Should we be worried?

I don't want to worry anyone but . . . it's possible that sometime next summer the universe as we know it could come to a sudden end.

That's when the good folk at the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN) will switch on their giant particle collider and attempt to recreate the conditions of the early universe.

It's taken them years of work and zillions of euros to create this giant scary experiment whose outcome no physicist can be sure of.

Scientists connected with the project openly admit they haven't a clue what will happen. Some think nothing will occur. Others think it could be something big.

It's possible it could be something very big.

Even the top brass at CERN sound a little pessimistic in their comments. “We are now in the endgame,” says Lyn Evans, at CERN, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider.

I guess the only consolation is that if there is an artifically induced BIG BANG it will all be over in a nanofraction of a second.

Here's a New York Times article on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/science/15cern.html?ex=1336881600&en=7...