Oh, Black Hole, Thee we fear and adore!
or
The day the earth stood jittery.
The
CERN recently came to worldwide attention in a most flustering way: As a possible father of the
Eater Of The Worlds, aka
black hole.
The question is, what kind of danger really emerges from CERN's newest experiment, also known as the
Large Hadron Collider? And
large it really is. Buried, well out of sight in a depth of 50 to 175 meters under ground near Geneva, Switzerland, the 27 kilometer long
LHC is the largest machine ever build by mankind. And according to CERN officials, it is perfectly safe. But these denials do sound too rehearsed to contain the whole truth, don't they?
Please, read the whole article.
Really, do it!
(And have a look at
Timo Grubing's blog, who kindly made the illustrations!)
1 Introduction
The idea to produce black holes on earth is well known and it was discussed over the years by many well known authors. Dan Simmons in example, just to name one.
In
Hyperion, Simmons states a situation, where a black hole, accidentally created by a group of physicists, finally destroys the whole earth. In the proposed scenario, by the time of the
Great Mistake, mankind gladly is capable of interstellar travel and in possession of a not too small number of extraterrestrial colonies. In fact the larger part of mankind already does live off-earth by then.
Why is CERN doing its experiments now, giving us no chance to leave a possible collapsing earth? The dangers and possible consequences are well known!
What are the scientist's true intentions, to put all of our lives at stake?
2 The way of the CERN society
If you have a close look at CERN, you will find, that the
Large Hadron Collider is the logical conclusion in the long line of experiments, silently being performed since 1954, the founding year of the
European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is CERN's obscure, full name. Seen from this perspective, the production of black holes seems to be the ultimate goal of the CERN society.
But why do these scientists want to make those monsters of the cosmos so badly? Even at these risks? CERN still owes us an honest answer.
Some possible reasons are quite easy to guess, though:
3 Reasons
What benefit could a sealed off society of scientists, which CERN truly is, have in mind as a trade-off for mankind? Looking closely at CERN, one comes across some plausible reasons:
3.1 Energy source
CERN could try to use the black hole as a way to tap into the gigantic amounts of black, or
"dark" energy. Knowledge in managing an energy source of this extent is very small at best. It might well be a direct way to turn our planet into a burning hell.
A black hole would be
the perfect waste dump site you could imagine! Nothing you put in it will
ever re-emerge again. Not even nuclear radiation! If you really want to get rid of something,
anything from radioactive waste over exhaust gases to toxic or life-threatening material, a small black hole would be your best choice.
You could even use a small black hole as a perfectly secure office shredder. Not one single document would ever be retrievable.
Ever! Intelligence services all over the world would want their own black holes. And possibly more than just one each. Producing them will turn CERN into a goldmine! If you ever wondered over the vast
number of countries, funding the CERN, this idea will be a no-brainer.
3.3 Control of Earth's climate
If the black hole was sealed off from matter, it would still swallow infrared radiation (=heat). That way global warming could become controllable and eventually reversible. But at what cost? Since light is radiation, too, and therefore also swallowed by the black hole, possibly at the cost of a life in
eternal darkness!
One regularly ignored fact is, that the world's climate is a very fragile system. If the black hole being constructed at CERN is too large, it might actually get
too cold on earth to live. The point of absolute zero is -273°C. Not a single human was ever known to be alive after experiencing such temperatures. Mankind would be doomed!
3.4 Beaming & Time travel
Many physicists state, techniques, until now only known from popular science fiction, might be possible in the vicinity of a black hole. The mentioned techniques inspired
Philip Eisner to write his famous scenario of
Event Horizon. The political, commercial and economical potential in controlling technology allowing instant travel, possibly through time as well, does not need to be discussed at this point. Deploying thousands of Marines all over the world in no more than the blink of the eye should easily be worth the money CERN cost up till now.
3.5 Other reasons
There might be a huge number of other reasons, the people of CERN just don't want us to know. At best we will never know, at its worst, we all will. Terminally.
4 Further information
If you believe anything from my writing above, please read
CERN's press release and possibly the
Journal Of Physics' paper as well to get an idea of the real situation.
5 My intention
The enormous potential carried by the
CERN's black hole conspiracy (CBHC) for conspiracy theorists is formidable, 9/11 alone was good for more than 7 years now. Combining CBHC with 9/11 will bring our conspiracy-screwballs well through the next 20 years without any risk of boredom. I just wanted to write down some of the more obvious CBHCs to come, just to be able to say "I saw it coming," when it is time.
By the way, feel free to tell me of your ideas how to use a black hole in the comments section. I might add it to the article's list.
6 Word of thanks
A
big thank you goes to Timo Grubing, my most favourite illustrator, for the imposing illustrations! Have a look at
Timo's homepage and at
Grubismus, his art blog.
7 Disclaimer
No, this is not meant serious, you should have realized that some abstracts ago, anyway.
I'm sorry for all those who stopped reading half the way through the story and did not get my intention. But just as I told them, they should have read to the end.
The name comes from XBox Media Center. It was first developed for the Xbox and is now also available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. XBMC is best described as a media hub, and it is free!
When it started to rain I turned in my seat to close my window, catching the computer case with my knee, which left the sidepanel tilted sideways. The now falling coffee mug found the panel to be a nice springboard for it's final jump into the casing, spraying lukewarm coffee all over the innards.
