The end of the world is coming and I am having a blast!

Cartoon from The Friendly Atheist.

Completely unrelated to whatever crazy old Harold Camping might be thinking or doing is the fact that, for the last few months I have been having and continue to have one of the best times of my life.

And I want the party to go on!

But not cranky old Harold Camping. A retired civil engineer (I can't believe we share the same profession!) he has been spreading the word around the world that the end is to come on Saturday, May 21st. Two days from now.

And he has billboards in such places as Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran! If anything, you have to admire his tenacity.

But he is not trustworthy. His prophecies have backfired on him at least once before, as he had already predicted the end of the world would be on September 6th, 1994. Either he was wrong or I am now living in the Matrix and have not noticed it.

His calculations for claiming the end of the world are downright ridiculous. First, he seems to assume the world is 6,000 years old, as fundamental christians like to believe. Then he places the year of the (non-existent) Flood as 4990 b.c.e and he adds 7000 years (because the bible says somewhere that 1000 years is like a day). Then he does some other cockamanied calculations to arrive at the May 21st. date. When asked, he says that on that day, at 6 in the evening there will be a huge earthquake. Where? Everywhere!

That is why it shames me to know he is an engineer. You would think a member of our time honored profession would know that it cannot be 6 pm everywhere in the world at the same time. It is all nonsense and a lot of crap.

Of course, people like me have been having a blast with the whole thing. Many other predictions of the end of the world have come and gone and nothing has happened, which causes even some christian church officials to denounce doom-sayers like Camping "because they give the church a black eye" when the alleged prophecy fails to happen.

Camping and his cohorts are up for another great disappointment, like the Millerite thing back in 1844. Unfortunately it seems that, like when other prophecies failed, their faith may be somehow reinforced and they will come up with all sorts of explanations as to why the Rapture failed to happen. Unless, of course, there is some "Kool Aid" involved and they are no longer around to explain themselves. We will see... on Sunday.

In the meantime - party on!

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2012 and the end of the world

This morning I was listening to the NPR news and they mentioned the Mayas and 2012 and the end of the world

I do have a comment to make about that:

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...Sorry, where was I?

LHC: End of the world postponed?

Of course I do not believe that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will cause the end of the world! But since the chicken-Littles of the world have been crying wolf... I thought I would have a little laugh at their expense.

What is the Large Hadron Collider? Simply put, it is the largest particle accelerator ever built (actually, the largest atom-smasher) and it will allow us to peer into the very fabric of the universe and re-create conditions that were only present a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang. If you don't know what a particle accelerator is and what it is used for, go check wikipedia, which also has a nice article on the LHC.

Now, seriously, we science fans are more than a little disappointed. The LHC (see news here) was initially turned on on September 1oth. A good day for science! The giant magnet was powered on and protons were spun around the 27 km circunference successfully. Unfortunately on September 19th, a failure in two of the magnets used to accelerate and confine the proton beam caused a helium leak. Helium is used as a coolant, the LHC magnets being kept at an extremely low temperature of 1.9 K - that is more than 270°C below cero!

Imagine the challenges of operating equipment at such extreme temperatures! Science fans have been further disappointed by the fact that the LHC is now only slated to be re-started in the early spring of 2009 - which for me means march or april.

There have been all sorts of reactions from the fans of the LHC protesting such a lengthy repair. But the challenge is to bring the failed section up to room temperature: from 1.9 K to 300 K it may take several weeks, in order to avoid any damage during heat up. And once the repairs are conducted, it will then take some more time to cool down everything to operating temperature - not to mention the planned winter shut down, which is closing fast!

In any case, 2009 should be the year when the LHC will make headlines (at least in the media outlets that we, science fans, read) and who knows, maybe string theory will get confirmation... or not!