October 21, 1953, at Madison Square Garden. Bobo Olson wins the vacant middleweight title against Randy Turpin. Interesting side note, long before the latest trend of tattooed athletes, Olson and Turpin both sported tattoos. Today tattooed athletes are not an uncommon sight, but in the 1950s Olson and Turpin were some of the few athletes with tattoos. During this era, tattoos carried a heavy social stigma and were largely out of step with the conservative, clean-cut image expected of mainstream sports figures. Olson had a tattoo on each upper arm, and Turpin had a tattoo on each forearm. Hats off to them for not giving a damn about what society thinks.
Anyway, back to Bobo Olson vs. Randy Turpin in October 21, 1953 at Madison Square Garden. Turpin was a great fighter, a hall of famer with an extremely unorthodox and awkward style, a style that helped him become one of only two men to beat a prime Sugar Ray Robinson, the other man being Jake LaMotta. Olson used a patient, defensive strategy early in the fight before taking control and swarming an exhausted Randy Turpin. In the first three rounds, Olson backtracked nimbly, protected his head with his arms, and bided his time while Turpin started strong and attacked aggressively. Olson opened Turpin’s cheek with a jab in the fourth round and shifted from a clever counter-boxer to the aggressor by the fifth round. As Turpin faded and ran out of steam, Olson repeatedly pursued him and trapped him against the ropes, pouring heavy hooks and jabs to both the head and body. Olson scored knockdowns against Turpin in the 9th and 10th rounds, sealing a 15-round unanimous decision to win the vacant World Middleweight Championship. This is one of my favorite Ring magazine covers, showing Olson, Turpin, Ernie Durando, and Charles Humez eyeing the middleweight throne.
TIME
Nov 2, 1953 12:00 A.M.
Hawaii's Carl (“Bobo”) Olson and England’s Randy Turpin have much in common. Both are 25-year-old middleweights who learned their fighting in slum streets, both have been boxing since their early teens, and both have suffered stinging defeats at the fists of Sugar Ray Robinson, now retired. Last week, in Madison Square Garden, a sellout crowd of 18,869 turned out to watch Olson and Turpin fight for Robinson’s old crown.
Turpin, a hard-punching, unrefined sort of fighter, started strong. He dashed out throwing punches, carried the fight to Olson for the first three rounds. Bobo, a clever boxer without a killing punch, backtracked nimbly, protected his head with his arms, and bided his time. As Turpin began to run out of steam—he had boxed less than 30 rounds in training —Bobo began his own offensive: a rat-tat-tat of light lefts and rights with just enough poke to them to keep Turpin off balance.
By the ninth round, Bobo’s spray of pokes had begun to slow Randy’s reflexes. Turpin let himself get trapped against the ropes, and there, while Bobo poured hooks and jabs to the head and body, Turpin unaccountably covered up only his midsection. Randy went down for a short count at the end of that round, for a nine-count in the next.
There was no ten-count punch in the Olson armory, but well before the end of the 15 rounds, Bobo had the title on points. Before the ring announcer could begin his portentous spiel (“The winner . . . and new Middleweight Champion . .”), loser Turpin dashed across the ring with a big smile and wrung the hand of winner Olson. The new champion promptly burst into tears of happiness.
These are my favorite photos of Bobo Olson, it's just a savage image of Olson having his way with Turpin on the ropes, the cold, ruthless look on Olson's face.
A bloody and battered Turpin comes back strongly in the 15th and final round, throwing leather desperately in an attempt to salvage the fight. It was too late. Olson got the decision and the middleweight title.
Bobo Olson defeated Pierre Langlois by an eleventh-round technical knockout (TKO) on December 15, 1954, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California, to retain the World Middleweight Championship. The fight was stopped in the 11th round because of a deep cut over Langlois' left eye. Here are a couple of images from that fight. The top photo really shows what a brutal in-fighter Olson was.
Bobo Olson was named The Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year in 1953 because he won all four of his fights that year and captured the vacant World Middleweight Championship.
In 1955, finding it hard to make the middleweight limit, Olson moved up to light heavyweight. He defeated former champion and Hall of Famer Joey Maxim on points. Maxim was a very clever boxer and had a chin made of pure granite. I can't believe I actually found this image of Olson knocking down Maxim on April 13, 1955, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Olson actually dropped Maxim twice during the bout—scoring 8-counts with knockdowns in both the 2nd and 9th rounds. He used a relentless body attack and swarming pace to earn a 10-round unanimous decision. Olson would challenge Archie Moore later that year for the light heavyweight crown but it wasn't meant to be.
Bobo Olson appeared as a guest on a March 13, 1955, television episode of "The Colgate Comedy Hour" hosted by Gordon MacRae, which also featured comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. These well-known 1955 publicity photographs capture Bud Abbott restraining Lou Costello as Costello comically acts like he is trying to go after Bobo Olson.
This is my favorite image of Bobo Olson training, shadow boxing on North Avenue beach with the ocean behind him in preparation for his bout with Sugar Ray Robinson in 1955. It's fascinating, next to Sugar Ray Robinson, Carl Olson was the most dominant middleweight of the 1950s, he just couldn't get past Robinson. No shame in that, Robinson was the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in boxing history, and arguably the greatest middleweight in boxing history.
Awesome image of the great Joe Louis as a referee holding up Bobo Olson's arm after defeating Garth Panter on November 3, 1954 at the Richmond Auditorium in California. Louis stopped the fight after Olson opened up two cuts on Panters face that bled profusely.
Absolute savage image of Olson throwing a right hand against Eugene "Silent" Hairston in 1952. Check out the sleepy look on Olson's face, the way his right arm is twisted, and the damage to Hairston's face. Man, what an image.
Bobo Olson's trainer Sharkey Wright, the greatest boxing trainer in Hawaii history. Before Bobo Olson fought Paddy Young on June 19, 1953, for the American middleweight title (which was an elimination bout for the vacant world middleweight title), he sent word back to the islands to make sure his mentor got the credit for getting him where he was. Olson’s message was simple and clear, “Please tell Sharkey Wright that if I win the title, it will be mostly because of his training. He gave me all the confidence that I needed and taught me how to fight. I owe a lot to Sharkey.” And just four months later, when Olson defeated Randy Turpin for the world middleweight title, Sharkey was one of the first people he called to tell him the good news and to thank him again for his teachings. Sharkey had been telling people for years that Olson was going to be a champion and it was one of the trainer’s biggest thrills. Sharkey also trained World Flyweight Champion Dado Marino.
Just finished watching this, phenomenal film with stunning visuals. Directed by Danny Boyle, this atmospheric sci-fi thriller follows a crew of astronauts in the year 2057 sent on a desperate mission to reignite a dying sun with a massive nuclear payload.
I love apocalyptic films, this one was phenomenal as well. A four-person crew is stationed on Pangea, a deep-space refueling station located between Earth and a colony on Europa. When they witness a mysterious cataclysm destroy Earth, they are left stranded and must deal with isolation, dwindling supplies, and severe psychological distress. The crew never investigates what caused the end of the world, but it is mentioned in the film that it might have been an experiment with the Large Hadron Collider (particle accelerator) gone wrong.
Speaking of the particle accelerator, this is another phenomenal film based on a disaster caused by an accelerator. The Cloverfield Paradox is a 2018 American science-fiction horror film directed by Julius Onah and produced by J.J. Abrams's Bad Robot Productions. It is the third installment in the Cloverfield franchise, following Cloverfield (2008) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). A team of international astronauts is aboard the Cloverfield Space Station in 2028. They test the Shepherd particle accelerator, a device built to solve Earth's severe global energy crisis. After the experiment overloads, the crew discovers that Earth has seemingly vanished from its coordinates. The particle accelerator acts as a dimensional rift, tearing a hole in spacetime and merging alternate universes. This causes bizarre events on the station—such as a crew member's arm disappearing and another timeline's survivor merging into the ship. The movie acts as a narrative bridge and origin story. The tear in spacetime rippled across multiple dimensions and timelines, unleashing monsters, aliens, and anomalies onto the separate Earths seen in the first two films.
At the end of The Cloverfield Paradox, it shows the monster raise it's head above the clouds and let out a loud roar but never shows what's going on beneath the clouds, this is an awesome fan poster showing what was transpiring beneath the clouds on Earth.
Speaking again of the particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to this day, people fear it, they believe something will go wrong and it will cause the end of the world. The fear was primarily popularized by nuclear safety officer Walter L. Wagner and Spanish risk analyst Luis Sancho, who filed a 2008 lawsuit to block its startup. British astronomer Martin Rees also raised theoretical concerns about micro black holes or strangelets in his book Our Final Hour, though he later clarified it was an unlikely risk. Critics feared the high-energy collisions could create tiny black holes that would grow and swallow the planet. Farsighted worries suggested hypothetical strange matter could convert normal matter into strangelets. If a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider successfully triggered a runaway conversion of normal matter into strangelets, it would mean the device had accidentally created a planetary "ice-nine" scenario, resulting in the rapid, violent, and complete collapse of Earth into a hyper-dense sphere just a few hundred meters wide, an instant apocalypse. It's scary stuff and Hollywood has used it as the basis for a few apocalypse films, but it's just not reality.
IFLScience
March 12, 2026
Black Holes, Weird Particles, And False Vacuum Decay: Why People Thought The Large Hadron Collider Could Destroy The World
It's a tall tale that even takes us as far as the end of the universe!
By: Dr. Alfredo Carpineti
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The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is synonymous with cutting-edge research in particle physics. In 2012, two of its four experiments discovered the Higgs Boson, the particle that gives all particles a mass. There was a time, though, when a small group of loud people got it into their heads – and then into the newspapers – that the LHC was going to end the world.
The LHC, located underground across the border between France and Switzerland, and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) were the focus of these conspiracy theories. Both colliders accelerate particles to a speed close to that of light before letting them smash into each other. The collision creates new particles as well as showing force interactions, similar to what the universe was like the instant after the Big Bang.
Bold claims...
The claim, which continues to exist in some form or another today, is that the LHC and RHIC would create something. The most popular idea was that the particle colliders would produce a black hole that would devour the Earth. Another, that they would start false vacuum decay, leading to the end of the universe itself. A third one involves the creation of stable strangelets, peculiar particles containing a strange quark and, for some unspecified reason, a problem for us.
Let’s debunk the black hole stuff first. The LHC gives a lot of energy to particles, but nowhere close to producing a black hole. A black hole is an object with an incredibly high density, so you need to pack a lot of matter (or energy) into a very small space. The LHC simply can’t do that.
Some extensions/alternatives to the Standard Model of Particle Physics (our current best understanding) suggest that an accelerator like the LHC could produce one micro black hole a second. Let’s assume that this is indeed the case: the smaller the black hole, the faster it evaporates due to the loss of Hawking radiation. Basically, these hypothetical black holes would be gone faster than they appeared.
The false vacuum decay theory is more interesting. It is a fascinating hypothesis that the universe is not in its lowest possible energy state. This means that the universe as it is today is only metastable, and there is a more stable version possible. If any portion of the universe were to reach that true stable configuration (the true vacuum), the whole universe would be condemned to the change, ending the existence of the entire cosmos.
…meet real physics!
Both the RHIC and CERN looked into the claims, and they took them very seriously. CERN commissioned two reports about its safety, both finding that there were literally zero concerns about the particle accelerators. This did not stop the promoters of the “danger claims” from issuing legal challenges and staging protests against the activation of the LHC.
We could get into the details of each claim for a bespoke rebuttal, but there is a simple truth that should convince you that the claims are nonsense. Nature is capable of producing much more energetic particles than we do, and it is consistently throwing them at Earth. Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays make the acceleration we are capable of at CERN look like child’s play.
Take KM3-230213A, the most energetic neutrino ever detected, believed to be linked to the most active supermassive black hole. It had an energy 100,000 times higher than the particles we collide in the LHC. If particle acceleration alone could cause the end of the world, our concerns should be directed towards the cosmos, not underground in Switzerland.
How does the Large Hadron Collider work?
“The Large Hadron Collider is a machine of 27 kilometers [16.8 miles]. It's about 100 meters [328 feet] underground, and it's filled with protons coming from the injector chain,” Rende Steerenberg, who is affectionately known around CERN as "the man who pushes the button to start the LHC", told IFLScience in an exclusive visit to the site.
Before getting to the LHC, those protons have to be accelerated by other smaller accelerators. Powerful magnets push the speed of these particles closer and closer to the speed of light, before entering the main ring of the LHC, where they will travel those 27 kilometers at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light.
“There will be protons circulating in the two opposite directions of the ring, and then these protons are brought into collision at four points of the ring,” Fabiola Gianotti, former director-general of CERN, told IFLScience.
The locations of those four points are the four experiments. ATLAS and CMS are the multipurpose ones – they just want to see what particles are produced in the collisions. ALICE works similarly to the RHIC, and it has studied the collisions between lead ions that recreate the conditions close to the Big Bang (as well as producing the almost-alchemical conversion of lead into gold). Last but certainly not least is LHCb, which is trying to understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter by searching for anomalies between the two.
The LHC will soon undergo a sizable upgrade as it prepares for its Hi-Lumi phase, where it will be capable of producing a lot more collisions, expanding even more on what we know. These nonsensical claims are bound to come back around, but the LHC has operated for almost two decades and we are still here, so we should not lose any sleep over the "danger" of particle physics.
Scientists use the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN to recreate the extreme conditions of the infant universe just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. By smashing protons or heavy ions (like lead) together at near-light speed, they generate microscopic fireballs of quark-gluon plasma, the hot, dense fluid that filled the cosmos in its first microseconds. The Large Hadron Collider creates "mini-Big Bangs" in the sense that it reproduces the exact temperature, density, and energy states of the universe just a fraction of a second after it began. However, these are microscopic explosions contained entirely within heavy steel detectors, posing no danger to the outside world. It generates unimaginable heat. By smashing heavy lead ions together, the collider generates temperatures exceeding 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius. This is hundreds of thousands of times hotter than the center of the Sun, matching the heat of the infant universe. These events happen at the subatomic level. While the temperature is incredibly high, it is concentrated in an area smaller than a single atom, so the total amount of energy released is tiny—about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito. The subatomic fireballs last for only a trillionth of a trillionth of a second before cooling down, breaking apart, and safely dissolving into stable particles. Here are some photos of the collider and you can see how massive it is.
The top two photos of just how massive the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is. It sits in a circular ring tunnel measuring 27 kilometers (about 17 miles) in circumference and buried 50 to 175 meters (164 to 574 feet) underground beneath the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva. The two bottom photos are diagrams showing how the LHC works. The LHC sends two separate beams in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer ring, accelerates two opposing beams of protons or heavy ions to nearly the speed of light using magnetic and electric fields, then smashes them together to study fundamental particles and forces.
It took 48 years to discover the Higgs boson. Often called the "God particle" it explains why anything has mass at all. It was first theorized in 1964 by Peter Higgs, François Englert, and Robert Brout, and was officially announced as discovered by researchers at CERN's Large Hadron Collider on July 4, 2012. The particle was first proposed in 1964 as part of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism to explain how elementary particles get mass. The Higgs boson is very heavy (about 125 times the mass of a proton) and decays in a tiny fraction of a second (10⁻²² seconds), meaning it does not exist naturally in everyday environments. Finding it required building the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which began high-energy proton collisions in 2010 before capturing the particle two years later. The Higgs boson is one of the most important discoveries in modern physics because it confirmed the existence of the Higgs field an invisible field that fills the entire universe. As fundamental particles move through this field, they interact with it and acquire mass. Particles that interact more strongly become heavier, while particles such as photons do not interact with the Higgs field and therefore remain massless. The Higgs boson itself is not what gives particles their mass. Instead, it is the detectable quantum particle associated with the Higgs field, providing the experimental evidence that the field exists. Without this field, atoms could not form, stars and planets would never exist, and the universe as we know it would be impossible. Physicists first proposed the Higgs mechanism in 1964, but it remained unconfirmed for nearly five decades. On July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of the Higgs boson through the ATLAS and CMS experiments, completing the final missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery earned Peter Higgs and François Englert the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. Although it is widely known as the "God Particle," many physicists dislike the nickname because it can be misleading. The Higgs boson doesn't create the universe—it simply reveals one of the fundamental mechanisms that allows matter to have mass, making the existence of everything around us possible.
Space is a beautiful and fascinating place, but it isn't Disneyland, it's filled with threats to Earth, to the existence of the human race. Asteroids are one of those threats. The main asteroid belt is located in the vast region of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This ring-shaped region sits roughly 2.0 to 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun—which translates to about 186 million to 298 million miles (300 million to 480 million kilometers) away from our star. The main asteroid belt contains an estimated 1.1 million to 1.9 million asteroids larger than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter, according to NASA Science, alongside millions of smaller rocks, pebbles, and dust particles. There are roughly 10,000 asteroids in the main asteroid belt that are at least 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) wide, roughly the same size of the Chixculub impactor, the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs, a species that ruled the Earth for 165 million years. There are roughly 200 asteroids in the main asteroid belt that are at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide, big enough to end all life on Earth. The dwarf planet Ceres is the undisputed king of the belt, measuring about 580 miles (940 km) across. The asteroid Vesta comes in second at about 325 miles (525 km) wide. While about 200 objects exceed 60 miles in diameter, only about 20 to 23 are truly massive giants that stretch larger than 120 miles (200 km). This is the Discovery Channel Miracle Planet asteroid simulator that shows what would happen to Earth if a 310 mile wide asteroid were to hit it.
In the 1998 movie Armageddon, the massive asteroid is explicitly described as being "the size of Texas", which translates to roughly 600 to 800 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) across. That's more than twice the size of the asteroid in the Discovery Channel simulation.
The asteroid responsible for Meteor Crater (also known as Barringer Meteor Crater) in Arizona was approximately 150 feet (50 meters) wide. Meteor Crater has a diameter of about 3,900 feet (1,200 meters), or roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. The depth of the crater is roughly 560-600 feet (170 to 180 meters). The rim height rises about 148 feet (45 meters) above the surrounding Arizona plains. The circumference is nearly 3 miles (5 kilometers). The asteroid hit what is now northern Arizona approximately 50,000 years ago (geologists estimate between 49,000 and 50,000 years ago). During this period (the late Pleistocene epoch), the area was not a desert, but a cooler, wetter juniper-pinyon woodland inhabited by prehistoric animals like mammoths, giant ground sloths, and ancient bison. No humans were living in the region at the time of the collision. The cosmic event unfolded in seconds. A 150-foot-wide iron-nickel asteroid known as the Canyon Diablo meteorite slammed into the ground traveling at roughly 26,000 miles per hour (12 kilometers per second). The impact released an explosive force of about 10 megatons—roughly 150 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb—instantly vaporizing most of the space rock and flattening trees for miles around. Because the Arizona climate later turned incredibly dry, the scar left behind has been exceptionally well-preserved over the millennia. The top photo is a view of Meteor Crater from space by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, managed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The second photo is a view of the crater from an airplane.
You know, it's scary to think that it is entirely within the realm of theoretical possibility that an intelligent civilization somewhere in the universe has suffered a catastrophic apocalypse from a large asteroid impact. The observable universe contains an estimated two trillion galaxies, each holding billions of stars and planets. Even if the emergence of intelligent life is astronomically rare, the sheer number of opportunities means it has likely happened multiple times across cosmic history. Asteroid impacts are not anomalous events; they are a routine mechanism of planetary evolution. Every rocky planet sits in a cosmic shooting gallery of space debris. Earth itself has experienced multiple mass extinction events, most notably the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, which ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Planets can be struck not just by local asteroids, but by interstellar objects passing between solar systems. If an advanced civilization has not yet developed planetary defense systems (like asteroid redirection), a large enough impact could wipe them out. This is what the main asteroid belt looks like. By the way, an asteroid is a rocky or metallic celestial body that orbits the Sun. Most of these minor planets reside in the main asteroid belt situated between Mars and Jupiter, representing leftover material from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
Of course you can't talk about asteroids and not mention Chixculub, the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs. It was roughly 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) in diameter, comparable in size to Manhattan Island or Mount Everest. The impact occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, triggering the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out roughly 75% of Earth's species, including non-avian dinosaurs. The asteroid slammed into Earth at a staggering estimated speed of 20 kilometers per second, which translates to roughly 45,000 miles per hour (72,000 kilometers per hour). It was traveling at more than 58 times the speed of sound. The explosion and the aftermath would have been something you can't begin to comprehend. The sheer kinetic energy released by this speed and mass created a blast equivalent to 100 teratons of TNT—billions of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
This thin line of clay found around the world solved one of the biggest homicide cases in history, what killed the Dinosaurs. This is the famous K-T (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary line. Below the line, Dinosaur fossils can be found. Above the line, they disappear forever. When examined, the line is found to contain a global layer of clay rich in iridium (an element rare on Earth but common in asteroids), alongside shocked quartz, microscopic glass beads called tektites, and a layer of soot from worldwide fires. All ingredients of a massive asteroid strike. Again, below the line, Dinosaur fossils, above it, gone forever. With that, one of the biggest homicide cases in history was solved, that line is literally the smoking gun.
The 2020 film Greenland is one of my favorite disaster films. The film follows structural engineer John Garrity (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their diabetic son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) as they fight to survive an extinction-level comet impact. In the film, the largest fragment of the comet (Clarke) was 9 miles (14 km) wide, pretty close to the size of the Chixculub asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs. This is the impact crater from the comet (Clarke) in the film Greenland.
It's interesting that there is a real-life asteroid crater in Greenland, the Hiawatha crater, and it's located in the far northwest corner of Greenland, completely hidden beneath the ice sheet.
Specifically, it sits right at the edge of the Hiawatha Glacier in the remote region of Inglefield Land, looking directly out toward Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. The crater is buried beneath a half-mile-thick (1 kilometer) layer of solid glacial ice. From the air, you cannot see the bowl of the crater at all. The only clue visible on the surface is a distinct, circular depression and ripple pattern in the ice, which was formed as the Hiawatha Glacier flowed over the rim of the ancient crater. The Hiawatha Crater is massive, measuring 19 miles wide (31 kilometers) from rim to rim. It plunges more than half a mile deep (roughly 1 kilometer) from its rim down to its floor. The crater is large enough to completely swallow the entire city of Washington, D.C., or fit the island of Manhattan inside it with room to spare. It ranks among the top 25 largest impact craters ever discovered on Earth. The asteroid responsible for the crater struck northwest Greenland 58 million years ago and was roughly 0.9 to 1.25 miles wide (1.5 kilometers). Scientists estimate that it was a heavily fractionated, iron-rich meteorite weighing between 11 and 12 billion tons. When the asteroid slammed into Earth, the collision released an absolute cataclysm of energy—equivalent to seven million atomic bombs detonating at once. It completely devastated the local region with seismic shaking, massive thermal blasts, and widespread forest fires. Despite being in the Arctic, Greenland was not covered in ice at the time. It was a balmy, temperate rainforest filled with primitive wildlife. This is a close-up of the northwestern ice-sheet margin in Inglefield Land. The Hiawatha impact crater was discovered beneath the semi-circular ice margin. The structure is also imprinted on the shape of the ice surface, even though it lies nearly 1000 meters below the ice surface.
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October 21, 1953, at Madison Square Garden. Bobo Olson wins the vacant middleweight title against Randy Turpin. Interesting side note, long before the latest trend of tattooed athletes, Olson and Turpin both sported tattoos. Today tattooed athletes are not an uncommon sight, but in the 1950s Olson and Turpin were some of the few athletes with tattoos. During this era, tattoos carried a heavy social stigma and were largely out of step with the conservative, clean-cut image expected of mainstream sports figures. Olson had a tattoo on each upper arm, and Turpin had a tattoo on each forearm. Hats off to them for not giving a damn about what society thinks.
And I have to say, the tattoos on Bobo Olson really added an element of bada$$ery to his appearance.
Anyway, back to Bobo Olson vs. Randy Turpin in October 21, 1953 at Madison Square Garden. Turpin was a great fighter, a hall of famer with an extremely unorthodox and awkward style, a style that helped him become one of only two men to beat a prime Sugar Ray Robinson, the other man being Jake LaMotta. Olson used a patient, defensive strategy early in the fight before taking control and swarming an exhausted Randy Turpin. In the first three rounds, Olson backtracked nimbly, protected his head with his arms, and bided his time while Turpin started strong and attacked aggressively. Olson opened Turpin’s cheek with a jab in the fourth round and shifted from a clever counter-boxer to the aggressor by the fifth round. As Turpin faded and ran out of steam, Olson repeatedly pursued him and trapped him against the ropes, pouring heavy hooks and jabs to both the head and body. Olson scored knockdowns against Turpin in the 9th and 10th rounds, sealing a 15-round unanimous decision to win the vacant World Middleweight Championship. This is one of my favorite Ring magazine covers, showing Olson, Turpin, Ernie Durando, and Charles Humez eyeing the middleweight throne.
TIME
Nov 2, 1953 12:00 A.M.
Hawaii's Carl (“Bobo”) Olson and England’s Randy Turpin have much in common. Both are 25-year-old middleweights who learned their fighting in slum streets, both have been boxing since their early teens, and both have suffered stinging defeats at the fists of Sugar Ray Robinson, now retired. Last week, in Madison Square Garden, a sellout crowd of 18,869 turned out to watch Olson and Turpin fight for Robinson’s old crown.
Turpin, a hard-punching, unrefined sort of fighter, started strong. He dashed out throwing punches, carried the fight to Olson for the first three rounds. Bobo, a clever boxer without a killing punch, backtracked nimbly, protected his head with his arms, and bided his time. As Turpin began to run out of steam—he had boxed less than 30 rounds in training —Bobo began his own offensive: a rat-tat-tat of light lefts and rights with just enough poke to them to keep Turpin off balance.
By the ninth round, Bobo’s spray of pokes had begun to slow Randy’s reflexes. Turpin let himself get trapped against the ropes, and there, while Bobo poured hooks and jabs to the head and body, Turpin unaccountably covered up only his midsection. Randy went down for a short count at the end of that round, for a nine-count in the next.
There was no ten-count punch in the Olson armory, but well before the end of the 15 rounds, Bobo had the title on points. Before the ring announcer could begin his portentous spiel (“The winner . . . and new Middleweight Champion . .”), loser Turpin dashed across the ring with a big smile and wrung the hand of winner Olson. The new champion promptly burst into tears of happiness.
Photos from Bobo Olson vs. Randy Turpin.
Look at these shots of Randy Turpin in his corner, phenomenal photography.
Olson going to work on Turpin against the ropes.
These are my favorite photos of Bobo Olson, it's just a savage image of Olson having his way with Turpin on the ropes, the cold, ruthless look on Olson's face.
Olson drops Turpin in round 9, the bell rang and interrupted the referee count at five. Love the "magic eye" view on the bottom.
Olson drops Turpin in round 10, Turpin was up at the count of nine.
This is a great shot of Olson and Turpin being separated by referee Al Berl between rounds.
A bloody and battered Turpin comes back strongly in the 15th and final round, throwing leather desperately in an attempt to salvage the fight. It was too late. Olson got the decision and the middleweight title.
Brutal photo of Randy Turpin after the fight.
Bobo Olson and Randy Turpin on the cover of The Ring magazine two months after the fight.
Bobo Olson as king of the middleweights.
Bobo Olson defeated Pierre Langlois by an eleventh-round technical knockout (TKO) on December 15, 1954, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California, to retain the World Middleweight Championship. The fight was stopped in the 11th round because of a deep cut over Langlois' left eye. Here are a couple of images from that fight. The top photo really shows what a brutal in-fighter Olson was.
Bobo Olson was named The Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year in 1953 because he won all four of his fights that year and captured the vacant World Middleweight Championship.
In 1955, finding it hard to make the middleweight limit, Olson moved up to light heavyweight. He defeated former champion and Hall of Famer Joey Maxim on points. Maxim was a very clever boxer and had a chin made of pure granite. I can't believe I actually found this image of Olson knocking down Maxim on April 13, 1955, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Olson actually dropped Maxim twice during the bout—scoring 8-counts with knockdowns in both the 2nd and 9th rounds. He used a relentless body attack and swarming pace to earn a 10-round unanimous decision. Olson would challenge Archie Moore later that year for the light heavyweight crown but it wasn't meant to be.
Bobo Olson appeared as a guest on a March 13, 1955, television episode of "The Colgate Comedy Hour" hosted by Gordon MacRae, which also featured comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. These well-known 1955 publicity photographs capture Bud Abbott restraining Lou Costello as Costello comically acts like he is trying to go after Bobo Olson.
Bobo Olson looking daggers at a heavy bag during training.
I love this image of Olson training, he looks like a guy you wouldn't want to mess with.
This is my favorite image of Bobo Olson training, shadow boxing on North Avenue beach with the ocean behind him in preparation for his bout with Sugar Ray Robinson in 1955. It's fascinating, next to Sugar Ray Robinson, Carl Olson was the most dominant middleweight of the 1950s, he just couldn't get past Robinson. No shame in that, Robinson was the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in boxing history, and arguably the greatest middleweight in boxing history.
Bobo Olson knocks out Pedro Gonzalez in the 4th round of their 10- round bout at the Oakland Auditorium in Oakland, California on July 7, 1954.
Awesome image of the great Joe Louis as a referee holding up Bobo Olson's arm after defeating Garth Panter on November 3, 1954 at the Richmond Auditorium in California. Louis stopped the fight after Olson opened up two cuts on Panters face that bled profusely.
Absolute savage image of Olson throwing a right hand against Eugene "Silent" Hairston in 1952. Check out the sleepy look on Olson's face, the way his right arm is twisted, and the damage to Hairston's face. Man, what an image.
Bobo Olson with legendary three weight division world champion Barney Ross.
Bobo Olson's trainer Sharkey Wright, the greatest boxing trainer in Hawaii history. Before Bobo Olson fought Paddy Young on June 19, 1953, for the American middleweight title (which was an elimination bout for the vacant world middleweight title), he sent word back to the islands to make sure his mentor got the credit for getting him where he was. Olson’s message was simple and clear, “Please tell Sharkey Wright that if I win the title, it will be mostly because of his training. He gave me all the confidence that I needed and taught me how to fight. I owe a lot to Sharkey.” And just four months later, when Olson defeated Randy Turpin for the world middleweight title, Sharkey was one of the first people he called to tell him the good news and to thank him again for his teachings. Sharkey had been telling people for years that Olson was going to be a champion and it was one of the trainer’s biggest thrills. Sharkey also trained World Flyweight Champion Dado Marino.
Bobo Olson with Rocky Marciano.
Bobo Olson with a member of his team.
One last photo of the great Carl "Bobo" Olson.
Carl "Bobo" Olson - Hawaiian Boxing Legend.
Just finished watching this, phenomenal film with stunning visuals. Directed by Danny Boyle, this atmospheric sci-fi thriller follows a crew of astronauts in the year 2057 sent on a desperate mission to reignite a dying sun with a massive nuclear payload.
Stunning and terrifying view of the sun from the observation deck on the spacecraft in the film Sunshine.
I love apocalyptic films, this one was phenomenal as well. A four-person crew is stationed on Pangea, a deep-space refueling station located between Earth and a colony on Europa. When they witness a mysterious cataclysm destroy Earth, they are left stranded and must deal with isolation, dwindling supplies, and severe psychological distress. The crew never investigates what caused the end of the world, but it is mentioned in the film that it might have been an experiment with the Large Hadron Collider (particle accelerator) gone wrong.
Speaking of the particle accelerator, this is another phenomenal film based on a disaster caused by an accelerator. The Cloverfield Paradox is a 2018 American science-fiction horror film directed by Julius Onah and produced by J.J. Abrams's Bad Robot Productions. It is the third installment in the Cloverfield franchise, following Cloverfield (2008) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). A team of international astronauts is aboard the Cloverfield Space Station in 2028. They test the Shepherd particle accelerator, a device built to solve Earth's severe global energy crisis. After the experiment overloads, the crew discovers that Earth has seemingly vanished from its coordinates. The particle accelerator acts as a dimensional rift, tearing a hole in spacetime and merging alternate universes. This causes bizarre events on the station—such as a crew member's arm disappearing and another timeline's survivor merging into the ship. The movie acts as a narrative bridge and origin story. The tear in spacetime rippled across multiple dimensions and timelines, unleashing monsters, aliens, and anomalies onto the separate Earths seen in the first two films.
At the end of The Cloverfield Paradox, it shows the monster raise it's head above the clouds and let out a loud roar but never shows what's going on beneath the clouds, this is an awesome fan poster showing what was transpiring beneath the clouds on Earth.
Speaking again of the particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to this day, people fear it, they believe something will go wrong and it will cause the end of the world. The fear was primarily popularized by nuclear safety officer Walter L. Wagner and Spanish risk analyst Luis Sancho, who filed a 2008 lawsuit to block its startup. British astronomer Martin Rees also raised theoretical concerns about micro black holes or strangelets in his book Our Final Hour, though he later clarified it was an unlikely risk. Critics feared the high-energy collisions could create tiny black holes that would grow and swallow the planet. Farsighted worries suggested hypothetical strange matter could convert normal matter into strangelets. If a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider successfully triggered a runaway conversion of normal matter into strangelets, it would mean the device had accidentally created a planetary "ice-nine" scenario, resulting in the rapid, violent, and complete collapse of Earth into a hyper-dense sphere just a few hundred meters wide, an instant apocalypse. It's scary stuff and Hollywood has used it as the basis for a few apocalypse films, but it's just not reality.
IFLScience
March 12, 2026
Black Holes, Weird Particles, And False Vacuum Decay: Why People Thought The Large Hadron Collider Could Destroy The World
It's a tall tale that even takes us as far as the end of the universe!
By: Dr. Alfredo Carpineti
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The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is synonymous with cutting-edge research in particle physics. In 2012, two of its four experiments discovered the Higgs Boson, the particle that gives all particles a mass. There was a time, though, when a small group of loud people got it into their heads – and then into the newspapers – that the LHC was going to end the world.
The LHC, located underground across the border between France and Switzerland, and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) were the focus of these conspiracy theories. Both colliders accelerate particles to a speed close to that of light before letting them smash into each other. The collision creates new particles as well as showing force interactions, similar to what the universe was like the instant after the Big Bang.
Bold claims...
The claim, which continues to exist in some form or another today, is that the LHC and RHIC would create something. The most popular idea was that the particle colliders would produce a black hole that would devour the Earth. Another, that they would start false vacuum decay, leading to the end of the universe itself. A third one involves the creation of stable strangelets, peculiar particles containing a strange quark and, for some unspecified reason, a problem for us.
Let’s debunk the black hole stuff first. The LHC gives a lot of energy to particles, but nowhere close to producing a black hole. A black hole is an object with an incredibly high density, so you need to pack a lot of matter (or energy) into a very small space. The LHC simply can’t do that.
Some extensions/alternatives to the Standard Model of Particle Physics (our current best understanding) suggest that an accelerator like the LHC could produce one micro black hole a second. Let’s assume that this is indeed the case: the smaller the black hole, the faster it evaporates due to the loss of Hawking radiation. Basically, these hypothetical black holes would be gone faster than they appeared.
The false vacuum decay theory is more interesting. It is a fascinating hypothesis that the universe is not in its lowest possible energy state. This means that the universe as it is today is only metastable, and there is a more stable version possible. If any portion of the universe were to reach that true stable configuration (the true vacuum), the whole universe would be condemned to the change, ending the existence of the entire cosmos.
…meet real physics!
Both the RHIC and CERN looked into the claims, and they took them very seriously. CERN commissioned two reports about its safety, both finding that there were literally zero concerns about the particle accelerators. This did not stop the promoters of the “danger claims” from issuing legal challenges and staging protests against the activation of the LHC.
We could get into the details of each claim for a bespoke rebuttal, but there is a simple truth that should convince you that the claims are nonsense. Nature is capable of producing much more energetic particles than we do, and it is consistently throwing them at Earth. Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays make the acceleration we are capable of at CERN look like child’s play.
Take KM3-230213A, the most energetic neutrino ever detected, believed to be linked to the most active supermassive black hole. It had an energy 100,000 times higher than the particles we collide in the LHC. If particle acceleration alone could cause the end of the world, our concerns should be directed towards the cosmos, not underground in Switzerland.
How does the Large Hadron Collider work?
“The Large Hadron Collider is a machine of 27 kilometers [16.8 miles]. It's about 100 meters [328 feet] underground, and it's filled with protons coming from the injector chain,” Rende Steerenberg, who is affectionately known around CERN as "the man who pushes the button to start the LHC", told IFLScience in an exclusive visit to the site.
Before getting to the LHC, those protons have to be accelerated by other smaller accelerators. Powerful magnets push the speed of these particles closer and closer to the speed of light, before entering the main ring of the LHC, where they will travel those 27 kilometers at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light.
“There will be protons circulating in the two opposite directions of the ring, and then these protons are brought into collision at four points of the ring,” Fabiola Gianotti, former director-general of CERN, told IFLScience.
The locations of those four points are the four experiments. ATLAS and CMS are the multipurpose ones – they just want to see what particles are produced in the collisions. ALICE works similarly to the RHIC, and it has studied the collisions between lead ions that recreate the conditions close to the Big Bang (as well as producing the almost-alchemical conversion of lead into gold). Last but certainly not least is LHCb, which is trying to understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter by searching for anomalies between the two.
The LHC will soon undergo a sizable upgrade as it prepares for its Hi-Lumi phase, where it will be capable of producing a lot more collisions, expanding even more on what we know. These nonsensical claims are bound to come back around, but the LHC has operated for almost two decades and we are still here, so we should not lose any sleep over the "danger" of particle physics.
Scientists use the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN to recreate the extreme conditions of the infant universe just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. By smashing protons or heavy ions (like lead) together at near-light speed, they generate microscopic fireballs of quark-gluon plasma, the hot, dense fluid that filled the cosmos in its first microseconds. The Large Hadron Collider creates "mini-Big Bangs" in the sense that it reproduces the exact temperature, density, and energy states of the universe just a fraction of a second after it began. However, these are microscopic explosions contained entirely within heavy steel detectors, posing no danger to the outside world. It generates unimaginable heat. By smashing heavy lead ions together, the collider generates temperatures exceeding 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius. This is hundreds of thousands of times hotter than the center of the Sun, matching the heat of the infant universe. These events happen at the subatomic level. While the temperature is incredibly high, it is concentrated in an area smaller than a single atom, so the total amount of energy released is tiny—about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito. The subatomic fireballs last for only a trillionth of a trillionth of a second before cooling down, breaking apart, and safely dissolving into stable particles. Here are some photos of the collider and you can see how massive it is.
The top two photos of just how massive the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is. It sits in a circular ring tunnel measuring 27 kilometers (about 17 miles) in circumference and buried 50 to 175 meters (164 to 574 feet) underground beneath the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva. The two bottom photos are diagrams showing how the LHC works. The LHC sends two separate beams in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer ring, accelerates two opposing beams of protons or heavy ions to nearly the speed of light using magnetic and electric fields, then smashes them together to study fundamental particles and forces.
It took 48 years to discover the Higgs boson. Often called the "God particle" it explains why anything has mass at all. It was first theorized in 1964 by Peter Higgs, François Englert, and Robert Brout, and was officially announced as discovered by researchers at CERN's Large Hadron Collider on July 4, 2012. The particle was first proposed in 1964 as part of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism to explain how elementary particles get mass. The Higgs boson is very heavy (about 125 times the mass of a proton) and decays in a tiny fraction of a second (10⁻²² seconds), meaning it does not exist naturally in everyday environments. Finding it required building the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which began high-energy proton collisions in 2010 before capturing the particle two years later. The Higgs boson is one of the most important discoveries in modern physics because it confirmed the existence of the Higgs field an invisible field that fills the entire universe. As fundamental particles move through this field, they interact with it and acquire mass. Particles that interact more strongly become heavier, while particles such as photons do not interact with the Higgs field and therefore remain massless. The Higgs boson itself is not what gives particles their mass. Instead, it is the detectable quantum particle associated with the Higgs field, providing the experimental evidence that the field exists. Without this field, atoms could not form, stars and planets would never exist, and the universe as we know it would be impossible. Physicists first proposed the Higgs mechanism in 1964, but it remained unconfirmed for nearly five decades. On July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of the Higgs boson through the ATLAS and CMS experiments, completing the final missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery earned Peter Higgs and François Englert the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. Although it is widely known as the "God Particle," many physicists dislike the nickname because it can be misleading. The Higgs boson doesn't create the universe—it simply reveals one of the fundamental mechanisms that allows matter to have mass, making the existence of everything around us possible.
Physics are fascinating.
Space is a beautiful and fascinating place, but it isn't Disneyland, it's filled with threats to Earth, to the existence of the human race. Asteroids are one of those threats. The main asteroid belt is located in the vast region of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This ring-shaped region sits roughly 2.0 to 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun—which translates to about 186 million to 298 million miles (300 million to 480 million kilometers) away from our star. The main asteroid belt contains an estimated 1.1 million to 1.9 million asteroids larger than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter, according to NASA Science, alongside millions of smaller rocks, pebbles, and dust particles. There are roughly 10,000 asteroids in the main asteroid belt that are at least 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) wide, roughly the same size of the Chixculub impactor, the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs, a species that ruled the Earth for 165 million years. There are roughly 200 asteroids in the main asteroid belt that are at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide, big enough to end all life on Earth. The dwarf planet Ceres is the undisputed king of the belt, measuring about 580 miles (940 km) across. The asteroid Vesta comes in second at about 325 miles (525 km) wide. While about 200 objects exceed 60 miles in diameter, only about 20 to 23 are truly massive giants that stretch larger than 120 miles (200 km). This is the Discovery Channel Miracle Planet asteroid simulator that shows what would happen to Earth if a 310 mile wide asteroid were to hit it.
In the 1998 movie Armageddon, the massive asteroid is explicitly described as being "the size of Texas", which translates to roughly 600 to 800 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) across. That's more than twice the size of the asteroid in the Discovery Channel simulation.
Actual photos of Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, approximately 580 miles wide.
The asteroid responsible for Meteor Crater (also known as Barringer Meteor Crater) in Arizona was approximately 150 feet (50 meters) wide. Meteor Crater has a diameter of about 3,900 feet (1,200 meters), or roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. The depth of the crater is roughly 560-600 feet (170 to 180 meters). The rim height rises about 148 feet (45 meters) above the surrounding Arizona plains. The circumference is nearly 3 miles (5 kilometers). The asteroid hit what is now northern Arizona approximately 50,000 years ago (geologists estimate between 49,000 and 50,000 years ago). During this period (the late Pleistocene epoch), the area was not a desert, but a cooler, wetter juniper-pinyon woodland inhabited by prehistoric animals like mammoths, giant ground sloths, and ancient bison. No humans were living in the region at the time of the collision. The cosmic event unfolded in seconds. A 150-foot-wide iron-nickel asteroid known as the Canyon Diablo meteorite slammed into the ground traveling at roughly 26,000 miles per hour (12 kilometers per second). The impact released an explosive force of about 10 megatons—roughly 150 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb—instantly vaporizing most of the space rock and flattening trees for miles around. Because the Arizona climate later turned incredibly dry, the scar left behind has been exceptionally well-preserved over the millennia. The top photo is a view of Meteor Crater from space by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, managed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The second photo is a view of the crater from an airplane.
A closer look at Meteor Crater.
You know, it's scary to think that it is entirely within the realm of theoretical possibility that an intelligent civilization somewhere in the universe has suffered a catastrophic apocalypse from a large asteroid impact. The observable universe contains an estimated two trillion galaxies, each holding billions of stars and planets. Even if the emergence of intelligent life is astronomically rare, the sheer number of opportunities means it has likely happened multiple times across cosmic history. Asteroid impacts are not anomalous events; they are a routine mechanism of planetary evolution. Every rocky planet sits in a cosmic shooting gallery of space debris. Earth itself has experienced multiple mass extinction events, most notably the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, which ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Planets can be struck not just by local asteroids, but by interstellar objects passing between solar systems. If an advanced civilization has not yet developed planetary defense systems (like asteroid redirection), a large enough impact could wipe them out. This is what the main asteroid belt looks like. By the way, an asteroid is a rocky or metallic celestial body that orbits the Sun. Most of these minor planets reside in the main asteroid belt situated between Mars and Jupiter, representing leftover material from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
Of course you can't talk about asteroids and not mention Chixculub, the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs. It was roughly 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) in diameter, comparable in size to Manhattan Island or Mount Everest. The impact occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, triggering the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out roughly 75% of Earth's species, including non-avian dinosaurs. The asteroid slammed into Earth at a staggering estimated speed of 20 kilometers per second, which translates to roughly 45,000 miles per hour (72,000 kilometers per hour). It was traveling at more than 58 times the speed of sound. The explosion and the aftermath would have been something you can't begin to comprehend. The sheer kinetic energy released by this speed and mass created a blast equivalent to 100 teratons of TNT—billions of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
This thin line of clay found around the world solved one of the biggest homicide cases in history, what killed the Dinosaurs. This is the famous K-T (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary line. Below the line, Dinosaur fossils can be found. Above the line, they disappear forever. When examined, the line is found to contain a global layer of clay rich in iridium (an element rare on Earth but common in asteroids), alongside shocked quartz, microscopic glass beads called tektites, and a layer of soot from worldwide fires. All ingredients of a massive asteroid strike. Again, below the line, Dinosaur fossils, above it, gone forever. With that, one of the biggest homicide cases in history was solved, that line is literally the smoking gun.
The 2020 film Greenland is one of my favorite disaster films. The film follows structural engineer John Garrity (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their diabetic son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) as they fight to survive an extinction-level comet impact. In the film, the largest fragment of the comet (Clarke) was 9 miles (14 km) wide, pretty close to the size of the Chixculub asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs. This is the impact crater from the comet (Clarke) in the film Greenland.
It's interesting that there is a real-life asteroid crater in Greenland, the Hiawatha crater, and it's located in the far northwest corner of Greenland, completely hidden beneath the ice sheet.
Specifically, it sits right at the edge of the Hiawatha Glacier in the remote region of Inglefield Land, looking directly out toward Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. The crater is buried beneath a half-mile-thick (1 kilometer) layer of solid glacial ice. From the air, you cannot see the bowl of the crater at all. The only clue visible on the surface is a distinct, circular depression and ripple pattern in the ice, which was formed as the Hiawatha Glacier flowed over the rim of the ancient crater. The Hiawatha Crater is massive, measuring 19 miles wide (31 kilometers) from rim to rim. It plunges more than half a mile deep (roughly 1 kilometer) from its rim down to its floor. The crater is large enough to completely swallow the entire city of Washington, D.C., or fit the island of Manhattan inside it with room to spare. It ranks among the top 25 largest impact craters ever discovered on Earth. The asteroid responsible for the crater struck northwest Greenland 58 million years ago and was roughly 0.9 to 1.25 miles wide (1.5 kilometers). Scientists estimate that it was a heavily fractionated, iron-rich meteorite weighing between 11 and 12 billion tons. When the asteroid slammed into Earth, the collision released an absolute cataclysm of energy—equivalent to seven million atomic bombs detonating at once. It completely devastated the local region with seismic shaking, massive thermal blasts, and widespread forest fires. Despite being in the Arctic, Greenland was not covered in ice at the time. It was a balmy, temperate rainforest filled with primitive wildlife. This is a close-up of the northwestern ice-sheet margin in Inglefield Land. The Hiawatha impact crater was discovered beneath the semi-circular ice margin. The structure is also imprinted on the shape of the ice surface, even though it lies nearly 1000 meters below the ice surface.