Conditions
remain the same today, though collisions do not, at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) near Geneva Switzerland. (The particle collider
facility also runs through a section of France in that general
vicinity and is operated by the European scientific group called
CERN.) Particle collisions is what they do and they do it well. Today
is a normal day, an ordinary day; quiet, peaceful, even sane. There
is a lot to be said for the mundane. Too bad no one is saying it but
the “ordinary” does not make headline front page news and it does
not pay well either.
The scientists there work
feverishly every day for a chance to make a name for themselves by
creating new particles to parade around for all of mankind to marvel
at their creations and their genius. The Higgs-boson discovery in
2012 was an eye opener. The Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon
Solenoid experiment is open to the public to admire. The
Higgs-to-bottom quark coupling was extraordinary. It was the
experiment to date that is sending us on our way to bigger and better
particle findings. We are looking for black holes, dark matter and
dark energy as we speak.
Every day is a good day to explain
what our universe is made of and what makes it work. Scientists take
it apart bit by bit for show and tell.
In the most simplistic
terms: The standard model claims that everything in the universe is
made from basic building blocks called “fundamental particles”
that are governed by 4 forces:
Gravity, electromagnetic,
weak nuclear and strong nuclear. These 4 forces work over different
ranges and have different strengths. The new particles being worked
on today, if they exist, would not be the description of the Standard
Model. The science might lead to a whole new area of particle
physics. It could also lead to the discovery of a 5th. Fundamental
particle.
It is time to move on to the matter at hand. A small
group of criminal quasi-would-be-scientists just woke up to a new day
from their not too kind dreams. They would have been better served to
stay asleep in their beds on this fine day, which was quickly
accelerating into a nightmare. They were a group of misfits living
and working in an illegal particle creation lab in upstate New York.
I wish we could say it was a particle accelerator facility but it was
not. It was a run down factory and they were out to make anything for
a buck. Some of them actually had a diploma or GED from some place or
another.
Conditions were spiraling out of control. A strange
blue substance, a thick gelatinous product or brew had been expanding
over night. It was now growing, overflowing from the copper vats onto
the concrete floor of the abandoned work site, hidden mostly by oak
trees and situated by the remote river bank, which was only now
rising higher than usual. The product or material was a highly toxic,
dangerous invention that quickly ate through the floor. These wacky
individuals who created the stuff began to run in circles. They were
five grown men in their thirties scampering about and screaming like
babies at the top of their lungs over what they had done. The
situation was beyond their control. What have they created?
It
wasn't like they were scientists from the CERN facility in
Switzerland, who at any moment of the day could create tiny black
holes with their sophisticated collider. Any one of which could
destroy the Earth in minutes. Any one of those miniature sub atomic
black holes could instantly, with their newly created weight and
heavy mass, pass easily right through our planet to its core and
destroy us one and all. There would be nothing to stop it.
This
newly invented blue glob like material seems to be doing just that.
New York is as good a place as any to put an end the world. As the
hysterical men looked down the newly formed hole, they could see no
end in sight. The substance was well on its way to the center of the
Earth. It would surely disrupt the electromagnetic dynamics of our
planet.
It is funny how these men from CERN and these idiots
from New York don't ask for a show of hands or ask the question, “Hey
boys and girls, would anyone here mind if we tamper with the forces
of nature by breaking the laws of the universe and perhaps in the
process destroy our world and all of us in it?”
We might
respond in kind, “Do you have an alternate planet in mind where we
might reside?” “Could we see a show of hands?”
Authors
note: This story is not far from reality.