CERN Set To Rupture Dimensions And Unleash Demons? Total Balderdash!

One of the demons people fear is likely to be released if CERN's Large Hadron Collider Is back  up and running.

What is it about basic physics experiments, i.e. into the basic nature of the universe, that drive an element of humanity into total paranoia and hysteria? Now that CERN is ready to commence experiments once more with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) it's been noted that wacky, halfwit speculations are circulating the memosphere like a virtual brain virus (WSJ, April 5, p. A1 and A10).

One nutty blogger actually tried to pin last year's deadly Nepal earthquake on LHC trial tests, while a headline of an opinion piece published by the Coldwater MI 'Daily Reporter' screamed: "We Should Be Very Careful About CERN!". Why?  Because you don't understand its working principles?

Meanwhile, as the WSJ piece put it (A10):

"Last summer, Internet chatter about CERN's role in hastening Doomsday spiked"

Showing again that too many without adequate knowledge have way too much time on their hands.

Acknowledging the frenzy, CERN's cognoscenti put up a FAQ on its website called "The Surreal FAQ" and in its one of many deadpan rejoinders to the nonsense assured one and all "it won't open a door to another dimension" also adding: "Shiva, a gift from the Indian government represents the life force and we have lots of statues. Our logo is meant to represent particle accelerators, not Satan"

Sadly even having to acknowledge no obeisance to an entity ("Satan") that doesn't exist anyway.

Then there are the dime store psychologists, never mind they lack even a dime store exposure to psychology. The WSJ piece cites a Michael Barkun - an emeritus professor of Political Science at Syracuse University who offered the chestnut that "CERN has a special ability to attract the conspiracy subculture".

But as I noted in my post from two days ago it was Dr. Pat Bannister in the 1970s who distinguished a conspiracy (sub-) culture from the genuine conspiracy research community. And the yokels proposing CERN's LHC opening up "doors to other dimensions"  and unleashing "demons" are definitely of the first category. They are basically adult children who lack a grasp of even basic physical concepts and hence concoct whole cloth nutso nonsense that some - like Barkun - generously describe as "conspiracies".  A better word for them is unsupported, unverifiable bullshit.

According to Barkun quoted in the WSJ (ibid.):

"Any time you have forces that are high energy and invisible, like those in the Large Hadron Collider, they lend themselves to these kind of interpretations"

Which is debatable. It is rather more plausible that such off the wall interpretations will come from those with a minimal science background, or even reading background. Which are exactly the points made by those such as Neil Postman and Pat Bannister. If you think and operate at a cartoon level, and your reading is at a comic book, superstition or cartoon level,  eschewing anything "difficult",  you will emerge as a child. Then you will entertain childish ideation.

This is the specific case of the Raelians also cited in the WSJ piece.  According to the article: "They see life on Earth as the creation of scientists from another planet, and announced last year they would stage a demonstration at CERN's campus to protest the LHC's destruction of tiny life forms contained within particles"

No, you just can't make this shit up. These dopes truly believe subatomic particles like quarks harbor miniature life forms. As one CERN spokesperson put it: "I guess they more or less see particles as planets with very small people on them:"

Clearly the Raelians ignore the fact these life forms would have far more to worry about being gobbled by ordinary dust mites. Fortunately, they must have come to their senses as they never showed up.

Some of the blame I think might be placed on CERN for willingly participating in fantasy fiction fare that weak minds might find believable. For example, CERN chose to participate in the 2009 film 'Angels and Demons' which spun a yarn about using antimatter created in the LHC to construct a super bomb. In fact, CERN's physicists contributed to the script! Bad idea, because even a loose association like that would trigger neurons in the collective brains of a paranoid child subculture that grew up with video games and X-men comics. Then they might conjecture such fictional participation was concealing a real one.

Kate Kahle, who oversees social media for CERN (and has a physics degree), was quoted in the WSJ piece admitting she "tried to engage directly with serial conspiracy theorists with mixed results." She recalled one of the responses to her denial of occult mischief: "Was that a 'no' to the portal or to the demons?"

Of course, Pat Bannister would have advised  Kahle  from the outset not to waste her time because none of the occult lot she addressed were at the level of  mentally mature adults. That is,  who could grasp her words within a rational setting as opposed to an irrational one embraced as more real by semi-literates, unread in even classic fare like 'Beowulf' or The Odyssey'.  (Far less factual scientific books like Hawking's 'Brief History of Time',  or Peter Sturrock's 'The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence', (It would be like arguing with a kindergartner whether the 2nd derivative can be used to obtain the maximum of a function.)

Again, the conspiracy culture approaches its conspiracy thinking - if that is what it can be called - from a cartoon level of simple analogies and caricatures: i.e. good vs. evil, '666' means antichrist,  high energy machines imply dimensional ruptures etc. No genuine research or investigations of any scientific or mathematical validity go into it. Bannister herself would point out the very mention of "demons" immediately discloses the person as possessing the mental age of a 5 or 6 year old.  Hence, no serious person would treat such a "conspiracy" as the rational product of a sound or mature mind.

Kahle's error lay in making that assumption (of dealing with rational minds) as opposed to overgrown babies who combine an extravagant imagination with a sense of profound entitlement to have their codswallop respected. Much like too many in Google groups who believe just because they can express an absurd opinion on the Kennedy assassination they can expect it to be accepted.(Or they base their opinions on a work of fraudulent scholarship like the Warren Report.)

In the end, CERN's high energy experiments will be performed and no untoward effects - like mini black holes or cosmic ruptures- will be manifested. At that stage one hopes the regressed infants and their ideation will settle down, and perhaps muster enough curiosity to read a real science book, as opposed to a comic.