What, no apocalypse yet?
Oh, that's a relief! Now, I suppose I can stop chanting The Litany Against Fear, and get back to my pronoiac projects? Thanks for the "heads-up," boingboing & science daily...
"A new report provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’s switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. Nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC ... The Safety Assessment Group writes, 'Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth - and the planet still exists.'"
The sort of "end-times" paranoia that underlies immanent paradigm shifts always reminds me of Enrico Fermi's ironic wager before The Trinity Test (testing the first atomic bomb):
To break the tension, Fermi began offering anyone listening a wager on "whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world." (in the latter case, how does one collect on such a bet? ;~} Q.E.D.)
Perhaps next, we can provide enough evidence to convince people that in 2012, the solar maximum & polar shift won't cause another ice age, or our planet won't be eaten by aligning with a black hole at the galactic center, or whatever other cataclysmic disasters may occur?
Here's one of my favorite radical physicists, Tony Smith's take on the matter... via Terrence McKenna, King Wen, et alia:
What might 2012 - ?The End? - be like?
I don't know, but maybe one possibility might be that suggested by Teilhard de Chardin: that humanity will turn, by planetary arrangement and convergence of all elementary terrestrial reflections,towards a critical pole of reflections of a collective and higher order. He concludes that:
"...if we could see the specific radiation of Noospheres scattered throughout space, it would be practically certain that we would see a cloud of thinking stars..."
Meanwhile, if you haven't heard it yet, here's the Large Hadron Rap:
"A new report provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’s switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. Nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC ... The Safety Assessment Group writes, 'Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth - and the planet still exists.'"
The sort of "end-times" paranoia that underlies immanent paradigm shifts always reminds me of Enrico Fermi's ironic wager before The Trinity Test (testing the first atomic bomb):
To break the tension, Fermi began offering anyone listening a wager on "whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world." (in the latter case, how does one collect on such a bet? ;~} Q.E.D.)
Perhaps next, we can provide enough evidence to convince people that in 2012, the solar maximum & polar shift won't cause another ice age, or our planet won't be eaten by aligning with a black hole at the galactic center, or whatever other cataclysmic disasters may occur?
Here's one of my favorite radical physicists, Tony Smith's take on the matter... via Terrence McKenna, King Wen, et alia:
What might 2012 - ?The End? - be like?
I don't know, but maybe one possibility might be that suggested by Teilhard de Chardin: that humanity will turn, by planetary arrangement and convergence of all elementary terrestrial reflections,towards a critical pole of reflections of a collective and higher order. He concludes that:
"...if we could see the specific radiation of Noospheres scattered throughout space, it would be practically certain that we would see a cloud of thinking stars..."
Meanwhile, if you haven't heard it yet, here's the Large Hadron Rap:
Click to view