Saturday, March 29, 2008

Science Fiction Saturday

I haven't yet read this article, but I love the combination of matter-of-factness and wackhood in its summary on the Times's front page:

Two men are pursuing a lawsuit to stop scientists from using a giant particle accelerator, saying it could create a black hole that might eat up the Earth.
I think this would make a great movie -- "Twelve Angry Men" meets "War of the Worlds." John Grisham and James Cameron could collaborate on the script, and can't you see Tom Cruise as a lawyer grandstanding before a judge, begging him with all the intensity in those blue eyes to stop the intergalactic consequences of this accelerator AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH? (Insert your own Scientology/handling the truth joke here.) It would be kind of awesome, assuming we're not all in a black hole.

Happy Saturday, all!

7 comments:

  1. A tiny black hole that could eat the Earth. Neato.

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  2. Ah, but that's what black holes do.

    -wendieO

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  3. Clearly someone was sleeping when their physics instructor covered the relationship between *mass* and *gravity*... :-)

    But if the super-collider *could* make a micro black hole, our energy crisis could be forever solved. Nothing offers energy potential like a black hole...

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  4. I'm loving 'wackhood'.

    K

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  5. Tom Cruise: I beg you, your honor, to stop the intergalactic consequences of this accelerator AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH!

    Judge: Stop! Stop. You had me at "hello."

    Tom: Um, wrong movie.

    Judge: Oh. Rats.

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  6. My husband is one of the evil scientists--oops, I meant to write physicists--on the experiment in question. He's well aware of this kook.

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  7. And yet, Emily Dickinson was no kook, and she also worried, starting when she was a child, that messing with a single atom could bring about total destruction:

    It troubled me as once I was --
    For I was once a Child --
    Concluding how an Atom -- fell --
    And yet the Heavens -- held --

    The Heavens weighed the most -- by far --
    Yet Blue -- and solid -- stood --
    Without a Bolt -- that I could prove --
    Would Giants -- understand?

    Life set me larger -- problems --
    Some I shall keep -- to solve
    Till Algebra is easier --
    Or simpler proved -- above --

    Then -- too -- be comprehended --
    What sorer -- puzzled me --
    Why Heaven did not break away --
    And tumble -- Blue -- on me --

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