Large Hadron Collider or the Modern Prometheus

Thousands of the world's smartest people built the most expensive machine in human history to unlock the secrets of the universe, and the internet's response was… "portal to hell." We’re diving into the many, many CERN conspiracy theories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to find out how a particle physics experiment became the internet’s favorite modern-day Tower of Babel.

We start with a quick explainer of the Large Hadron Collider—a machine designed to smash particles at near light speed—and how CERN ended up at the center of some of the internet’s most persistent modern myths. (Spoiler: In 1964 someone called the Higgs boson the "God particle," and things basically went downhill from there.)

From there, we unpack the fever swamp of enduring CERN conspiracy theories, including black holes, interdimensional gateways, and the alleged ancient Egyptian wormhole technology that has the Vatican panicking. We also dig into the mystery of the Celtic horned god that may or may not have ever existed, and Project S.A.T.A.N.—the experiment that was almost (unwisely) named after the Morning Star. Finally, we address the Mandela Effect’s strange habit of drifting into particle physics discussions it has no business being in, and the legendary weasel-and-baguette saga that nearly broke billion-dollar science. 

Join us as we figure out how a friendly particle accelerator became the primary source for apocalypse fan-fiction and the world’s most overworked metaphor.

Spoiler: CERN is not opening a portal to hell. The internet, however, absolutely is.

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Quote of the Episode: “If one word has some of the same letters as another word, you’ve found a connection. Then you just make up the rest.”

Previous show notes by Judas "In this episode I will be investigating the many, many conspiracy theories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider @CERN. "

Transcript

Woe to you of Earth and Sea!
Welcome to Satan is My Superhero, a show about art, culture, history and the devil.
I'm your host, Judas Falling.
In this episode, I will be investigating the many, many conspiracy theories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
The lifeblood of conspiracy theorists, the internet, that without which they would have no echo chambers to hear their own voices,
was famously invented by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee while working at CERN.
Irony!
Ugh, so ironic.
Why is the LHC such a magnet to the uncritical mind of a conspiracy theorist?
The Large Hadron Collider is one of the most expensive things humanity has ever built.
Definitely the largest and most complicated scientific experiment ever constructed.
Literally thousands of scientists and engineers work there trying to unlock the secrets to the very fabric of the universe.
I'll admit, from a certain point of view, this looks exactly like a bunch of mad scientists have built a gigantic doomsday machine to unravel space-time itself.
Did you hear they're building the world's largest and most expensive machine to smash atoms apart and see what's inside?
Oh yeah? Whose idea was that?
Victor Frankenstein or Dr. No?
But what are the conspiracy theories surrounding the LHC?
For the purposes of this podcast, the best place to start is the Higgs boson, otherwise known by its nickname, the God particle.
Oh, poor choice.
A primary goal at CERN has been to discover the Higgs boson first theorised by Peter Higgs and associates in 1964.
The Higgs boson gives all other particles their mass.
It's very important. Without it, none of what we can see and touch in the universe would exist.
Except for me. I have no mass.
I'd be just fine. Lonely, but mostly unaffected.
Because of this importance, Leon Lederman, the former director of Fermilab, called the Higgs boson the God particle.
In a book he co-authored with Dick Teresi called The God particle, if the universe is the answer, what is the question?
Hey Leon, we need a catchy name for the Higgs boson. Something the general public can latch onto.
Hmm, what about the God particle?
Love it. And I can't see any potential problems with it at all.
Me neither. I'm sure I'll never regret calling it that.
Lederman has since expressed his regret at coming up with this pithy title.
Obviously, the idea of understanding the God particle annoys the bejesus out of anyone with a certain religious bent
and excites the hell out of anyone with a conspiracy theorist outlook.
Author, investigative mythologist, art historian and consulting producer on the incredibly credible History Channel show
Ancient Aliens, William Henry, has likened the LHC to the Tower of Babel.
He also believes ancient Egyptian art depicting Osiris on a ship
looks suspiciously like modern artistic representations of wormholes.
William claims
The addition of the wormhole shaped ship to the Osiris pillar slash Tower of Babel suggested to me that this ladder or stairway to heaven
is either some form of ancient particle accelerator for opening wormholes or a scanning device.
I have to agree the artwork he's referring to really does look like artistic representations of wormholes.
But obviously Mr. Henry understands wormholes look absolutely nothing like those two-dimensional artistic representations.
They're like those graphics you see of the bowling ball on the stretchy fabric when scientists try to explain Einstein's version of gravity
or the classic picture we've all seen of the atom with the tidy little nucleus being orbited by the electron.
Those visuals are designed to explain what's happening but they are in no way representative of what the curvature of space-time or an atom would actually look like.
Same story with the artistic representations of wormholes.
He gets that right?
Hmm.
I'm going to say no.
Henry is not the only one concerned that the LHC will open a portal to hell and be used like a stargate for the devil.
Stephen Olivia, senior pastor at Grace Kingdom, said the LHC.
Will be used to open a polyam's bottomless pit spoken of in prophecy of revelation.
It is claimed the acronym CERN is short for Synunos, a horned god from Celtic mythology
and we all know how terrifying ancient horned gods can be.
Hey, some of my best friends have horns.
Let's get one thing straight about Synunos.
There may never have been a horned god from Celtic mythology called Synunos.
He is only ever mentioned once in the ancient sources, a Roman column in Paris dating around the 1st century CE, the pillar of the boatman,
named Synunos among a group of other Roman and Celtic gods.
Then he really doesn't show up again until Margaret Murray put him in her 1931 book, God of the Witches.
Respected Egyptologist Murray had left her lane to study the history of European witchcraft
and this last half of her career has been widely discredited by later academics.
It is claimed she herself practiced magic and would put curses on anyone who upset her.
Biographers have argued that this was just her sense of humour rather than any actual belief in the supernatural.
Nevertheless, she has earned the title Grandmother of Wicca.
I'd like to order dessert now, please.
I'm very sorry, Ms. Murray, but it's after 9pm and they have closed the kitchen.
I could go back and see what they have left in the fridge if you like.
No, that's alright, dear.
Just bring me some eye of newt and a single strand of the chef's hair.
It is most likely that Synunos is a catch-all phrase for any and all of the horned gods of Europe.
There are etymological reasons to believe that this is the case and we've seen this before right here on this podcast.
He's talking about you, ball.
So even if the Conceal European Paula Research Nuclea had gone to all the trouble of crowbarring their acronym to give a nod and a wink to an ancient forest spirit, they clearly didn't do their homework.
Which would be odd for a bunch of nerds.
It is claimed the Vatican and Jesuits fund CERN.
They don't.
The Vatican Observatory, which is run by Jesuits, has sent astronomers to CERN to collaborate on projects.
And in 2020, Pope Francis did appoint CERN's Director General, Fabiola Giannotti, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
An organisation dedicated to the promotion of science.
Former members include such physics heavyweights as Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger.
I wonder if this cat was invited.
Extra, extra, Pope believes in science, proof once and for all he is the Antichrist.
In his book, CERN, Satan's Playground, author Nick Huntley claims,
CERN is deeply and darkly connected to many world leaders.
The Vatican, the Hollywood elites, the deep state, the Illuminati and the New World Order.
He also asks the question,
Could CERN be responsible for releasing the devil from the bottomless pit, from his prison, hell, has written in the Bible in Revelation?
Oh, oh, oh, let me answer this one.
No.
For context, TT's will give you a brief list of some of Huntley's other books.
Apollyon Unleashed, CERN will free the destroyer.
The Hunt for UFOs, Aliens and the Pentagon 2021.
CERN Portals and Dark Matter, Time Travel Stargates.
Jay the Gray Alien, Kids Ask About Aliens.
CERN Science and Satan, Particle Paganism.
CERN Ceremonies of Satan, Particles and Paganism 2.
COVID-19 vs. Black Lives Matter, The New World Order.
Aliens for Dummies, UFOs and Abductions 101.
And my personal favorite, UFOs are real.
Aliens are already here.
He believes aliens crashed at Roswell.
They got lost on their way home from Uranus.
Writing for the website raptureready.com, Matt Ward describes the scientists at CERN as...
Stunning in their simplicity, in their childlike abandonment of consideration for risk, and stunning in their arrogance and hubris.
The website mostholyplace.com believes...
Not only can the Bible coexist with science, but it can agree with it perfectly.
That's just blatantly false, isn't it?
According to Most Holy Place, the Holy Trinity and Scripture can be used to decode the secrets of the subatomic universe,
with the Father being the neutron, the Son being the proton, and the Holy Ghost being the electron.
Most Holy Place are offended that protons, or the Son of God, are being smashed together over and over again.
Poor little Jesus keeps getting crucified at near the speed of light on a daily basis there at the LHC.
And of course it goes without saying that antimatter is represented by the unholy trinity of the beast.
The website also points out that lightning produces antimatter, and in 2017 scientists from Kyoto University did detect positrons,
the antimatter partner of electrons being created by lightning.
The researchers at Kyoto University spent many years and millions of yen to discover this,
but they could have simply read their Bibles, as the scientific theory is clearly illustrated in Luke.
I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven!
Hallelujah!
Oh dear, science is on to me!
Dan Brown could smell a conspiracy in the air around the LHC,
and his Angels and Demons involves a plot to use stolen antimatter from CERN to assassinate the Pope.
Okay team, we've been tasked with assassinating the Pope.
We need a plan.
I've got one.
We could get a blueprint of the Vatican, train a weasel to navigate through it and chew through the wiring,
near the pontiff's bedchamber, causing a fire.
Love it!
What else could we do?
We could train a bird to drop a poison baguette near the Pope, who will then eat it.
Nice!
Any more?
We could break into the most high-tech lab in the world, steal the most dangerous and volatile substance known to man,
research and develop entirely new technology to create a mobile octopole magnetic field trap to contain the antimatter while we move it into position before turning it into a bomb.
Oh, Robbie, you've outdone yourself once again. Brilliant!
What about you, Bronwyn? Any ideas?
Well, I mean, he's a frail old man. We could just push him over.
Why did everyone go so quiet?
I'm not sure you're a good fit for this organisation.
So, should I just leave?
I think that would be for the best.
Okay, um, bye then.
Has she gone?
She's gone.
We have to murder Bronwyn now.
Any ideas?
Yeah, we could get a blueprint of our house and train a weasel to navigate through it and chew through the wine.
It is claimed the town of St. Genespaulie near CERN and housing many of the LHC employees was known as Apolaicom during the Roman occupation of the region,
and the Romans built a temple to Apollo in that area.
Apolaicom would mean Apollo's possession in Latin, and with some mental gymnastics,
you can leap from the Greco-Roman deity Apollo, god of archery, music, dance, truth, prophecy, healing, the sun, and poetry, etc., etc.,
to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Abaddon, archangel of the abyss, Apollyon.
You can then imagine that during the Roman occupation, the Romans would have certainly built a temple not to Apollo,
but to the Hebrew demon Abaddon, which they would have called Apollyon,
because we all know how much the Romans loved the Israelites and their culture.
And now evil scientists have built a portal to the bottomless pit of Hades, right in the same spot.
I'm sorry, what?
Obviously, absolutely no part of what I've just told you makes any sense at all to sensible ears,
but it gets even worse.
During the Roman era, St. Genes Pauli was actually called Colonia Lulia Equestris,
founded by none other than Julius Caesar himself.
So, yeah.
Mummy, I want to come up with crazy conspiracy theories just like you,
but I'm very stupid and lazy and could never do all of the research required to make connections
between seemingly unconnected phenomena.
Oh, sweetie, you don't have to worry about any of that.
If one word has some of the same letters as another word, you've found a connection.
Then you just make up the rest and other stupid lazy people will have their stupid lazy minds blown.
The four main detectors are set out around the LHC in pretty much the shape of a crucifix.
That's unfortunate.
One of the experiments is called Atlas, named after a pagan god.
From one angle, Atlas looks like a 7,000 ton wheel with eight spokes.
It has been noted that this eight-spoke configuration shows up in Buddhism, known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
In Wicca, it is known as the Wheel of the Year, denoting the solstices and equinoxes upon which to carry out unholy rituals.
St. Peter's Square at the Vatican is, of course, not a square at all, but also a wheel featuring eight definite spokes.
And last but not least, favorite of all kooks, the Mayan calendar also has this eight-spoke design.
This calendar is of particular note to LHC conspiracies because of the Mandela effect.
What is the Mandela effect?
It is where enough people all agree they remember something in a certain way.
It's a shared false memory, if you like.
The most popular of these, at least according to its proponents,
is the idea that many people around the world remember Nelson Mandela dying sometime in the 80s.
As you can imagine, these people were very surprised to learn of his actual death in 2013
and are obviously so world affairs illiterate they were unaware of his South African presidency in the 90s.
Jesus H. Christ, what has any of this got to do with the LHC?
It was 2012 when the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced.
2012 is when the Mayan calendar allegedly predicted the end of the world.
The world didn't end, so a new theory had to be concocted to explain the failed prediction,
and the internet landed on the idea that the world as we knew it ended with the discovery of the God particle,
and the LHC migrated us all into a new reality.
But some people remember the old reality, and in that reality, Nelson Mandela died in the 80s.
Hey, have you got that money you owe me?
What money?
You know that money I lent you in 2011.
Oh, I see what's going on here.
You failed to migrate completely to the new reality.
What?
Yeah.
Do you remember the Bernstein Bears?
No, I remember the Bernstein Bears, and I also remember you owe me money.
Do you remember a movie from the 90s about a genie played by the comedian Sinbad called Shazam?
No, I remember a movie from the 90s called Kazam starring Shaquille O'Neal as a genie.
I think you're being racist now.
You wouldn't accept money from a racist now, would you?
Another experiment is called Alpha, potentially mocking scripture where it is claimed Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega.
Let's go, boys!
I'm going to take a short break from the show right now to talk about my sponsors and Patreon.
I don't currently have sponsors or Patreon, but if you'd like to support the show, you can do that by buying my novel.
It's called Chaos Machine by Judas Forley.
It's available through Amazon.
You don't need a Kindle to read it.
Almost any digital device will do.
Don't forget, Chaos Machine by Judas Forley.
Now, back to the show.
So primed to attack CERN as its bastard child, the internet, that on June 24th, 2016, an ominous-looking photograph above the LHC became an overnight viral sensation.
Oh, wow. Check out this photograph.
It's a cloud.
Yeah, but it's right above the Large Hadron Collider.
And?
And have you ever seen a cloud in Switzerland?
Well, no, but...
Exactly.
I was going to say I've never been to Switzerland.
Yeah, you're right.
Maybe Switzerland's not even a real place.
Multiple conspiracy theorists claim scientists at CERN or related to the field of quantum physics have committed suicide trying to find or having found the secrets of reality.
They don't name anyone.
There's your first clue.
I couldn't find any record of these physicists' suicides.
I searched so hard on this angle I am now getting Google pop-up ads directing me to mental health services.
So while I found no evidence, the theory that does not give any examples is still repeated over and over.
The LHC has had two major shutdowns that have made the headlines.
One was caused by a weasel chewing through cables and the other by a bird dropping a baguette into some sensitive equipment.
Journalists at the time made a joke that it was actually a time traveller from the future coming back to our time to sabotage the machine and stop it from realising the future they live in.
Terminator style.
It's all very amusing for journalists to make these sort of jokes and far be it from me to criticise.
But obviously kooks all over the world took this to be the most likely reason for the shutdowns.
Is the time portal ready to transport a human back to the early 21st century and stop the LHC coming online?
Yes, but there's an issue.
What's the problem?
It's not big enough for a human.
It can only handle something as big as a rodent or bird.
That's okay. I know this guy Robbie whose great, great, great, great grandfather trained weasels and birds for exactly this type of thing.
Another claim is that since the LHC was switched on there has been an increase in earthquakes and UFO sightings.
There hasn't been an increase in the frequency of earthquakes since the LHC was switched on.
What has happened is we have more detectors now and so the number of earthquakes detected and reported is increasing all the time.
But those earthquakes were always happening at that rate as far as anyone who actually studies this stuff can tell.
Did you feel that?
Feel what?
It felt like an earthquake.
There must be UFOs nearby.
CERN and the greater scientific community in general have not helped this conspiracy theory situation surrounding the Large Hadron Collider.
Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, Sergio Bertolucci, has said of the potential of the LHC to open a portal into another dimension.
Out of this door might come something or we might send something through it.
Oh dear.
Prior to switching on the LHC, CERN's Director General at the time, Rolf Dieter Herr, said.
When we open the door, something might come through it into our reality.
Yeah.
A whole lot of BS came pouring through it.
In 2008, Spanish journalist Luis Sancho and botanist Walter Wagner attempted to have the LHC shut down in a Hawaiian court.
Wagner and Sancho were concerned the LHC would cause tiny black holes that might swallow the earth,
negatively charged strangelets that would turn everything they touched into strangelets,
and magnetic monopoles that would convert the atoms we know into another form of matter.
The case failed just in time for Wagner to be indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempting to embezzle $340,000 from the World Botanical Gardens in Hawaii.
Unrelated but interesting side note, Walter Wagner shares his name with the man who married Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the bunker in 1945.
I now pronounce you man and wife.
You may kiss the bride.
Oh, thank you, Walter.
Will you be staying for cake?
I really wish I could, but I have to time travel back to the 21st century and cook some books.
You are from the future?
Oh, I shouldn't have said that, but yeah.
Oh, Walter, how does my marriage to Dolphy turn out?
Well, I guess I would categorise it as very successful.
You'll be married to each other for the rest of your lives.
Well-known and respected German biochemist Otto Rossler also launched a failed legal campaign to have the LHC shut down due to what he believed to be a flawed planetary safety report.
He has said,
This is a risk at all dishonesty on the part of the guild of elementary particle physicists that are sitting enthroned in Geneva.
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics Director of Quantum Gravity Division, Herman Nicolai, said Otto's arguments are...
Based on an elementary misunderstanding of the theory of general relativity.
Ouch!
Near the main building at CERN, there is a statue of the Hindu god of destruction, Shiva.
The statue was a gift to CERN from India.
CERN's official position on why they have a statue of a Hindu god on the premises is...
Lord Shiva practiced Nataraj dance which symbolises Shakti, or life force.
This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the cosmic dance of subatomic particles.
I'm looking for a gift to give a respectable scientific organisation.
Do you have anything that says India?
Statues are always a good idea for this type of situation.
That would be great, but we've already given these people a lot of money.
There's not a lot left in the budget.
No worries, I can do you a rock bottom price on Shiva the Destroyer.
Destroyer maybe doesn't quite send the right message.
Did I say destroyer?
I'm sorry, I meant dancer.
Shiva the Dancer.
In 2016, staff at CERN created an unauthorised hoax video of a fake human sacrifice in front of the Shiva statue.
So yeah, that's a thing that happened.
One of the experiments at CERN is known as CAST, an acronym for the CERN Axion Solar Telescope,
where they are trying to detect axions emitted by the sun.
Axions are a hypothetical particle that could explain dark matter.
While it all sounds unconspiracy theory enough, the original name for this experiment was the Solar Axion Telescope Antennae,
the acronym of which was SATAN.
Are these physicists just trolls?
It is claimed by many that Stephen Hawking was scared of what the LHC might do.
He wasn't.
Hawking wrote the foreword for the book Starmas, 50 Years of Man and Space, in which he did say,
The EG's potential as the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100 billion gigaelectron volts.
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.
The LHC is currently capable of generating collisions at 13,000 gigaelectron volts.
The Large Hadron Collider needs to increase its output by a factor of 7,692,307.692,3077 in order to reach that type of energy level.
A man-made particle accelerator capable of that kind of energy would have to be larger than the planet Earth itself.
Even if that were economically and technologically feasible, the universe has already experienced energy levels that high in its past,
and cosmic rays from space regularly collide at those kinds of levels.
So far, no catastrophic vacuum decay.
If anything, Hawking was one of the many scientists around the world slightly disappointed with what the LHC has been finding.
He said the discovery of the Higgs boson was...
A pity, in a way.
Has it made physics less interesting, only further confirming the standard model of particle physics,
which theorists are quite frankly getting a little bored with after a century of always being correct and predictable?
It's time to get up or you'll be late for work.
I'm not going to work today.
Oh, is that because all the great theories have already been thought of and proven,
and you now realise you chose a field with no future and have probably wasted your whole life?
No. It's Sunday, that's all.
Well, there you have it.
The Large Hadron Collider, opening a portal to an entire dimension of...
Crazy.
I'd like to end with another quote from William Henry, he of the Osiris Wormhole Depictions.
If I'm right, the murder of God, open brackets, the discovery of the God particle, close brackets, will take place at CERN.
If I'm right, open brackets, and I always am, close brackets.
Oh, I've actually got nothing to add.
I just wanted to do the brackets thing.
And that's why Satan is my superhero.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, subscribe, you know the drill.
But more importantly, please recommend this show to just one person.
I mean literally one person.
Choose that person well.
Shut up, stupid motorbike.
We're recording a podcast from here.