Not By Fire

Hey, we’re still here. And my broadband connection has come back. So much for the naysayers who predicted the end of the world when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on. I guess they can come down from the mountaintops now, and dispense with the sackcloth and ashes.

Or maybe not, because so far the scientists at CERN are just testing their new toy. They don’t start smashing fundamental particles into each other at tremendous and possibly world-destroying energies (or not) until next month.

(If you want to know what might happen if the naysayers had been right, you might care to check out my short story ‘How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen’. Currently available here or in an audio version, until I get around to coding it I’m afraid. (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.))

I was pleased by the blanket coverage of actual science in the media, but do find it rather worrying that the only way scientists can get any real attention these days is to be wrongly accused of plotting to blow up the world. If we keep up this inattention it really will be over for us, as a species because we need a whole bunch of cleverness to get us out the mess stupid applications of good ideas have gotten us into.