>>Well I see the world did not get swallowed by a black hole under the swiss countryside and the particles did not go backwards in time to sabotage the machine....seeing how I'm still here typing...haha
>>
>>http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR16.09E.html
>
>Ah, but the whole black hole thing doesn't happen until they actually start doing things with the particle beam, collisions and such. That'll start happening next week:
>
>"The next important milestone will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now. These will give the experimental collaborations their first collision data, enabling important calibration work to be carried out. This is significant, since up to now, all the data they have recorded comes from cosmic rays. Ramping the beams to high energy will follow in preparation for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) next year"
>
>~~Bonnie

Yep. gotta set the stage for 2012. :o) There's another theory for ya (like there's not enough floating around already!)