**Warning: You are now entering the twilight zone.**

Wondering what today’s featured interpretation graphic for google.com means?  Well, it may have something to do with Europe, ancient cultures, and the beginning and end of the universe.  For those that do not know, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being turned on today.

Europe and the universe

That is correct, they built a multi-billion dollar behemoth underground in Europe to try to recreate some of the things that were going on at the beginning of the universe.  There is no real way to know if they will succeed, but they are planning on flinging particles at each other at near the speed of light with promises that it will uncover new scientific truths.

Ancient cultures

Doomsday!  There were many people screaming that the LHC not be turned on for fear that it would destroy the world: it is expected that some of its experiments will create black holes.  Now, the first work that they’ll be doing over in Europe will not be the full speed, slam-bang stuff that the LHC is capable of, so do not expect the world to implode anytime soon.  There is still some time.  However, we may be able to link the earth’s demise to the Mayan calendar.

The Mayan calendar ends in December of 2012, and there are many opinions as to what will happen at that precise moment.  Could it be that they predicted our demise via a planetary catastrophe caused by smashing particles together?  As far as the stars go, the calendar has made some accurate predictions, so it is appropriate to believe that their scholars and priests must have known about particle physics.  The world is on a crash course, right?

**Leaving the twilight zone**

I [heart] the LHC and the Mayan Calendar.  We’ve been smart in the past and we are only getting smarter.  I’ll see you on New Year’s of 2013.

C.O.