‘The Hills’ Girls Suffer LHC Information Overload

'Why are they doing that?' The Hills Girls bravely confront the LHC and the Big Bang (E! Channel)

Superb! The Large Hadron Collider has barged its oversized supercooled magnets into the very popular US teenie drama, “The Hills.”

Now I’ve heard it all. Not only did the LHC grand switch-on event appear as headline news on every newspaper, website, TV and radio news channel back on September 10th, the LHC has now been worked into the script of The Hills.

The program usually deals with fever-pitch relationship battles between the cast of over-privileged teenagers who shop and fill their days saying “yeah… that’s cute.” For the vast majority of the world who may not have seen the show, imagine a hoard of Paris Hilton clones, struggling by on the mean streets of the Beverley Hills (having just moved from that other well-known dive, Laguna Beach) dressed in Prada, sipping tall-skinny-chai-lattes, moaning about boys. And don’t get me started on the guys, just think “metro-sexual” with a heavy dose of Boy George thrown in…

So, I almost spluttered my Starbucks coffee over the keyboard when seeing this funny excerpt from The Soup, showcasing a refreshingly “intellectual” conversation on the The Hills:

Girl 1: You know the world’s supposed to end? They just started, like, in Geneva, this particle accelerator [...] and they are smashing particles together.

Girl 2: What?

Girl 1: They’re trying to create black holes.

Girl 2: Why are they doing that?

Girl 1: They wanna figure out how… we’re here. They wanna prove the Big Bang, and that matter can come out of nothing.

[Long pause]

Girl 2: Isn’t it crazy how all this is happening whilst Lauren is gone?

I’m thinking the actresses might have been a little out of their depth when discussing the LHC, but the script writers either have a great sense of humour or they wanted to boost the intellectual content of the program. Perhaps there’s a little-known government quota that requires all TV programs to contain a certain amount of mental stimulus? They threw all the science they had at 30 seconds of one episode.

Having watched The Hills (I can’t avoid it! It’s everywhere in LA!), the program has the bare minimum of intellectual content (much like a Big Mac has the bare minimum of nutritional content).

Although I poke fun at the escapades of The Hills girls, I don’t think it’s any bad thing that the LHC should come up in conversation in a popular TV show. Keep it up is what I say (even if it is a little funny!).

PS. However, physicists aren’t actually trying to produce black holes… but we know that already… don’t we?

Source: Gizmodo