Just when the media hysteria over doomsday scenarios relating to the Large Hadron Collider has died down, along comes a visually stunning short film from L Studio called Rift that explores just what such a scenario might look like. It's described as "a surreal interpretation of Pandora's Box about a scientist whose failed experiment results in the formation of a black hole that alters time and space, creating a chaotic Twilight-Zonesque nightmare." And the climax features a picture-perfect big swirly hole devouring our world as we know it. Yikes!
It's a nice example of the kind of innovative media that is finding its way onto the Web, in defiance of the usual commercial/studio outlets. Short films tend to get short shrift in Hollywood, outside of film festivals and the annual Oscar category.
I also give the filmmakers props for getting the scientific terminology (such that there is) largely correct, even if they went with the far-fetched Doomsday Scenario. (Yawn.) We get it: disaster sells tickets. Just ask Roland Emmerich. In fact, the scientist/protagonist offers an excellent summation of why physicists don't consider the LHC a threat — words that are echoed in today's Los Angeles Times by UC-Santa Barbara physicist Steve Giddings:
Yeah, sure, he says that now, but just wait until the big swirly wormhole comes to get him.
