The end of the World as we know it

So I will start off by stating the obvious (as has been stated in dozens of newspapers over the last few days) – it obviously was not the end of the world on the 10th September.

That was the day when at 9.30 am local time, 300 feet below ground near Geneva, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built became operational, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Concerns were expressed - in particular by the German chemist Professor Otto Rossler - that black holes created by the LHC will grow uncontrollably and "eat the planet from the inside".

These claims were dismissed by Prof Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University who said that the LHC is "feeble compared with what goes on in the universe. If a disaster was going to happen, it would have happened already."

Either way, these worries about the end of the universe seem to be pounced on as a newsworthy hook, but whatever the headline, I think it is great that a science story has been such a big part of the news coverage over the last week.

The £5 billion machine has been described as a 17-mile racetrack around which two streams of protons - building blocks of matter - run in opposite directions before smashing into one another. The protons will reach 99.99% of the speed of light. At the current time, sub atomic particles have just been fired around the tunnel, the first collisions are expected in a month.

I think the machine is absolutely amazing, and really hope that it will actually help to answer some of those remaining mysteries of the universe. Physicists hope to learn more about the origins of mass by learning about the Higgs boson — known as the “God particle” because it is thought to lend mass to matter. The LHC should also answer difficult questions about gravity and dark matter - the "glue" thought to hold the universe together.

I wonder what will happen if we do actually find the answer to all these questions though….