Wewt! Science! I think this should be up and running within a couple months.

Also if you want some more engineering badassery, google ATLAS experiement as it is the other detector that is something like 7 stories tall.

who doesn't love giant science machinery?

Heheheeh. Hadron collider.

@braak: OK, cut that out! This is serious science... sorry, can't say that with a straight face. Hadron collider -- another name for a lady of the night?

It's a Stargate, baby!

@CMG: when giant science machinery has a theoretical chance of destroying the planet (theoretical being the literally accurate word, see [en.wikipedia.org] for more), it's tough not love.

Apparently, power corrupts; absolute power hypothetically generates micro black holes.

@CMG: Taxpayers.

Taxpayers in the form of government grants. But a lot of private money too. Micro-black holes may end up being very important in figuring how these sigularites might give access to the 11th dimension. I think that's where elves and fairies live. Anlong with in-human horrors we can hardly imagine.

@zerofritz: I think we're gonna be OK. This is pretty essential research if we want to make the next big breakthroughs in physics, and frankly, there are much less hypothetical drawbacks to other areas of science we ought to be a lot more concerned about (genetic research, digitization of information, antibacterial soap, etc., etc.).

@braak & NefariousNewt: Collider? I hardly even knew her!

Time to upgrade my old fridge magnets

@moff: Oh, i know. i'm just being a smartass :) I'm just hoping that if they do generate a black hole, that's it's all film-negative-y on the other side, because that would be neat.

But I'd like to complete my work on V.I.N.CENT ahead of time.

This looks like the kind of thing that, when activated, stands the chance of malfunctioning in such a fashion that any attendant scientists caught in the maelstrom of high energy plasma and electrical discharge will either be granted super powers or wisked away to a faraway world.

Where can I sign up?

kept at near-zero temperatures.

I believe you mean near-absolute zero.

(aka outside my office right now.)

I hope they didn't go with Acme magnets. Acme didn't work out so well for the Coyote.

Magnets are funny things. These are not the strongest magnets in the world; you can't do that with superconductors. But magnetic field strength (measured in Tesla or Gauss) is a density, and in fact the strongest magnet in the world is only about 50 T, compared to the fields of nearly 1 T that you get from modern permanent magnets. The trick is, the total energy stored in the field is the square of the field density times the volume - and those big monsters in the LHC fill a massive volume with a magnetic field.

All of these magnets are still pretty wimpy by my standards, though.

@Jeff-Minor: Will there be Mist?

@rrich: It's a great big whril.

Well of course there will be mist! And flashing lights and faint music. It will all be a dreamy wonder before it becomes a nightmare. At least that's the way I wrote it.

Hey, does anybody remember that part in Terminator 3, when they had to escape the facility to get to the helicopter landing pad, or whatever?

And the secret passage to the landing pad passed directly through the supercollider?

That was crazy.