Outsmarting the CERNageddon
It’s a sunny summer day in Geneva, Switzerland. The birds are singing as lovers canoodle near the Jet d’Eau. Somewhere, someone is listening to techno music a little too loudly.
Nearby, 570 feet belowground, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, hums away at full power, whipping up lead atoms to near the speed of light before slamming them into protons to see how they explode. The 17-mile tunnel generates 14 trillion electron volts at a collision point six thousandths of an inch across. It is the largest and most powerful machine ever built by humans and the signature scientific experiment of the 21st century.
Suddenly, the ground begins to rumble. It shakes and then rends apart, as if ruptured by a monster deep within. There isn’t even time to scream before the earth gives way—pulled inward at terrifying speed—carrying lovers, fountain, and techno music down into the horrible maw of blackness that was once our planet’s core. In seconds, it’s over. Earth has evaporated into an empty black nothingness.
This was the doomsday scenario put before physicists in 2008, as the LHC was revving up for its first run. Fed by news reports morbidly fascinated by apocalyptic scenarios, the public was genuinely
