YOU would have thought it was the final moments of the World Cup. An estimated 1 billion people were glued to their television screens. Nearly 6000 newspaper articles discussed the event and the blogosphere was buzzing with anticipation. T-shirts were made, Google changed its logo for the day, and people placed their bets. Only it wasn't soccer that people around the globe were so enthralled by - it was a beam of protons.
The protons' lap around the 27-kilometre circumf-erence of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, was the talk around water coolers everywhere. Coverage of the event even bumped the US election into second place.
But would the LHC have enjoyed the same media coverage if a handful of critics hadn't spread absurd claims that the particle smasher would create a black hole and swallow up ...
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