Those of you watching the news for the last 24 hours have no doubt heard that CERN is firing up their Large Hadron Collider for the first time, and that there are numerous doomsday scenarios associated with these experiments, the purpose of which is to smash together subatomic particles at very high speeds to determine if Higgs bosons actually exist, or something like that.  To be honest, we aren’t sure if “large” describes the hadrons or the collider.  Anyway, scientists admit that these collisions might create some tiny black holes and that there is an infinitesimally small chance that the Canton of Geneva, along with portions of France, will be swallowed up in the process.  Fortunately, CERN is just across the lake from us so we are able to observe firsthand any unusual events.  For example, yesterday was a clear, sunny day except for a strange vapor cloud over the collider.  Also, last night we heard a lot of low-frequency rumbling coming through the ground, and Everett seemed particularly fussy before bedtime.  Aaron reported today that the entropy (or chaos, we’re not sure yet) in his office is increasing.  Lastly, the turtle who lives at our house disappeared for several days and then suddenly reappeared when they started the collider.  Certainly any one of these events in isolation could go unnoticed.  But the low probability of all of them happening at once indicates that something big is likely to happen.

We were able to visit CERN a few days before this big event.  And I have great news for those of you who study EEG source localization and have wondered for years what a dipole is: we found one (see picture above) and there are several more in this area.