What do you mean? It didn't collide. There's no blackhole sucking up earth, we are all still alive. How could it have collided if we are still here?

I believe all those anti-LHC people will find the sarcasm in my post to be annoying... Now I just need to wait for 2012 to pass and I can say the same exact thing!

Maybe we are not really here! How can we tell? Maybe earth was already in a really big black hole!

wait...what happens if they whiff a shot?

@Jordan

The scientist performing the collision has to get "KICK ME" tattooed on his back.

Be awesome when this comes around 100% and they find the God particle.Can't wait to see religion turned on it's weak head.Anyone who believes in a supreme being is lost & weak.

Too bad you didn't do your homework before making such an idiotic post. The god particle is a theoretical particle that gives mass to matter. It has nothing to do with religion.

hey no god, agree with you in the no god. But you can't say religion is weak, been millions of death from religion... probably billions but can't be sure. Plus what makes a guy who believes in something weak, it'd actually make him stronger for his belief even if it is false.

hey no god say religion is weak and anyone who follows that is weak and lost in the middle east or my home town and we'll see who ends up in the hospital weak or 6 feet under

@ God_is_Awesome

Isn't ironic how you think God is so awesome yet despite the fact that Christian beliefs are supposed to reject violence you preach it? Religious people are so funny.

As far as I'm concerned religion was set in place to keep the sheep in line. Nothing keeps an idiot from doing something stupid like telling them that some magical being in the sky will smite them if they do said stupid act.

A religion is a set of beliefs that are used to explain the unexplainable. Someone who believes in god is not weak, they are just looking for answers, as are all of us. If you do not believe in a higher power, that is great. If you do, that's great too. To each his own. However, spending time criticizing other people's beliefs is pointless, and gets us nowhere. Atheists: if someone vehemently practices their religion, do you really think that you will get them to abandon their beliefs by calling them ignorant and weak? If you do, then you do not understand the power a person's beliefs hold. After all, would you suddenly start to believe in god if a religious man called you stupid because you do not? I am not saying everyone should have the same beliefs, I just think we should respect each other as equal human beings.

@Arguments:

But human beings are not all equal. Some are smarter, stronger or more moral than others. I'm not atheist, as that in itself is religious to me, just not believing a "higher power", but from a scientific point of view, religion fails. It fails in levels that border on the edge between "EPIC" and "OMGWTFBBQ".

@buttsex_guy

A person's intelligence or physical strength is not a measure of their worth as a human being. When I said that all people are equal, I meant in terms of deserving respect as a human being. Some people are certainly smarter then others. Some are stronger, some have a higher sense of morality, etc. Yet they are all still human. Also, I understand where you are coming from, however I believe that the conflict between religious beliefs and science is a manufactured one. While some biblical tales do contradict what science has shown us, most intelligent people (I would hope) do not look at these stories as universal truths. They are parables, and the bible is mainly a protreptic text. While today's organized religions may sometimes seem misguided, especially with the moral issues we as a society face today, there needn't be any conflict between science and one's individual beliefs, whatever they may be.

Sooo...what about that Large hadron Collider - anyone here about that thing? Apparently it had it's first collision on Monday. Sweeeeeeeet! That thing is Legen - wait for it - dary! Bump my fist baby. Oh, sorry, I seem to have stumpled upon a religeous post, I though it was about the LHC *walks away whistling*.

Before anyone flames me (smites me?), I seem to have written 'stumpled' instead of 'stumbled'. My sincerest apologies to anyone I may have offended. Live long and prosper, and may the force be with you.

Dude I was just thinking the same thing right before I read your post... I think it's pretty funny how everytime dvice puts a new article about the LHC on here the comments always go straight to religion or the state of the economic world

In the beginning everything we know started from nothing. Somehow all this nothing got together with all the other nothings, and they decided to see how many nothings they could fit into one nothing. Then they got closer and closer together and compressed together until they imploded/exploded, and POOF, there was a whole lot of somethings, the universe. Maybe it was actually created by the LHC. Ridiculous.

Even when the LHC finds the elusive Boson particle, does that really negate God himself? Even Stephen Hawkings says that the more you delve into deeper mathmatics and astorphysics, there has to be an intelligent design because to much energy and we would be dust on the cosmic wind and to little and we wouldve collapsed back in on ourselves (paraphrased from "the case for Christ") I personally cant wait to see what they can really discover with this machine and hopefully it will help us learn more about physics so we may even leave this planet you know?

*forgive my typos.

Stehpen Hawking is an athiest delux. Would you believe in god if you had his affliction. Why would a god do that.

I find it rather amusing that our search for answers only leads to more questions. For example; let's assume the LHC finally identifies the Boson particle. If found, the subatomic particle would define why photons have mass.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't explain WHY it's there, WHERE it came from or WHAT started it. It would only serve to prove that it's present. I would say that IF the LHC is able to detect the 'God particle' it would, in fact, provide further evidence that God is real.

It takes more blind faith to believe this all happened by random chance than by design.

Behind schedule, overbudget, ridiculously prone to failure and a colossal waste of time and money.

The thing is utterly useless.

Perfect description of every government-pushed, taxpayer-funded project.

well if god is real than he sure is doing a HELL of a good job with humanity, poverty murder war nah its all good where we are, or how about people who live good lies and go to hell just for rejecting him? doesnt add up does it?

The Higgs boson, AKA the god particle, is theorized to exist in a non-quantized state as a quantum probability wave and have an influence on all other quantum mechanics. The particle is assumed to exist in quantized form only at extremely high energy densities, hence the expectation of its discovery at the collision of two streams of particles. For the scientist, unlike the scientismical sects, religion is the expression of fundamental realities, with god being always a mystical concept and not a person or ideology to whom a name or party may be ascribed. Any serious study of religion will find expression of fundamental scientific principals, such as the triune nature of energy and time, as found in the Judeo-Christian trinity and the dance of creation and destruction of Shiva. The concept of god does not negate free will, but insists upon it. Negative assessments of religion from popular exposure to it is similar to judging chickens by exposure to powdered eggs from an old WWII ration kit. Jaded ignorance is always in fashion, but seldom of any use. Any such black hole of intellectual superiority produced by streaming religion into anti-religion is likely to evaporate immediately when the opposing forces are removed for want of any external sustaining force, lacking any internal depth of energy density from which to draw. Particles and particle constructs should exist in mathematically defined stable quantities as noted by Moseley's predictive rearrangement of the periodic table of elements.

Hey no god, stop talking about "weak".
Weak force is carried by the W and Z bosons, which have already been observed.
Higgs "God particle" Boson carries gravity.
See, you are completely missing the point.

In regards to government funded projects, the Waxahachie collider was funded, begun, defunded, and undone, resulting in a hole that was dug, then filled in, much resembling the three steps in the motion of Shiva, which should be the trasitive form of energy in motion from particle to wave and ray and back again to particle, or to particle and then back to wave or ray, depending on whether you view the universe as half-created or half-destroyed. Personally, I think it's all ball bearings, actuated by a complex series of levers and pulleys. I'm just not sure how they get the little wires attached to the ball bearings. So far, I'm pretty sure it is magic.

Really people. Can't we have a calm, reasonable discussion about the subject of the article once in a while? I mean, someone mentions the unwisely named god-particle, and war breaks out. proud hypocritical power-protestants one one side, and proud hypocritical troll-happy atheists on the other. Not to sound like some sort of admin, but keep your fiery opinions to yourselves please. Sheesh.

@Brass Orchid:

Hilarious.

According to Hindu beliefs, the fiery tongues protruding are the expression of Kali, or dark energy, upon being confronted by the fallen Shiva. This, of course, would mean that our belief in nuclear fusion as the power source of stellar bodies is mistaken. As I haven't heard of anybody apprehending the neutrinos that should be streaming outward from the solar fusion engine, I'm not going to call it ridiculous just off hand. Human nature is a microcosm of nature. We are awareness, always, but not always aware that we are aware. This is the ego, which prevents awareness that that of which we are aware is not ourself, in itself the division between Kali and Parvati, which is expressed as Ganesha, or so it seems. Shangri La lies to the North.

I'm real

God is dead. We will all join him in death in 2012. We've all been fooled for over a millennium, ever since the first UFO's came and the Visitors came down with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. ....the spaghetti monster ate Kali for breakfast then munched Buddha.. we're doomed to spend eternity wrapped in the tentacles of this omnipresent being...

Well, if Buddha hadn't been made of chocolate and wrapped in gold colored aluminum foil, he probably wouldn't have been eaten, so I say it serves him right. Sidhartha Gautama was the blind Roman soldier who was given the Spear of Destiny and ordered to take a stab at Godhood. That's how he knew that the common elements all had eight electrons in their outermost valence shell and sought harmonic distribution of force through bonding, and that denying destiny was the source of all sorrow. Sure, I just made that up, but it looks just like the real thing, even though it is only chocolate wrapped in gold colored aluminum foil. I'm going to hang it on my Carbon Sequestration Tree this year. The real Buddha goes underneath, of course.

ok for all you nay sayers out there... i am real... and for that poser who claims to be god at the bottom... your going to hell, plain and simple my child

Awesome; I can't wait for more news. Now, if we could just get the world to update drawings of the atom showing the p, s, and d orbitals in their proper forms, lest our advanced relations from the ether think us un-attentive.

There are no electron orbits. The energy sandwich we call the electron shell is non-quantified waves without a particulate form. The points of attachment where we assume electrons are shared are low energy nodes in the shell, which vibrates at a specific frequency. This arrangement is what causes the geometric regularity of valence bonding called sacred geometry. As The Real God if you don't believe me. He made this stuff up.

@hothog:
"Stehpen Hawking is an athiest delux. Would you believe in god if you had his affliction. Why would a god do that"

That argument goes both ways. How could he believe in evolution that allows such horrible condition to afflict people? Anytime you say, "how could God..." you need to also say "how could Evolution (or X worldview)..." right along with it!

I, for one, am glad the LHC is up and running. I believe - fundamentally - that human beings should explore the Universe with every available tool. Who knows? Perhaps, one day, we may find God among the wide cosmos. Regardless of your philosophical inclination, you must realize that human beings are the most wonderful and amazing constructs we have discovered in this Universe. What else has risen up from a simple chain of proteins to probe the heavens with complex tools and transformative ideology?

Okay I just have one single question for all the religious people posting on here. when you create the argument "how did something come from nothing" ask yourself this if God created everything, what was before God, how did God come from nothing. If he created everything nothing was before him, so really he shouldn't exist..... right? all I am saying is think before you argue because both sides run into the same issue of something from nothing.

I am religious and I think about this stuff often especially about how we all came to be and how god has existed. The best explanation is that time is infinite in both directions like a line. Everything that exists in the universe has always existed, maybe infinitely. So either god has always existed or there was a god before him, (so on and so forth) or something else we can't explain.
I don't mean to offend anyone who doesn't believe in god, these are just my beliefs.