you may have noticed ScienceBloggers pushing hard on the meme about the Large Hadron Collider destroying the Earth, Not!
I now reveal the true reason.
We went so far as to put
"Has the LHC Destroyed The Earth?" on the banner ad position.
Well, there's a reason for this. It was a test, a warmup exercise for the real thing.
Of course LHC was not going to destroy the Earth on wednesday, probably, it was just a warmup of the injector and bending magnets, there were no actual collisions.
Those come next month and then will be run, by the trillions, for years.
Well, ok, the collimator collisions could have killed us all, but the odds are very small.
You must then continue to check in on "Has the LHC Destroyed The Earth?", as often as you can - I recommend about 137 times per day for the average ScienceBlog reader.
You see, there is, a priori, a finite, but small, chance that the LHC will actually destroy the Earth.
Really.
To avert this, we are invoking the Quantum Zeno effect - the more often an observer looks to check if the Earth Has Been Destroyed Yet, the less the probability that the Earth will actually have been destroyed, for any finite number of events at the LHC.
Really.
This is the only way we can avoid Quantum Suicide.
Really.
If you click, you will save countless realizations of the Earth, and yourself, from instant annihilation, each time.
Really.
Well, no, but you will save countable realizations of the Earth, and yourself, from instant annihilation, each time you click, if the LHC is operating.
Really.
Think of the Children!
Click or Die!
Of course, depending on the full structure of the complete extension of the underlying Hilbert space, there may be many instantiations of total annihilation anyway.
You still have a moral duty to minimize these.
Or even keeping the set of surviving Earths from becoming a subset of measure zero.
Click or Die.
Update: The Quantum Pontiff unveils more LHC destructive secrets
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I prefer not to observe, so the Earth may simultaneously be destroyed and not.
Lassi,
That's only if you're one of those benighted ManyWorlds-disbelieving cavemen.
In the same spirit, you should heep an eye on the live webcam at http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html to see that nothing goes wrong! :-)
I love the link. I'll be sending people there for sure.
The whole situation leads to a serious question -- if the Hadron Collider does produce Earth-eating black holes, will I have time to max out my credit cards?
Lassi,
It's a super position to be in. ;)