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!
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A tiny black hole that could eat the Earth. Neato.
ReplyDeleteAh, but that's what black holes do.
ReplyDelete-wendieO
Clearly someone was sleeping when their physics instructor covered the relationship between *mass* and *gravity*... :-)
ReplyDeleteBut 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...
I'm loving 'wackhood'.
ReplyDeleteK
Tom Cruise: I beg you, your honor, to stop the intergalactic consequences of this accelerator AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH!
ReplyDeleteJudge: Stop! Stop. You had me at "hello."
Tom: Um, wrong movie.
Judge: Oh. Rats.
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.
ReplyDeleteAnd 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:
ReplyDeleteIt 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 --