When Worlds Collide

By the time you read this, we may already have been sucked into a black hole created by the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which is in France – er, I mean Switzerland – er, some of each, apparently. (Must be some kind of tax scam, like those “duty-free” stores at airports.) But – you’ll say – in that case, I won’t be reading this, ‘cause I won’t exist any longer. Not necessarily! We don’t really know what goes on inside of black holes (although listening to a speech by George Bush provides a few clues). We could get sucked into one, and still be living pretty much the way we are now, and doing pretty much the same things – but on a much smaller scale. For example your brain might wind up the size of Jimmy Carter’s. (But wait – his would be smaller too. Oh, never mind.) But hey, in any case it’s all in the name of “science”, and as we all know, “science” can do no wrong. (Well, there was that small matter of the atom bomb, but the only people who got hurt were little yellow devils, so that was OK too.)

BTW, and all kidding aside, a very interesting book on the whole cutting-edge particle physics issue is one by Lisa Randall called "Warped Passages". Did I understand all of it? Heck no. But it did provide some intriguing clues, and it made a pretty good case for the LHC (once we get over the black hole issue, that is).