May 2008
Update : Start-up has been pushed back until later in 2008, read about the LHC milestones
Update : Start-up looks set for September 10th, 2008
Update : LHC has been fired up ! (Will fears of earth-gobbling black-holes be unfounded ? )
Further Reading :

CERN on the Wiki
LHC on the Wiki
“The God Particle” on the Wiki
Official CERN website
The LHC experiment on the CERN Website
The Six Billion Dollar Experiment on the BBC
“World’s Largest Supercollider Could Destroy the Universe” - Tech & Free Press website