Archie Verdune
12-14-2012, 04:52 PM
The Large Hadron Collides
It was the worst day of Professor Higgins’ life, which was a surprise even to him as three weeks earlier he had initiated the catastrophe that would end all life on the planet, and eventually the galaxy. What could be worse than that you may well ask, and for The Prof it was all a matter of timing.
You see, his friend Fritz (another professor, they all are) had just given him the projected data for when the black-hole they had created would go critical and start to swallow the earth. It would achieve the size of a small pin-head on the morning of the twenty-first of December two-thousand-and-twelve.
By which time it would start to consume first the building and by mid-day breach the Earth’s crust. The entire planet would be gone by mid-night; mid-night on that most ridiculous of dates. Both he and Fritz silently stared at each other as The Prof motioned him to sit.
Fritz helped himself another martini from the jug as he sat and tried to think of what to tell his cohorts; they deserved to know, as did everyone, when the end would come. But it was so damned incredible for it to be on that date.
They had already decided to tell the world so everyone would have the chance to mend bridges and make peace with their families; though someone with a bit more social-savvy could well predict a riot. It didn’t matter in the end because however he died it couldn’t be any worse than being stretched to infinity whilst being crushed to nothing.
That was the only bonus of creating a black-hole; they now understood how it came to be, and why it was reacting as it was. You see, in order to create the hole they had to smack quarks off each other at light-speed; with an unforeseen fly in the ointment.
During one of the many quark-attacks an anomaly showed its face, a particle of anti-matter got caught directly in the line of fire. Yes they also discovered anti-matter thus proving the existence of space-time; quite a day they had. And they celebrated it like a New-York Irishman on Paddy’s Day.
A week later the celebration came to a swift end when the reality of the situation became apparent. Fritz had discovered that the anti-matter particle had somehow reversed its polarity and was now acting gravitationally. It was pulling in all the surrounding anti-matter particles, forming a tiny little orb of nothing.
Of course that orb wouldn’t be tiny for long, there would be no escape; which was one of the reasons the professors had decided to let it be known to the masses. People would try, well people with access to space-shuttles and such would try, but the Moon would only be a couple of days behind and Mars a matter of weeks.
Several martinis later Fritz and The Prof made their way to the main conference hall where they had called all the plant personnel together; the quicker they got it over and done with the better.
The obvious questions followed his announcement; can we stop it? Can we get away? And suchlike. They had already tried everything within their means, bombarding it with every particle they could muster and even several pounds of C4, which went off like a damp squib, its energy sucked into the void.
Nothing could affect it in any way, but The Prof knew that as soon as the Governments found out they would want it destroyed and inevitably settle on the nuclear option. Alas, that was also futile; based on all their calculations it was indeed an immovable object and would stay exactly where it had been created, only getting bigger.
Then, over the murmur of the crowd a lone voice rang out, the voice of dissention; it was Gertrude Hassel.
“So, can we bring it forward then?” she asked.
Okay, so she may have had some pretty obvious character quirks, like her scientific need to be right which was compounded by that overwhelming female desire to prove everyone else wrong. But in this case she had only said what they all were thinking, that date, that stupid, ridiculous, damned date. The numpties had been going on about it for years, how the Mayans had ended their calendar thereby predicting the end of the world.
Now she knew, as well as everyone else that could read and had access to the internet, that the Mayans hadn’t actually predicted anything. All they had done was stop calculating their calendar, a fairly sensible move when you’re carving it in stone. Even the eejit who wrote down the biggest ever number stopped somewhere, he could have added another digit, but didn’t; and he was using a pencil.
So, for the first time ever, all the massive IQ’s and egos in the building were united, the muppets couldn’t have it, something had to be done. A flurry of ideas flew around the hall; release a biological weapon, nuke Yellowstone, poke the Arabs and the Jews, tell the Chinese that the Americans don’t have the money to buy their country back.
It took Fritz, well tipsy by now, to show them the error of their ways.
“Let the Drones have something,” he said, “It’ll let them think that there might be a higher power and that they are all going to live forever in cloud-cuckoo-land.”
Depression washed over them at that and they sank into their seats, ready to comprehend the inevitable. Some of them had indeed found God themselves, no atheists in the fox-holes kind of thing; and had promptly run about trying to convert everyone else. It would seem to be more real for them if everybody believed in the same thing. But it takes many sheep to form a flock and this lot had the disadvantage of being mostly shepherds, so they argued accordingly.
Even Fritz and The Prof had given it some thought. They knew that no single particle, no matter how small, could spontaneously burst into existence; it had to come from somewhere. And they now understood that absolute nothing could indeed exist; having created some for themselves.
It was on his seventh martini of the day that Fritz had a realisation; yes he had created a black-hole, a tiny little orb of nothing, but it had to be created, it couldn’t possibly occur in nature. The odds were staggering, about seven-hundred-billion to one; and proper Roman billions at that, not those soppy little billions the super-rich like to use to count their money.
That would mean that all the other black-holes they had detected, must have been created by alien civilisations that had come to the technological know-how to ask that biggest of questions; how did the Universe occur? A much more interesting question than the religious: why?
“Yes!” stated The Prof, “When a civilisation reaches the stage of getting some real answers, poof!! A bloody great black-hole to sort them out. It must be God’s way of telling us to Go Away!!!”
So, eventually, when the Universe consists of nothing but conjoined black-holes, it will be nothing, containing all that has ever been; and perhaps the desire, the overwhelming, irresistible desire to be once more. And from that desire in the void, an explosion, a Universe bursting into life, striving towards its first black-hole.
THE END; AGAIN
It was the worst day of Professor Higgins’ life, which was a surprise even to him as three weeks earlier he had initiated the catastrophe that would end all life on the planet, and eventually the galaxy. What could be worse than that you may well ask, and for The Prof it was all a matter of timing.
You see, his friend Fritz (another professor, they all are) had just given him the projected data for when the black-hole they had created would go critical and start to swallow the earth. It would achieve the size of a small pin-head on the morning of the twenty-first of December two-thousand-and-twelve.
By which time it would start to consume first the building and by mid-day breach the Earth’s crust. The entire planet would be gone by mid-night; mid-night on that most ridiculous of dates. Both he and Fritz silently stared at each other as The Prof motioned him to sit.
Fritz helped himself another martini from the jug as he sat and tried to think of what to tell his cohorts; they deserved to know, as did everyone, when the end would come. But it was so damned incredible for it to be on that date.
They had already decided to tell the world so everyone would have the chance to mend bridges and make peace with their families; though someone with a bit more social-savvy could well predict a riot. It didn’t matter in the end because however he died it couldn’t be any worse than being stretched to infinity whilst being crushed to nothing.
That was the only bonus of creating a black-hole; they now understood how it came to be, and why it was reacting as it was. You see, in order to create the hole they had to smack quarks off each other at light-speed; with an unforeseen fly in the ointment.
During one of the many quark-attacks an anomaly showed its face, a particle of anti-matter got caught directly in the line of fire. Yes they also discovered anti-matter thus proving the existence of space-time; quite a day they had. And they celebrated it like a New-York Irishman on Paddy’s Day.
A week later the celebration came to a swift end when the reality of the situation became apparent. Fritz had discovered that the anti-matter particle had somehow reversed its polarity and was now acting gravitationally. It was pulling in all the surrounding anti-matter particles, forming a tiny little orb of nothing.
Of course that orb wouldn’t be tiny for long, there would be no escape; which was one of the reasons the professors had decided to let it be known to the masses. People would try, well people with access to space-shuttles and such would try, but the Moon would only be a couple of days behind and Mars a matter of weeks.
Several martinis later Fritz and The Prof made their way to the main conference hall where they had called all the plant personnel together; the quicker they got it over and done with the better.
The obvious questions followed his announcement; can we stop it? Can we get away? And suchlike. They had already tried everything within their means, bombarding it with every particle they could muster and even several pounds of C4, which went off like a damp squib, its energy sucked into the void.
Nothing could affect it in any way, but The Prof knew that as soon as the Governments found out they would want it destroyed and inevitably settle on the nuclear option. Alas, that was also futile; based on all their calculations it was indeed an immovable object and would stay exactly where it had been created, only getting bigger.
Then, over the murmur of the crowd a lone voice rang out, the voice of dissention; it was Gertrude Hassel.
“So, can we bring it forward then?” she asked.
Okay, so she may have had some pretty obvious character quirks, like her scientific need to be right which was compounded by that overwhelming female desire to prove everyone else wrong. But in this case she had only said what they all were thinking, that date, that stupid, ridiculous, damned date. The numpties had been going on about it for years, how the Mayans had ended their calendar thereby predicting the end of the world.
Now she knew, as well as everyone else that could read and had access to the internet, that the Mayans hadn’t actually predicted anything. All they had done was stop calculating their calendar, a fairly sensible move when you’re carving it in stone. Even the eejit who wrote down the biggest ever number stopped somewhere, he could have added another digit, but didn’t; and he was using a pencil.
So, for the first time ever, all the massive IQ’s and egos in the building were united, the muppets couldn’t have it, something had to be done. A flurry of ideas flew around the hall; release a biological weapon, nuke Yellowstone, poke the Arabs and the Jews, tell the Chinese that the Americans don’t have the money to buy their country back.
It took Fritz, well tipsy by now, to show them the error of their ways.
“Let the Drones have something,” he said, “It’ll let them think that there might be a higher power and that they are all going to live forever in cloud-cuckoo-land.”
Depression washed over them at that and they sank into their seats, ready to comprehend the inevitable. Some of them had indeed found God themselves, no atheists in the fox-holes kind of thing; and had promptly run about trying to convert everyone else. It would seem to be more real for them if everybody believed in the same thing. But it takes many sheep to form a flock and this lot had the disadvantage of being mostly shepherds, so they argued accordingly.
Even Fritz and The Prof had given it some thought. They knew that no single particle, no matter how small, could spontaneously burst into existence; it had to come from somewhere. And they now understood that absolute nothing could indeed exist; having created some for themselves.
It was on his seventh martini of the day that Fritz had a realisation; yes he had created a black-hole, a tiny little orb of nothing, but it had to be created, it couldn’t possibly occur in nature. The odds were staggering, about seven-hundred-billion to one; and proper Roman billions at that, not those soppy little billions the super-rich like to use to count their money.
That would mean that all the other black-holes they had detected, must have been created by alien civilisations that had come to the technological know-how to ask that biggest of questions; how did the Universe occur? A much more interesting question than the religious: why?
“Yes!” stated The Prof, “When a civilisation reaches the stage of getting some real answers, poof!! A bloody great black-hole to sort them out. It must be God’s way of telling us to Go Away!!!”
So, eventually, when the Universe consists of nothing but conjoined black-holes, it will be nothing, containing all that has ever been; and perhaps the desire, the overwhelming, irresistible desire to be once more. And from that desire in the void, an explosion, a Universe bursting into life, striving towards its first black-hole.
THE END; AGAIN