So I’m on one of my favorite blogs this morning (Style Razzi), and I notice her first post is about that multi-billion dollar Atom smasher they built out on the Swiss border that they switched on earlier today.

The post that Style Razzi refers to is full of “woe is me”, “end of the world” predictions similar to the ones that were widely circulated in 1999 about Y2K. I find these current predictions to be particularly amusing since Atom Smashing is nothing new.

When I was in high school, much talk was made of a mammoth Atom smasher out in Arizona somewhere (pictured right) that was 5 times the size of the one in Switzerland (about 5 football fields around).

At that time, similar predictions of doom and mass extinction flew wildly.

As you know, an atom is one of the smallest particles known to man (with the Quark being the smallest). It’s basically a mass of energy that requires speeds to be electrically charged. Atoms are so tiny that they pass right through us without causing any problems.

The purpose of the Atom smasher is to shoot atoms (or protons) around in a huge circle at sufficient speeds to cause the particles to collide or crash into each other with the purpose being to reveal new, as yet undiscovered matter in the fragments or whatever breaks off.

The Doom part comes in because Bible thumpers think the Atom Smasher will “destroy the world by spawning mini black holes which will sink to the Earth’s core before gobbling it up.”

As I said, atom smashing has been around since before I was in high school and we have new inventions like the Internet to thank those scientists and physicists for. So I’m not losing any sleep over the Atom smasher in Switzerland.

The sky isn’t falling, but it is partly cloudy with a 30% chance of rain.