Has anyone else noticed that with the passing of each year, the well of sci-fi tropes becomes a little less sci-fi and a bit more…well, sci?

With a new year ahead of us—a brand new year full of potential and promises—our planet has a nice white canvass to paint a picture on. While 2009 wasn’t a largely significant year for scientific breakthroughs that will change the world in the long run, it does show the potential that the future has. And for those of you that favor sci-fi fiction, you may be beat to the punch on a lot of your ideas by reality. Just thinking of all of those extrasolar planets that have been discovered makes Carl Sagan’s Contact and sci-fi staples like Star Trek a little more believable. A very little, but still…

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A quick glimpse at history shows us how man’s ideas have been proven as ignorant and then one-upped by scientific fact (or, in some unfortunate cases, simple logic).

For instance, hundreds of years ago the majority of the human population believed that brave sailors that ventured too close to the horizon would fall off the face of the earth. Sometime later, masses of religious crazies hunted down witches under the brilliant deduction that if you threw a supposed witch into a lake, she would float to the top of the water (apparently oblivious to the fact that an “innocent” would presumably sink to the bottom and drown). Even more recently, prior to the detonation of the A-bomb, many people—some of them incredibly intelligent—feared that the detonation would set the entire atmosphere on fire.

And of course, let’s not forget the horror and peril we were all subject to as 1999 came to a close. Funny how the phrase Y2K is now laughable, isn’t it?

With all of that being said, let’s now consider the newest item on interest that has many deluded people running for the hills, screaming that the sky is falling and, in turn, swallowing the world whole.

This would be the Large Hadron Collider.

For those not yet in the know, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a seventeen mile long circular tunnel located beneath part of Switzerland and France. If it ever actually fully operates as it is intended, the LHC will allow scientists to study the more elusive fundamentals of matter that have remained a mystery for so long. The LHC will produce tiny patches of very high energy by colliding atomic particles together at insanely crazy speeds speed…about 99.999% of the speed of light to be exact. Scientists hope to be able to study energy produced in the collisions in order to see what the very high energies that existed early in the evolution of the universe were like and how they reacted. Collisions in the LHC will have up to 7x the energy of those produced in previous machines, recreating energies and conditions that existed billionths of a second after the start of the Big Bang.

And now it’s tiem to break out your Sci Fi 101 handbooks…

Many folks (some are even scientists themselves) wonder what will happen if the LHC is a little too powerful? Slamming particles together at such a speed could theoretically create a black hole. All the elements are there, but it is about the equivalent of saying that a single cigarette butt tossed from a moving car will set the entire globe ablaze.

While science geeks rejoiced everywhere at the LHC’s start-up in late October 2009 and what it meant for the progress of mankind and knowledge, many others are wondering when the sky is going to start boiling and when the Gates of Hell are going to open up beneath our feet.

The majority of scientists—those involved with the LHC project and those that are not—agree that there is nothing at all to be worried about. Sure, there is a chance that the LHC could bring about a Roland Emerich-style apocalypse. But it could also open a portal to a universe dominated by fluffy pink ponies with rabies where Glenn Beck is a symbol of peace. Both scenarios are just as unlikely as the other. In fact, Brian Cox, renowned physicist (sometimes referred to as “the rock star of physics”…no joking) has gone so far as to say: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”

Not very scientific, but it gets the point across.

How about you good folks? Are you excited to see what sort of world-changing scientific information we get from the LHC or are you already holed up in your underground bunker with Ramen noodles and sardines, waiting for the rise of the fluffy pink ponies? Better yet, do advances like this pose a threat to you and your best-selling sci-fi ideas or generate even more fantastic fodder for fiction?

Barry has had fiction and poetry included in several print and online publications such as The Edge of Propinquity, Everyday Weirdness, Southern Fried Weirdness, Northern Haunts, Death in Common, Sand and others. His dark fiction has been collected in his book Debris, released by Library of Horror Press. Barry enjoys coffee, ambient music, all things astronomical and paranormal, and irony. You can read more of his meanderings at www.barrynapierwriting.wordpress.com.