As you may have heard today will be the day when the Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built will be test fired and particle physics finally comes of age. The most powerful atom-smasher ever built will produce collisions of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light in the circular tunnel, giving off showers of particles that will provide more clues as to how everything in the universe is made by re-creating the conditions of the "big bang," the explosion that theoretically created the cosmos.

                                           

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, moving around the 17-mile tunnel at 11,000 times a second at full power. When the LHC is running at full throttle it will imbue each of the particles travelling around its 27 km circumference with approx. 7 teraelectronvolts ( TeV ) which may not be much in everyday terms, barely matching the kinetic energy of a mosquito but it can do extraordinary things to the fabric of the universe. Leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking say the atom-smashing experiment will be absolutely safe although some skeptics fear the proton collisions could unleash microscopic black holes that might literally swallow the entire planet starting with Switzerland as a hors-d'oevre.

If it is 8.41 am Greenwich Mean Time or later and you are still alive and reading this 'blog then it would tend to indicate that Dr.Hawking is correct...

The experiment could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time as well as possibly finding evidence evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" as it is believed to give mass to all other particles yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right any advances in our understanding of 'dark matter' could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the 21st century's first academically acknowledged time machine. It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure but if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine which means 2008 could become Year Zero: a must-see for the discerning chrononaut .

Taref'eva and Volovich are sensible and well respected mathematicians based at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, so they are not actually suggesting that visitors from the future or indeed the past are imminent. What they are saying is that since causality - the idea that effect must follow cause - is one of the fundamental principles of physics, the notion that it may be tested at the LHC is worth pushing as far as possible. Their work has yet to be recognized by a peer reviewed journal but that hasn't stopped other physicists from taking a keen interest.

                                                    

According to general relativity everything in the universe is played out on a stage that has three dimensions of space and one of time. The strange thing about this 'space-time' is that it gets warped by the mass and energy of the universe's contents. This is what apparently lies at the roots of gravitational attraction. The mass of the Earth, for instance, distorts the surrounding space, causing everything in its vicinity to feel a pull towards it. It's harder to visualize the distortion of time but it does happen to a tiny extent in the presence of any matter or energy. What's more a large enough concentration of mass or energy can distort time so much that it loops back on itself like a rubber sheet rolled up to make a cylinder. These loops are known to physicists as 'closed timelike curves' and they ought at least in theory to allow us to revisit some past moment in time.

                                         

Each particle travelling through the Large Hadron Collider at CERN creates a kind of shock wave in space-time, a gravitational ripple that distorts the space-time around it. When two such waves are heading towards each other the outcome could be spectacular and under the right conditions the colliding gravitational waves are capable of literally ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe – what was initially dubbed a 'wormhole' by Kip Thorne and his colleagues at the California Institute of technology who first got their heads around the math back in 1988. ( Physical review Letters, vol 61, p1446 )

These 'wormholes' make it theoretically possible to travel in time by closing the loop, rather like taking a tunnel under a hill instead of going over it – the same technology by which mankind hopes to some day reach the stars and any of the potentially habitable worlds that surround them – a matter not so much of scientific curiosity as deep rooted genetic imperative, being the only chance our species has of physically surviving beyond the lifespan of our planet. A wormhole to the stars or to another time period or quantum world would open up a pipeline to survival by placing our ailing civilization within striking distance of all the natural resources it needs to replenish the atmosphere and scrape through the existential bottleneck at which our species currently finds itself. Even the generally more circumspect Dr.Hawking has been forced to backtrack on some of his earlier statements and admit to at least the theoretical possibility of time travel ( ie: sending organized bundles of particles through time ) although in his introduction to 'The Science of Star Trek' the good doctor claims you would need a Faraday cage, a superconductor and more energy than you can shake a stick it to make it remotely feasible...

                                        

Few contemporary journalists or researchers are aware that the project, organized by the 20 member nations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research — known by its French initials CERN — has only been made possible thanks to the cornerstone work of French physicist Jules Gabriel Violle ( 1841 - 1923 ) one of the founders of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée and the École supérieure d'optique who improved and invented a number of devices for measuring radiation and the behavior of sub-atomic particles. Monsieur Violle patented the first calorimeter, the protype for the large barrel calorimeter used by the CERN project, apparently by decoding the secret symbolic language of gothic art and architecture and literally back-engineering the technology of the ancients, the hermetic alchemical science and sorcery that the industrious physicist dubbed 'the art of light'.

Violle outlined his theories in two books - 'The Mystery Of the Cathedrals' and 'The Houses of the Philosophers' which he authored under the pseudonym 'Fulcanelli' - a play on the names of 'Helios' and 'Vulcan' - the weaponsmith of the Gods. A third and final volume entitled 'Finis Gloria Mundi' concerning the cataclysmic possibilities of reversing the Earth's magnetic fields was later withdrawn from publication after the physicist realized the awesome destructive potential of his work. Although he is supposed to have died of natural causes in 1923 there are some irregularities in his death certificate which was in fact signed by his own son rather than the local coroner and there are those who believe the master alchemist is not only still alive, having achieved immortality through the completion of the 'great work' and effectively assumed the identity of his own offspring but is still at the helm of the shadowy HELIOS CORPORATION responsible for installing the large barrel calorimeter at CERN. ( pictured below along with the installation team )

                   

                              


Jacques Bergier, co-author of the best-selling 'The dawn of Magic' ( 1963 ) claims to have met 'Fulcanelli' in June 1937 while working with the nuclear physisist Andre Hellbronner and as a result of his testimony the American Office for Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, made a search for the elusive alchemist after the end of the war in 1945, anxious to prevent the alleged immortal from defecting to the east.

'Fulcanelli's disciple, the publisher Eugene Canseliet claimed to have last seen his master in 1954, some 31 years after his supposed death. According to Canseliet 'Fulcanelli' was continuing his work from a laboratory outside Madrid that seemingly existed in a fold in space time. The immortal alchemist was not only said to be aging backwards but somewhere along the way had changed gender, adopting the appearance of a young woman Canseliet nonetheless insisted was his ageless master...

Since Canseliet's death in 1982 the myth complex surrounding the mysterious inventor has served as an inspiration for a growing body of novels, comic books and movies including Dario Argento's 'INFERNO' ( 1980 ) Michelle Soavi's 'LA CHIESA' ( 1989 ) and Guillermo del Toro's 'CHRONOS' ( 1993 )

Be he alive or dead however there is no denying the master alchemist's seemingly far fetched theories are about to hit pay dirt !

For those who care BBC Radio 4 ( 92.4-94.6 MHz; 198kHz ) will be carrying live coverage of the test firing from 6.00 - 9.45 am GMT and returning for comment and analysis from 3.45 pm onwards should the world as we know it still be here. The full English language text of Fulcanelli's masterwork is available for free download from: - http://www.everythingisundercontrol.org/nagtloper/

                                                                 

Wherever he may be the Shadow Theatre congratulates Frere Chevalier Heliopolis Jules Louis Gabriel Violle aka: 'Fulcanelli' on the completion of his great work and his unravelling of the mystery of the 'first stone' of creation.

                   


Omnia ab uno et in unum omnia !!!

                       
  
THIS IS RICHARD STANLEY, THE LAST FREE MAN IN WEST LONDON, SIGNING OFF....