Satirical News Site Sparks CERN LHC Doomsday Fears: ‘Physicist Amit Goswami Warns LHC Could Destroy Planet’

A satirical news site Waterford Whispers News (WW News) succeeded in sparking mild panic in conspiracy theory and doomsday circles when it published on February 10, 2015, a fictitious exclusive interview with the theoretical quantum physicist Amit Goswami, 78, who served as professor at the University of Oregon’s Department of Physics from 1968 to 1997.

The professor, who has since become disillusioned with scientific materialism, is now an ardent advocate of what he calls “Quantum Activism,” which he defines on his website as “a solution space of the new quantum science based on the primacy of consciousness.”

In the spoof interview, WW News “quoted” the professor raising alarm that research experiments set to resume next week at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the “world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator,” could wipe out the planet if something was not done to halt the project.

A group of “alternative news” websites and conspiracy theory forums, including Godlike Productions, AboveTopSecrets, Project Avalon and Truthseeker, took the message and ran with it, generating excitement in conspiracy theory and doomsday circles.

In the “exclusive interview,” Goswami “told” WW News that when he and a few top scientists first proposed the idea of building a particle accelerator he “never thought it would get funding.”

He “said” the experiments have now gone too far and warned that the project would end in global catastrophe.

“Seriously, when myself, Higgs and Ben (Benjamin Lockspeiser, CERN’s first president) first pitched the idea, we never thought it would get funding. It was gonna cost billions for Christ’s sake. F**k knows what the thing does – no one does. Firing particles at each other at the speed of light can’t end well. I’m just worried now we took the joke too far.”

He “explained” that he was raising alarm because, “I’m coming near the end of my days now and I just want to get this off my chest. I just hope the world can forgive us.”

The website further “quoted” the professor saying that he and his peers in the field of quantum physics research “have absolutely no f**k**g idea” about what they are doing, and that quantum physicists were not nearer to explaining the universe than prehistoric man was.

“We have been just winging it to tell you the truth. Seriously, I haven’t a clue what’s going on. Neither does anyone else in my field. We keep proving stuff that never actually happened. Our cover is blown, what can I say?”

According to Goswami, as per WW News, “Over the years there have been just a handful of us pretending to know something about the universe that no one else does. But this is all lies to feed the charade. I’ve had some great times during the years, travelling the world and giving talks on our pretend finds.”

Responding to the question of how he and his colleagues were able to get away with pretending “to know something about the universe no one else does,” Goswni “said” everything “can be proven with mathematical equation.”

“I found out a long time ago that everything can be proven with a mathematical equation. Now, I mean everything; from unicorns, fire-breathing dragons, God and even the G-spot. None of it is true. Me and the handful that know the truth have been riding the Quantum Physicist celebrity wave for quite some time now, but it must end – before someone gets hurt.”

Such comments from a professor of theoretical quantum physics were apt to raise alarm at a time news outlets are reporting that CERN scientists will restart the LHC next week after it was shut down early in 2013 for service and upgrade to about double its previous energy levels.

Recently, CERN scientists made headlines with the claim that they could “make contact” with parallel universes in the new round of experiments by detecting mini black holes.

Conspiracy theorists have, for years, raised alarm about the LHC experiments, claiming that running the high energy particle collider could wipe out our planet and even the entire universe.

The Inquisitr recently reported fears in doomsday circles that experiments with the world’s largest particle accelerator could lead to a cosmic catastrophe. The fears heightened following alarm at the news that the newly upgraded LHC will generate particle collisions at nearly double the energy levels achieved in previous runs of experiments. According to conspiracy theorists, the experiments could recreate conditions similar to those that existed at the time of big bang creation of the universe or generate microscopic black holes and other exotic particles that could unleash powerful destructive forces.

The famous physicist Stephen Hawking caused further fears last year when he said the experiments have the “worrisome” potential of generating cosmic scale catastrophe. He said such experiments could generate what he termed a “vacuum bubble” that causes space and time to collapse catastrophically through a “vacuum decay.”

However, conspiracy theorists ignored his statement that the current LHC is not sufficiently powerful to generate energy states that could destroy the universe.

“The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV). This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming. A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.”

WW News’ spoof interview with Goswami only further fueled fears that scientists working in the Jura Mountains near the Franco-Swiss border are bent on destroying the world for reasons known only to them.