FANZINE

Step right up folks, lets give the particles a little push, and there, off they go, running like two subatomic lemmings fast as they can till they smash one another to bits. It was a gamble, would we learn the secrets of the big bang? or… um…  accidentally create a microscopic black hole that could suck the entire world right down the tube? There were those fears.

This drawing, while it looks appropriately like Pat Sajak’s Wheel of Fortune, is a representation (okay a loose one… ha) of the half section of the Hadron accelerator, which had its first go yesterday. To get an idea of the ring racetrack, and its massive scale, go to this video on the Telegraph UK (and they kind of trump me in reporting too). I keep thinking about Hula Hooping as a kid, and that pea they’d put in there that’d spin around as you shook your booty to make it make noise. Well just think two peas, tiny as they could be, spun round in opposite directions (hard to do that with the Hula Hoop) in a HUGE enclosed ring until… well what did we learn? I hope we don’t all run down the drain. Feel any tug today? More on this as we learn more of the facts and figures. Scientists threw some darts in/at a project that cost close to 10 billion dollars, but I bet it pays off.

-Lee Renic