Don't cross the streams!!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad”?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
--Ghostbusters (1984)

So two things.

1. I got the time wrong. It the LHC experiment was run at 5pm today.
2. The world didn't end!!

So apparently they only turned it on. They didn't do any exciting stuff like crossing the streams. Apparently they're going to do that in a couple of months. I don't know how many more 150ft marshmallow men we need, but I'd like to know those "scientists" check, double-check and recheck their calculations.

Here's a picture of some part of this machine. More at the link below....


Links:

• Pic from http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html
• Ask a Cern expert about black holes here.

End of the world?

Tomorrow morning, around 5am Australian Eastern Time, the propellerheads at the CERN laboratory in Geneva will be activating their Large Hadron Collider

A Large Hadron Collider.

What this means to non-nuclear physicists is that they are essentially turning on a machine that is 27km in diameter, and then "throwing" two particles at each other and watching them go boom. Why? well to "provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe."

There is apparently an infinitesimally small chance they might accidentally create a black hole. In Geneva. But don't worry, the men in the white coats and hard hats assure us that this has been "universally ridiculed by the experts involved in the project"

To commemorate life on earth, I present a YouTube sent in by a reader. Happy Life everyone! and if there's a world around tomorrow, I'll be sure to keep annoying you.