First Test of Hadron Collider

It is, most regrettably, the year 2008, and I, Dr. Watson Classen, have been informed that Europe has constructed a machine so large, so expensive, and so deeply buried beneath the Franco‑Swiss countryside that one must assume its creators wished to hide it from both God and common sense. This contraption, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is a circular tunnel stretching some 27 kilometers (or in other words, 16.78 miles), built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research — a group of individuals who appear convinced that the universe will reveal its secrets if sufficiently threatened.

The background of this device is simple enough: it was designed to accelerate protons to astonishing speeds and then collide them, all in the hope of recreating conditions similar to those of the early universe. I have always maintained that the early universe should remain precisely where it is — in the past — but modern scientists insist on dragging it into the present like an unruly houseguest.

On its first test, the Collider did not smash anything at all. Instead, it merely sent a beam of particles smoothly around its enormous ring, a feat the scientific community celebrated with the enthusiasm of men who have built a machine capable of catastrophic failure and are relieved it has not yet attempted such a thing. The newspapers declared the event a triumph of engineering, though I suspect they would declare a triumph if a man successfully tied his shoes while standing near the machine.

The test itself was uneventful: no explosions, no cosmic calamities, no sudden disappearance of Switzerland. The beam completed its circuit, the magnets behaved, and the scientists applauded as though they had personally prevented the collapse of reality. I, however, remain skeptical of any device that requires an entire nation’s worth of electricity merely to perform what amounts to a glorified lap around a tunnel. ¹