Social Media Getting Ready for the Doomsday

The world’s largest particles collider (Large Hadron Collider) has successfully completed its first major test by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva by firing a beam of protons around the 27-kilometer underground tunnel. This experiment is supposed to increase our knowledge of the makeup of the universe. Some skeptics predicted (and still continue to predict) that this experiment may have deplorable consequences for the mankind and the earth because it could cause formation of micro black holes that could suck our entire planet in.

Now it looks like we are going to stay safe along with our planet at least until October 21^st when crossing the beams in the tunnel is planned which could be potentially more dangerous. In the meanwhile I decided to take a look at how the blogosphere and social media are reacting to the event.

So, first of all, Google has a special logo for the event (pictured in the beginning of the post) as usually since Google is famous for creating a new logo for every more or less significant event. For now Google seems to be the only web company to distinguish the collider start-up with customized looks for the day - probably something will arrive later or maybe no one wanted to bother waiting for the big bang in case it happens after all.

New posts mentioning LHC (short for “Large Hadron Collider”) arrive every few minutes with some of them worth mentioning. Boing Boing is generous enough to reassure everyone that the collider will not destroy the earth while Engadget seemed to be of an opposite opinion and offered to kiss kids good buy before the collider is started. One of the posts brought me to a website devoted specifically to tracking the effect of the collider on the earth. The website is intended to answer one simple question: Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?

Probably once the answer is positive (hopefully never) the site will disappear along with the earth itself but for now I don’t understand why they have not plastered the page with Adsense to get some money off the wild interest to the event.

Twitter also demonstrates immense interest in the scientific event: as you can see from the image below, right now “The LHC” is the most frequently used term among Twitter users with “Large Hadron” and “CERN” also present among the top 10 most discussed topics on Twitter. What I find to be somewhat surprising is that LHC is even more popular than iTunes 8 and Apple despite of yesterday’s “Let’s Rock” announcement and still geeky audience of Twitter.

On FriendFeed I have already found a poorly-populated room dedicated to LHC so if you are deeply concerned about the subject and are planning to live with your fingers crossed until at least the end of October, I think joining the room is a good idea to discuss your plans and ideas on how you could contribute to preventing the doomsday.

Facebook also has a good selection of groups to join for discussions around LHC and its possible consequences for the mankind with the most popular CERN LHC will probably kill us but what the hell let’s see what happens! enjoying almost 7 thousand members already.

LHC is obviously the topic of the day which is evident from the graph below (courtesy BlogPulse) - during the last few days LHC was one of the most discussed topics for bloggers and yesterday it even became more popular than Apple itself:

I believe LHC has all the chances to stay on the top at least until October 21^st when we all realize that if we are still alive the collider will probably not destroy the earth. Well, at least that’s what I hope for.