Next Wednesday is Big Bang Day.
CERN will start testing the Large Hadron Collider to re-create the atmophere that occurred just after the Big Bang. Eventually, they'll be smashing proton beams into each other at nearly the speed of light in a 17-mile tunnel below ground. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Not only will this provide a better idea about what the Universe was like right after the Big Bang, but physicists are also hoping to see evidence that their ideas about string theory and what comprises the Universe are on the right track. BBC Radio 4 and CERN itself will have all-day coverage, if you're interested.
Oddly there are critics who think the attention paid to this is dumbing it down for the masses. I don't get that. Why should scientific revelations be reserved for only a few people to know about? And since we all live in the Universe, I'd hope we'd all want to know more about it and its origins. That's why I like reading books by people like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku because they make an effort to explain this stuff to people like me who have no background in physics.
In case you're worried that the world will end as a result of this experiment, be not afraid. Although there's a possibility the experiment will produce microscopic black holes, they apparently will only exist for a "nano-nano-nanosecond" and cause no harm at all. Collisions like this are happening all the time in the Universe anyway, and on a much greater energy scale, so if they really were harmful, we'd be obliterated already. That's the story I'm believing, anyway. If you want to go for the "maybe we've been obliterated already and our reality is a collective illusion," carry on. I'm going to make tea.
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