Last week in Switzerland, scientists tested the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. The largest particle accelerator ever made, the LHC is 17 miles in diameter and will serve as a learning tool to simulate the events that are believed to have caused the Big Bang. Or whatever.
What really interested the general public is the byproduct of this beastly machine: microscopic masses of strange matter fittingly called strangelets, which are created when nuclei of particles collide at high speeds. Due to their minute size, strangelets are generally harmless. The problem with the ones emitted from the LHC is that they could reach macro level, at which point scientists hypothesize they will attack the nuclei of all Earth matter, causing a chain reaction that would turn the entire planet and everything in it into a giant, steaming heap of dark matter. Truly an apocalyptic masterpiece — unless, of course, you believe that becoming a strangelet yourself isn’t death at all, but rather a second chance.
Whatever it is you believe about this exciting new prospect of Armageddon, you’re believing something. Because you love the apocalypse. There is no better crowd pleaser, no more enrapturing conversation starter, and no easier way to get yourself jazzed about life than the prospect of sudden, tragic and all-encompassing death. Everyone craves that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you think the world might end. For if a strangelet attacks you, and everyone you know, and everyone everyone knows, you’ll never have to worry about going over your cell phone minute allotment again. And you’ll never feel bad about yourself for not having been able to buy an iPhone.
Is that it then? The explanation behind our fascination with apocalypse? Are we so harried by our wildly complex and overall exhausting and hopeless lifestyles that we look at fantastical forecasts of Armageddon not as examples of disaster, but as beacons of hope? After all, when you stop and think about how the interest on your student loan is increasing cent by cent as you read this, and how you have a 12-page paper due next week over something you can’t even pronounce, and how your significant other is almost certainly engaging in an illicit affair with your best friend, giving up altogether on being composed of a healthy molecular structure sounds like paradise. If it’s expressly human to deal with all the miserable things we humans have to deal with, isn’t it logical that we’d aspire to be something expressly not human — like dark matter? Like strangelets?
Recall your excitement upon hearing that at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, all of the computer software of all the banks and companies in your time zone would short out because of the discrepancy between “19xx” and “20xx.” Because of a few innocuous numbers, computers would implode, then traffic lights would stop working, and then there would be nuclear fallout, hour by hour, until the entire world was dark and lifeless. We were all worked up about it – building makeshift shelters in our basements, stocking up on canned corn, writing out our wills to the cockroaches . . . I myself taped a flashlight to my head.
Just a minute later, it was Jan. 1, 2000. And the next day was the end of Christmas vacation, and I had to go back to school. We celebrated the New Year halfheartedly and all still alive, when all I really wanted was a measly apocalypse to get me out of gym.
Consider all the sources out there propagating ideas about the apocalypse — movies, the news, periodicals, scientific experiments, the Bible. People behind it know how much we love musing about the end of the world, and they know they can profit from it. For all we know, Nostradamus was just an invention of the minds behind the National Inquirer to get us to buy their papers. And the Mayans say that 2012 will be the end of all civilization – just far off enough to keep us on our toes.
So are we clinically depressed, then, hoping for mass death and all? Not in my opinion — although I am the one who made a Y2K survival kit out of my school backpack. I think we as a society, ever-consumed with ruminating The Man and The Bullshit, just like to keep our options open. We like to know that no matter how bad things really get, there’s always bird flu pandemic or strangelet invasion to clean our slates. It’s comforting to think that at the times when you’re at your worst, like those spent in the library during finals week choking back contraband Red Bulls and trying to keep your face from falling off your skeleton, a strangelet might creep up and end it all by enveloping you in warm, soft, abysmal dark matter.