The title of this blog post is in quotes because I did not say it, my spouse did -- in response to my somewhat rhetorical questions regarding the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which I posed to him over breakfast Friday morning."Why are these scientists spending BILLIONS of dollars to see a bunch of subatomic particles fly around and smash into each other?" I asked him while sucking down some Cheerios. "What is that going to get us?" To which he calmly replied, "Why do little boys want to blow up frogs?"
After more than 17 years, he finally found a way to (momentarily) shut me up. And I still don't have an answer. (Btw, if anyone reading this -- Dave S.? -- knows why little boys want to blow up frogs, please do leave a comment.)
In fact, the more I have thought about it, the more I am 99.9% certain that it never once occurred to me to blow up a frog. (Men, on the other hand, are a different story.) In fact, I would hazard that most females have not given much thought to frog demolition. But I digress.
The subject I am trying to get at (or to) is the Large Hadron Collider, which, per CERN's website (see link above): "is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe."
It could also create a tiny black hole that could quickly grow and reduce our big blue marble to a little black cinder . Pretty cool, huh?
Apparently, I was not the only NY Times reader who was morbidly fascinated and more than slightly unsettled by (What, me worry? You betcha!) the thought of the Earth being "eaten" by a man-made black hole. My favorite NY Times columnist, Gail Collins, also read the article by her colleague, Dennis Overbye, and then wrote a column about it, which appeared on Thursday.
As I already have enough to worry about, and am quick to worry (though strangely the thought of being sucked down a black hole, along with everyone I love, doesn't worry me as much as the thought of terrorists blowing up my flight to London next week or the possibility that the 757 we are scheduled to take is one of the ones American decided not to perform a necessary safety inspection of), I wasn't going to read Ms. Collins's column. But I happened to have "Morning Joe" on as I was getting ready Thursday and who should Mr. (Joe) Scarborough have on as a guest but -- you guessed it, Gail Collins. I reached for the remote to change the channel, but it was too late. I was sucked in.
I really do hope that the folks at CERN know what they are doing and that the safety inspectors aren't the same guys responsible for making sure airplanes are safe to fly. But I would feel a lot better if instead of trying to smash together subatomic particles those European scientists would have stuck to blowing up frogs (though I quite like frogs and do not wish them harm).
[For the record, my husband, who is reading this post while standing over my shoulder, just informed me that he did, in fact, once blow up a frog. Furthermore, he suggested I find an image of a frog with a firecracker in its mouth. I looked but could not find one. I am so ashamed... for so many reasons.]
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