Is there life after the Large Hadron Collider?

After a few false starts, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been switched on at CERN, the European research facility for experimental physics. It's already producing some amazing results and those with the imaganation and energy to get it going are to be congratulated. The following little poem is intended as a tribute, poking a little bit of fun at those who thought the facility being swtched on might have dire consequences.

For those familiar with "Albert and the Lion" read out loud with the same accent ...

Th’experiment had started well
No-one dead, nor yet unwell
Director said, “good work from all
“To make that bang from things so small

“Of course we had to whizz them fast
“Around a circle deep and vast."
So vast, in fact, that Switzerland’s
not big enough to hold said band.

A bit of France is needed too,
they gave some hectares, quite a few.
Germany when asked, of course
considered the request a sauce

Now, in that subterranean cave
Things strange, not particle nor wave
Had come to be, but none could see
them. Strangelets some and black holes wee.

Yes, holes in space and time there were,
So tiny no-one knew that there,
Beneath the rocky snowy alps
Were nasties seizing all the scalps

Of protons, neutrons, other things
For nothing has sufficient wings
The dread black hole e’er to escape
Till they, says Hawking, ee’vap’rate

You ask yourself, now why do this,
And risk creating an abyss
Into which the earth might fall
(and after that ’t would be quite small).

Well, ’tis a quest called find the Higgs
A boson, generous, it gives
its mass to all the other bits,
then t'universe forever quits

To make the Higgs appear again
A massive bang, like way back when
The cosmos, it was young not old,
Will do the trick the Higgs to unfold

Guess what, a most surprising thing,
Some Higgs were made inside that ring
And now there’s something new to note
The Higgs are black holes’ antidote!

That’s why results there were so few
And earth’s still here – a planet blue
Not black, nor charred, nor gone from view.
Th'experiment it lived right through.