Top 10 Uses for a Large Hadron Collider

So, in case you have not heard the news, somewhere under Geneva, they are about to spin up the Large Hadron Collider. It’s the device everybody is talking about. It’s the device that’s making people send death threats to scientists who work at CERN. It’s the device that, supposedly will blow up the world. Whatever.

Why am I so nonchalant? I was trained as a scientist, you see (for those Top Gear fans out there, yes, there really is a Clarkson University, and, yes, I really did go there. Once. In between drinking beers.) As a, ahem, trained and highly skilled scientist (oh, now there’s a pile of you-know-what if I’ve ever heard one) I can assure you that the world is not going to blow up (just yet.) How do I know this? Well, that one’s easy.

You see snowflakes, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC as I like to call it, is not going to blow up. No, like most great scientific experiments of its time, I predict the following events will occur.

• Some scientist will flip a switch. There will be “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” for a brief period of time
• Smoke will rise up and come out of the machine
• Another scientist will scratch his head and mumble something like, “oh, that wasn’t in my spec. I thought you were doing that…” Meanwhile, another highly trained and, stand back now, educated, skilled scientist will say something along the lines of, “funny, it didn’t do that on the small hadron collider.”
• The machine will totally crap out leaving us with a great big hollow empty tunnel beneath Geneva.
• The financial backers of the now dead tunnel will “release a statement” declaring that to be “just a demo” of sorts and proudly proclaim that the “real” collider is actually set to go off in another 15 years or, you know, whenever we can successfully split the atom. (Whichever comes first.)

So, in an attempt at helping along these hardworking scientists, I thought it might be a really good idea to present to you (and them) several things they could do with their now useless (though most expensive) tunnel (actually the tunnel formerly known as the large hadron collider to be very prince-like.)

And so, in no particular order, I present to you, the top 10 uses for a LHC:

10. Store old Tupperware containers
9. Hide Bigfoot, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy, but, please, not that Monkey-Faced boy-he’s been quite despondent since the Weekly World News went out of circulation.
8. Make The Stig look properly dressed (“Some say he wears a crash helmet and flame retardant clothing to the opening of all super colliders. All we know is, he’s called The Stig”)
7. Hold Heidi Klum’s legs-after her stint on Project Runway, black holes are the new black (and, let’s face it, the tunnel is long enough.)
6. Finally put an end to those annoying WWJD bumper stickers.
5. Disprove the incredible theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
4. Make small Hadrons everywhere really happy they never grew up.
3. Particles so small Posh Spice now needs liposuction (because, well, they’ll make her legs look big.)
2. Free up some of the world’s greatest nuclear scientists so that they can now do something productive, like, say, come up with better jokes for my blog.

and the number 1 thing that will happen as a result of all of this?

1. Finally Marvin the Martian will get the Kaboom! he’s been looking for.

Some runners up:

• Hide all of the celebrity adopted children, you know, the ones like Suri and Siloh and Apple and all. They can now be free of the horrible roving photographers and play in their very own giant jungle gym.
• Give Doctor Who a much needed house of ill repute (on this planet)
• Give the aliens from Area 51 a new ski resort in Switzerland. (Gives new meaning to the words “bunny lift” doesn’t it?)