EDITORIAL: Experimenting on the universe

The Stafford County Sun
Published: September 12, 2008

Are you afraid of black holes? Well some people are. They attempted to halt an experiment called the Large Hadron Collider, a project at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which they feared would cause miniature black holes that would destroy the planet.

The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator — a $9 billion dollar one — which will simulate the conditions right after the Big Bang. It is located deep underground the border of France and Switzerland. And yesterday, it was turned on.

So far, the planet is still here.

Skeptics who feared the experiment would destroy the world lost all their bids to halt the experiment, and it’s a good thing too. This ambitious, large-scale project shows the best that human scientific ingenuity aspires to - knowledge of creation.

Some hopes for the experiment are that it will discover something called the Higgs Boson, or the “God particle” as some call it. It could also confirm the possible existence of extra dimensions.

This is the stuff that dreams, comic books and children’s imaginations are made of, and it is exciting that it is happening in our time.

While all of this might sound far-out and esoteric, there will, no doubt, be many practical applications that come of out the discoveries of the Large Hadron Collider. Scientists seek to understand the

Universe and how it works better because of this experiment, and ultimately, it is hard to tell where a better understanding could lead us. But past discoveries of such strange phenomenon as electrons have transformed the way we live.

The beginning of this experiment is an exciting time for the world. It signifies that we are thinking big and looking at the deepest aspects of our existence. Here’s hoping we gain some enlightenment on our origins ...  and don’t get sucked up in a black hole.

Stafford County Sun editorials represent the opinion of the managing editor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on the editorial page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily the Stafford County Sun.