After a full week of operation, the Large Hadron Collider has yet to swallow the world, leaving humanity free to concentrate on its rather geeky name.
Unimportant, you say? Well, people who were excited when physicists flipped the LHC's switch might be less enthusiastic if, a year or two down the line, nobody's actually found Higgs bosons or sparticles or gluinos or other assorted dawn-of-the-universe dust bunnies.
Heck, even if scientists do confirm the existence of other universes or the Big Bang's details, there's no guarantee that the public will consider it a satisfactory return on their $8 billion investment. An 18-mile track and 27 tons of magnets are a great toy, but the public is a fickle child.
That's where branding -- or, if you prefer, framing -- comes in. A year ago to the day, Wired Science called for the Large Hadron Collider to be renamed. "It's an atom smasher. A giant atom smasher," I wrote at the time. "Smash stuff together and see what happens -- that's eternal! We dig that, we spent much of our childhoods doing that."
The Royal Society of Chemistry feels the same way, more or less: Last week they said the LHC's name "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public," and sponsored an LHC renaming contest that ended today.
The winning entry, submitted by Rhode Island resident Aaron Borges, was "Halo." No offense to Aaron, but I just can't get excited about this: Beyond the fact that Microsoft probably owns the word by now, it's a little too cute.
Wired Science is therefore proud to announce our own Large Hadron Collider Renaming Contest. Unlike the Royal Society of Chemistry, we can't offer a £500 prize -- so long, Lehman Brothers! -- but we will submit the winning entry to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operators of the LHC.
And the best part of a new name: You won't ever Google "Large Hardon Collider" by accident.
Submit your suggestions below, and vote away! The winner will be announced on September 24.
Image: Institute for Research Into the Fundamentals of the Universe*
See Also:
- It's Not a Large Hadron Collider, It's a Giant Atom Smasher
- Large Hadron Collider: Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios
- Video: Large Hadron Collider Fires Up Partying Physicists
- Atom Smasher Reveals New Aspect of Memeverse
- Large Hadron Collider's Hacker Infiltration Highlights Vulnerabilities
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.
