What's the French word for "Armageddon"?

Editor's Note: Happy April Fool's Day!

The Large Hadron Collider, or "LHC", will come online this year. The largest and most powerful accelerator ever built, it will smash protons together at 99.999999% of the speed of light in an effort to recreate conditions similar to those that existed during the Big Bang. The scientists who will do experiments there intend to study what the Bang was like and how our universe came into existence.

One small problem: humans didn't exist during the Big Bang. What makes them think we'll survive this one?

I have it from a very reliable Irish blogger that the LHC will make black holes when turned on. Black holes sound dangerous because they are. A black hole at CERN will suck in all matter around it... the Swiss and French will be first to go (which is fair, because it's their fault), then Europe, then the whole planet. Doesn't that concern all the Earth-lovers out there? What happened to going "green"?

Some people are trying to make a difference. Major news outlets like Yahoo Answers are reporting on this story, and YouTube reporters (who are admittedly "not that much into science") are spreading the word. And now, I've heard that SOMETHING is being done to stop the LHC from ever being used: a lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii (ironically one of the last places that will be eaten by the black hole) to halt work on the LHC. Lawyers to the rescue! To quote Slashdot:

"The plaintiffs cite three possible 'doomsday' scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter."

Apparently, the same guys tried to stop RHIC for the same reasons, but failed, and you know how that turned out. Well, I don't have any concrete infomation about accidents at RHIC, but that's probably because it's all been covered up. Is New York still there? Someone should check.

At any rate, if the LHC people have their way, Armageddon could be right around the corner. When it all goes down, remember that our lab is not responsible. Nuclear science is way safer than High Energy Physics. NSCL's accelerators can only reach about half the speed of light, and I'm pretty sure we've never tried to make any black holes. I looked into it personally.