Doom, as we know it.

Are we really opening up the portal towards the end of all times? Or are we in yet another threshold of scientific revolution, one that could redefine the big bang theory and trace the history of the universe? The day before the 7th year of the 9/11 attacks, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher which costs billions and billions of dollars, was tested, by firing a beam of protons underneath the earth's surface.

The beams will gradually be filled with more protons and fired at near the speed of light in opposite directions around the tunnel, making 11,000 circuits a second. They will travel down the middle of two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder than outer space. At four points in the tunnel, the scientist will use giant magnets to cross the beams and cause protons to collide. The collider's two largest detectors — essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons — are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Scientists and physicists, both those whose 20-year effort saw the culmination during the first test and other well-wishers, rejoiced in champagne and pajama parties. But another group of people compose of physicists, sociologists, and philosophers identified what maybe possible threats to humanity: "massive asteroid collisions, gamma ray bursts from supernovas that could sterilize the planet, man-made nanobots that could replicate and consume the earth's surface, and out-of-control artificial intelligence".

Though experts say dangers are "vanishingly small", are we ready to take on these, what maybe far-fetched threats? I sucked at high school physics so just by imagining the LHC and how it works, I'm already at a loss.