Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
14
The Great American Eclipse will grace the skies of North America on April 8 – and it has inevitably attracted a foul-smelling cloud of ludicrous conspiracy theories. Among the most ridiculous involves a favorite target of easily debunkable delusions: the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The story goes that CERN will be testing out its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider, on April 8 to coincide with the 2024 total solar eclipse.
While it’s true the LHC will be partaking in particle-smashing activity on April 8, it quite regularly does experiments and the timing has no connection with astronomical activity seen in North America.
Conspiracy theorists have taken to social media to share their thoughts on the supposed link between CERN’s activity and the total solar eclipse, although they've struggled to come up with any coherent explanation.
One person has suggested that Aleister Crowley – the infamous English occultist and writer – made contact with a demonic entity called Aiwass on April 8, 1904, and that CERN might be attempting to make contact with this demon.
Bear in mind, the LHC is located 100 meters (328 feet) beneath the Swiss-French countryside where the total solar eclipse will not be visible.
The machine consists of a 27-kilometer (16.7-mile) long underground tunnel ring lined with superconducting magnets that can accelerate subatomic particles close to the speed of light. Once they’ve built up enough energy, these subatomic particles are forced to collide, thereby revealing insights into the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
A total solar eclipse over 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) away on a different continent will have little impact on this work.
CERN has been at the forefront of some of the world’s biggest discoveries in physics, including the discovery of the Higgs boson – an elementary particle, often dubbed the "God particle”, much to the annoyance of physicists.
It's also sometimes the subject of conspiracy theories, often involving themes of parallel universes or other dimensions, perhaps because the nature of its work is so abstract and hard to comprehend.
Tinfoil hat enthusiasts often point towards the 2-meter (6 foot 6 inch) statute outside the CERN facility in Meyrin that depicts Shiva, the Hindu deity who is said to have danced the universe into existence. Some use the sculpture as evidence that the LHC is being used for dark universe-manipulating antics, but – as ever – there’s a much more straightforward (and boring) answer.
“The Shiva statue was a gift from India to celebrate its association with CERN, which started in the 1960’s and remains strong today. In the Hindu religion, Lord Shiva practiced Nataraj dance which symbolises Shakti, or life force. This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles,” CERN explains on their website.
