THE  SKY IS FALLING

A few weeks ago, we had a Chicken Little Moment.

You’ll recall the old Chicken Little fable in which an incredulous fowl believes that the sky is falling on Earth after he gets hit on the head one afternoon.

The frenzied chicken works himself into a state of hysteria and pronounces doom to those around him. Everyone believes him at first and fears for their lives, scattering about like, well, like chickens without their heads. Unbeknownst to the poultry, of course, is that what really hit him on the head was nothing more than an acorn falling from a tree.

Depending on who’s telling the story, and their own interpretation of the fable, the moral is either “don’t believe everything you hear,” or “have courage in your convictions.”

Both principles fit in interpreting the fallout from the activation of Europe’s enormous $8 billion particle accelerator in September, a tool that was created to probe the birth of the universe.

On the one side are the scientists, who—while spurning critics with a “don’t believe everything you hear” attitude—have built a massive labyrinth of iron, steel, and supercomputing wire 300 feet underground in a 17-mile-long circular tunnel on the border of France and Switzerland. At peak operation, hydrogen protons in the collider will reach nearly the speed of light and carry as much power as a speeding train. As the atoms smash, physicists hope to learn how the tiniest particles were first created after the Big Bang, which many theorize was the explosion that formed the stars, the planets, and everything else.

And on the other side are those who, true to their conviction, argue that we should fear the collision of protons, as it could harm the Earth by creating micro black holes, or subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong that they can suck in planets and other stars.

If you’re reading this magazine, it is safe to assume that, at least for now, the “don’t believe everything you hear” side is ahead—but be forewarned, as Chicken Little might say. The intensity of the collisions will only rise as testing resumes in a few months.

Searching for the origins of the universe is certainly one of the most fundamental of human endeavors. So is probing for the practical technologies of the future.

In this month’s focus on tomorrow’s technologies, scholar Ahmed K. Noor takes us on a journey to a not-too-distant time when robots will challenge current perspectives and our own reality. The work of perfecting cognitive robots to guide the blind and assist the elderly, or to roam fields and care for crops, is inspiring.

And while it’s difficult to ignore the current global financial crisis, which has us living with the predominant sense that the sky is falling, Noor’s article reminds us that there are those who, as he says, are “remaking the world we live in.” That’s why, when it comes to the sky falling, it’s best to believe that the lesson of Chicken Little is “don’t believe everything you hear.”

—John G. Falcioni, Editor-in-Chief
He can be reached by e-mail at falcionij@asme.org