Monday, February 05, 2007

What is the, ahem, LHC?

Just stumbled on this, in the "Big Questions" piece in the recent Wired magazine. John Hodgman (full disclosure: whom I went to school with years ago...) reports:
What is the Large Hadron Collider?
The Large Hardon Collider is a giant particle accelerator: a 17-mile-long tunnel beneath Switzerland and France. With it, scientists hope to isolate the Higgs boson, the particle that could explain mass. Some worry that the Hardon Collider is too big and could create a black hole that, while awesome, would destroy Earth. Is such a huge Hardon Collider worth it? Why are you laughing? Oh. Oh. I see. My mistake. I meant to say “Large Erection Collider.”
I've never heard this joke before. I swear.

1 comment:

Sabine Hossenfelder said...

i once sat through a seminar from a Japanese guy who had the typo on every second slide - must have escaped spell check. was hard not to laugh. tough it was of course a hadlon.