Both. In a strange twist of events, the LHC destroys the universe while simultaneously creating one just like it.

no the end of the world is December 22, 2012 according to the Mayans

we've got a while

I trust the particle physicists when they say this thing isn't going to destroy the world. I think that stuff just distracts from the interesting results they're going to find

Check out the LHC rap for a nice summary of what the LHC is about, if you haven't already

Why isn't Pandora over there with bricks. The LHC has a lot of wealthy owners.

"Find the Higgs Boson or destroy the world trying." - Particle physicists around the world whose entire career depends on this.

Goodbye everyone. =(

what`s the fear? are some people worried they will create a black hole on earth?

or some kind of space and time distorting vortex of tachyon particles ...oh wait that`s star trek. why cant sci fi shows actually employ real scientists to help them write their scripts? then we could learn something while we watch babylon5 seasons of babylon 5! (just finished downloading season 1-5)

Newton said the world will end in 2066. I'm sticking with that.

sean, actually star terk envisioned many products which have come to pass in some form. the concept of the cell phone and black berry was introduced and mainstreamed by star trek

I didn't see this topic until just now, otherwise I would have answered. Let me introduce myself:

Yes, I am a particle physicist.
Yes, I will be at CERN on that date.
No, I am not part of the LHC experiment - there are plenty of experiments at CERN, and the LHC just so happens to be the biggest, but I don't work on it.
No, we are not all going to die when they hit the switch - we don't have the technology to make those sorts of "particles" yet!

So, anybody whose worrying, please stop. It's my life on the line too!

mps: what if they're feeding you mininformation, so you will tell this to the public and their funding will continue? well?!? what then!?!?!?

WE'RE ALL DOOMED!

Oh no! I hadn't thought about that!!! They're lying to me!

... Wait! aoe3rules, it's alright! They can't be lying, because there will nothing to fund if we all die!

... But you raise a very good point - what if we've already been screwed over for funding, and we are going to take the World with us as revenge?!?

Be very afraid...

Is it true that the first beam was put off due to the Olympics?

mps... if you are a particle physicist, why isn't your number mps137?

I would say it has already destroyed the universe, but we didn't notice, being sucked directly into a parallel universe where canute gets discovered. I believe that's when the universe got destroyed.

But what if the whole thing is run a bunch of crazed Scientists who would not mind dieing if at the moment of death they could look at the LHC henceforth to be known as the Black-hole-o-maker and know that they had been proved right!

Kestas - apparently the scientists have delayed the start not due to the Olympics, but so that Andrew Marr (British BBC broadcaster) could be there to film it. It would have been last week, but Marr was on holiday in Devon...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4677687.ece

Well, the LHC was due to turn on in 2005, so there have been a number of delays. I'm afraid I don't know the exact reason why, as I don't work on the experiment, but I can make some enquiries. However, the delay could have been just for publicity reasons - this is the biggest experiment in particle physics, and most of us work on it, so we want the World to know about it.

It doesn't sound unreasonable that the delay would be due to the Olympics, although Andrew Marr, no matter how good a correspondant he is, sounds a little dodgy.

@flashman: are you talking about the fine structure constant alpha? I would have though my number should be mps511, as this is the rest mass of the electron in natural units.

Yes, and perhaps,

but 137 was reckoned to be the most common number used on brief case combination locks (137 - 137) at physics conferences...

And it is a cool number. I have a sheet somewhere showing how to achieve it using pi, e and i in various combinations. It was also the age of the universe last time I read anything worthwhile on it (13.7 bn years) although I reckon the number was massaged a bit for the purpose.

Ah, I see. Very interesting. I must admit that I didn't know all of that. I've never been to a conference where this number is used though, but at one of the conference centres the password to use the wireless network was '511eV/c2', which is a number a particle physicist is not able to forget. It was the only time I had ever seen a password being needed to access the wireless network at a conference. We're not so secretative - we publish in the public domain.

Well, it's just a pity that none of you will be around for me to say "I told you so".

But seriously, I'm interested in the results of the experiment, and despite my natural aversion and suspicion of particle physicists. I'm sure that it will all work out well. The real question is whether it's worth the money. =)

This a good quote from a BBC article I read today:
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The final tab for the LHC is expected to come in at a colossal 6.4bn euros, four times the original budget set by the Cern Council in 1995.

But that sum still represents good value for money, according to Dr Chris Parkes, of Glasgow University, UK, who works on the LHCb detector.

He said: "Tom Hanks is to appear in the movie of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, which involves scientists at Cern making anti-matter. But the new experiment at the LHC to understand anti-matter cost less than Tom Hanks will earn from the movie."
--------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7595855.stm

Thanks for the link Kestas - it makes very interesting reading. I had no idea that 'Angels and Demons' had such a high budget! I remember one of my colleagues, who used to make frequent trips to CERN, laughed all the way through - I got the idea that a lot of things mentioned were in the realms of artistic licence. I've never read it, so I can't say what my opinion is.

Chrispminis, when Thomson discovered the electron, his favourite toast was, "To the electron - may it never be of any use to anybody". He was under the impression that the particle was completely useless, and even wrote (I looked this up as I didn't know the actual quotation), "Could anything at first sight seem more impractical than a body which is so small that its mass is an insignificant fraction of the mass of an atom of hydrogen".

However, Thomson was wrong about this assumption! Without the discovery of the electron, our World today would be very different! For starters, there would be no cathode-ray tubes, so no computer monitors or TV. Electric current is carried by electrons, so its discovery was essential for all electronic devices!

Thomson could not see its potential, and I have difficulty seeing the potential of the work we do now. However, perhaps in 100 years time, the new physics discovered at the LHC will find a use.