Science doom vs the media

I am a lot of things, but a luddite, I am not. I adore new tech. Even more than that, I enjoy the idea of new tech – the human race’s amazing ingenuity to influence our world and shape our society using the blended fuels of creativity and science.

However.

I get ever so slightly nervous when scientists build an enormous machine that smashes matter together to see what happens. Especially, when what happens can be unexpected black holes and chain reactions involving exotic matter (eg stragelets) which could turn the planet into the proverbial grey goo.

Now, I’m not saying to Mama Science that she shouldn’t go ahead with the May opening of the Large Hadron Collider. Heck, I ride a motorbike, so I’m pretty much an adrenalin-induced catastrophe away from oblivion regardless. However, what I would really really really like is for the mainstream media to care about things like this.

Why is it that the potential extinction of humanity doesn’t rate page one if it contains too much science? Why does the mainstream media think that the the word “quark” is less exciting than the phrase “breast implant”. Have you ever seen the phrase “breast implant” uttered in the same paragraph as “apocalypse”? To prove the point, I did two searches on Google:

Search #1: “breast implant” AND apocalypse
Number of results: 11,600

Search #2: “quark” AND apocalypse
Number of results: 155,000

Point made? As humanity barrel’s down the path of science at ever increasing speed, it is we the people’s responsibility to understand where we are being taken. And it’s the job of the media to help us build that understanding. That means lucid, balanced, page 1 discussion, Media. Ok?

To help you along, I sat down and thought up a nice headline that you can use for your story. Please don’t bother to thank me – I do it because I care.

NEW SCIENCE TOOL COULD BLOW UP PLANET
ALSO SOLVE MYSTERIES OF SPACE AND TIME

Tags: apocalypse, doom, media, science