We’re doomed! Or so some would say. The Large Hadron Collider is going to be activated tomorrow, and according to some, this will apparently lead to the earth being swallowed by a black hole. And if this video is any indication of the CERN staff’s professionalism... well then we tend to believe them. But seriously, why so serious?

If the 8,000 scientists from 65 countries who have been working on the project for nearly 20 years, checking, re-checking, testing, re-testing, thinking of all possible contingencies are worth their salt, nobody has anything to worry about. And if they aren’t, well, at least it will be quick and painless.

On a more factual note, the Large Hadron Collider, while the biggest particle accelerator in existence, still only creates (albeit in a controlled, measurable environment) very small-scale phenomena compared to those already naturally happening in the universe. And if those natural particle collisions have failed to create black holes so far, we have very little reason to believe the LHC would. Even if it were, considering the small number of particles involved, any black holes would only be microscopic and last fractions of a second before collapsing on themselves.

All this is irrelevant in the light of the fact that no collisions whatsoever are taking place tomorrow. The low-energy test, measuring 450 GeV - about a tenth of the LHC’s max power – is only meant to test the magnetic accelerator rails themselves so they’ll only be sending protons through one way, therefore not causing a “reality-shattering” collision of doom. Different story with the full collision run on the 21^st though, then we’re doomed!