End of the World Delayed

After suffering some damage during one of its test runs last week, the Large Hadron Collider will be offline until sometime next year. According to the mad scientists running the project, the problem was that one of the magnets that keep the electron beams aligned shorted out. The LHC, located under the French/Swiss border, was built with the intention of replicating conditions at the moment of the Big Bang. Some had even hoped that the unit would confirm the existence of dark matter, and perhaps go as far as creating teeny-tiny blackholes. It remains unclear, however, exactly why someone would think that a blackhole located in the middle of the Earth would be a good idea.

That's why some critics warned that the contraption might have unintended consequences, such as destroying the entire frakkin' universe, leaving the Hubble Space Telescope with nothing to take pictures of. On the other hand, there would have no further need for taxpayer bailouts of major Wall Street firms.

While the collider itself suffered some physical damage during the mishap, one can only hope that perhaps several of the scientists were sterilized as well.

Well, that's what happens when you buy one of those Chinese-made lead-contaminated atom smashers at Wal-Mart.