The Large Hadron Collider Drinking Game
The rules are simple. Take a drink of your favorite beverage whenever one of the following occurs:
- A proton crosses the border between Switzerland and France.
- A magnet quench in a superconducting magnet causes all the liquid helium to boil away.
- A Higgs boson is detected (2 drinks).
- Scientists learn the secrets of the universe and go insane (2 drinks).
- A miniature black hole forms (2 drinks if it absorbs Switzerland).
- Strange matter is created (weird, unusual or eccentric matter doesn’t count).
- A petabyte of data is generated.
- Someone sings the chorus of the LHC Rap.
- The Super Proton Synchrotron reaches 300 gigavolts (2 drinks if it hits 400 GeV).
- The Compact Muon Solenoid finds something that completely alters our understanding of the fundamental forces of the universe.
- Flight 19 suddenly appears over Geneva.
- Particle superpartners are found to have natural supersymmetry.
- An intern confuses muons with gluons.
- The experiment goes awry and someone ends up with superpowers.
- Aliens show up and make us turn off the LHC before we implode reality.
- Scientists go back in time (2 drinks if they create a paradox).
- Someone says “Big Bang.”
- Particles crash into each other (2 drinks if there are Batman-tyle visual sound effects, like “Pow!” and “Zap!” when it happens; feel free to construct your own).
- Someone says, “What’s a hadron?”
- Scientists access another dimension (2 drinks if that dimension is occupied entirely by Donna Summer impersonators; 3 drinks if denizens of said dimension eat the scientists; note that these two conditions are not mutually exclusive).
- Someone on TV questions the amount of money spent to build the LHC.
- Someone on TV worries that the LHC will destroy the world.
- The world ends (drink whatever you have left).
- Scientists prove string theory (3 drinks because we’ll all pretty much have to take their word for it).
- Someone uses the term “beam pipe” in a pickup line.
