Sideband #19: LHC

The previous article contains a bit of doggerel I wrote as an informal writing assignment on a current events/blogging site I inhabited for a while a few years back. One of the other regulars sometimes held online “parties” complete with musical playlists (suggested YouTube and other musical links) and multiple, simultaneous conversations. Basically a kick off article followed by a very long, branching tree of comments.

We all had to refresh the article a lot to see the new comments, but it was fun.  Especially as the evening wore on and some of us got a bit tipsy. (All from the safety of our homes, I point out. Virtual online parties: no one drives home!)

Anyway, in the course of one such evening, the “poem” below popped out of my mind. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN was just beginning its testing, and the “it’ll destroy us all” fervor was at its peak.

You probably need a bit of background in sub-atomic physics to completely get the poem below. Word choice, word position, line count and syllable count are all part of the poem. As a reference hint, there are three families of matter, each contains two quarks (six quarks total). And hadrons are particles made of quarks. That’s all the clues you get.

Here’s the poem:

In honor of the LHC at CERN bringing about the end of the universe…

Little Hadronic Couplets

If you’re deeply concerned about the LHC destroying us all, you can check this link:

Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World, Yet?

And if you’re genuinely concerned, don’t be… nothing can go worng…