Waiting for the End of the World

Forgetting about the downside for a moment, big-picture-wise this could be a pretty cool scientific discovery:

GENEVA -- Michelangelo L. Mangano, a respected particle physicist who helped discover the top quark in 1995, now spends most days trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world.



The most complex piece of scientific equipment ever built, the collider will send particles crashing into each other at just a wink shy of the speed of light, generating energies more powerful than the sun.



Scientists like Mangano believe that this instrument, when it begins operating as early as this summer, will peer into a looking-glass world that could contain entrances to extra dimensions and super-massive partners of the familiar particles that make up our world. One creature that must be hiding there, the scientists say, is the Higgs particle, one of the most exotic undiscovered objects since the yeti.



Critics think the collider could also spawn a black hole that will swallow Earth.