_ _=Italice

Ben Englehard was tremulous from coffee, lack of sleep, and anticipation as he rode the elevator down to the Large Hadron Collider’s control room. His heart raced beneath the black letters on his T-shirt: "This I want to know, what holds the world together in its innermost parts"-_Goethe_.

“Today a new physics dawns,” He said, trying to divide the mounting tension.

“Let’s hope,” retorted Bob Carlson, crossing his left index and middle fingers.

This was the LHC’s first “full luminosity”, when super-conducting magnets would hurl beams of protons at 99.9999991% of the speed of light before crashing together. The possibility of cataclysmic events, such as mini-black holes and strangelet ice-nine transitions in which the world would vanish, was calculated to be virtually zero.

Partial luminosity tests proceeded without major mishap. Now it was time to explore the frontiers of the “New Physics.” At 23:59. 59 Ben gave the signal…

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