I enjoy conspiracy theories in a terrible 'aren't I clever because I don't believe in this stuff' kind of way. When the reptiles unmask themselves I'll be laughing on the other side of my face. Anyway, one of my favourite theories is that the LHC at CERN is doing the work of the illuminati: some kind of mad Stargate effort, as I understand it. A little while ago, I read an article purporting to be written by a CERN scientist who had turned against his illuminati masters and was exposing their plan so we can stop them before it's too late. It was wildly inaccurate and badly written but made a great short story and I was going to write my own version. The climax of the story involved a human sacrifice at CERN... A bunch of scientists with too much time on their hands beat me to it: Human Sacrifice Staged at CERN
Yes, rubbing the blood of a virgin on a particle accelerator will open a portal to the heavens, or possibly just start to slowly oxidize the metal housing. You still could write a short about it though.
Not a group of 'scientists', just a group of pranksters according to the article. Still funny though. Didn't Dan Brown already write that story?
The article suggests the pranksters were scientists (not mutually exclusive categories). I'd like to think they were. I've only read the Da Vinci Code. Maybe I should read his take on CERN. I'd be curious to see how a man who thinks world famous cryptologists wouldn't recognise back-to-front writing when they see it (and would need a mirror to read it) would write particle physicists.
Yeah, that other one had a wanna-be pope casually stealing an antimatter bomb that CERN whipped up on a rainy Tuesday morning and something something explosion Vatican parachute blah blah..... It just bugs me when people toss in what would be the scientific breakthrough of the century to use as more or less a MacGuffin.
Another author who wrote about CERN and, IMHO, did a much better job was Robert J. Sawyer in Flashforward. And don't go by the short-lived TV series; that was a complete dog (They ignored all the good things about the story and made up a bunch of stuff that simply didn't fit, but that's Hollywood for you.) In fact, if you're into science fiction at all, Sawyer is an excellent author to read... Canadian, too.
Interesting, antimatter bomb. When a nuke just won't give you that bang for your buck, also a healthy sized crater.
I had heard of Flashforward and was intrigued by the premise but couldn't be arsed with the TV series. I've totally fallen out with 'epic' when it comes to TV. I'm less a CERN fan than a science-meets-the-occult fan (I'm a chemistry graduate raised by a mother who loves anything paranormal), but this sounds like a good story either way. I've ordered me a copy.
You might check out Charles Stross's "Laundry Files" series. It combines Lovecraftian occult with modern tech. Basically, sufficiently advance mathematics is magic, so when you start fooling around "at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set", among other places, you can attract the attention of Things That Live Outside. It's got a lot of British humo(u)r in it too. Here's a link to a legit (through his publisher) free short story set in the Laundry universe (mods, I hope this is okay, if not, please delete): Overtime
It's a good story. Also in the public domain, I think, so I'm sure there's a free posting of it online, probably in multiple places.
I'm not sure what that means "couldn't be arsed" but I agree that the TV series was total crap. The novel, however, is full-arsed—as opposed to half-arsed—and a great read.
"Can't be arsed" means "can't be bothered"/too lazy or uninterested to do it. Next time you have to write dialogue for a lower class English character who decides not to do something because it requires more effort than he wants to put in: "I can't be arsed."
