CERN and the Timeline: The Rumour That the LHC Moved the World to Another Version

On September 10, 2008, CERN sent a proton beam around the Large Hadron Collider, known as the LHC. The 27 kilometre accelerator runs beneath the border between France and Switzerland. Nine days later, engineers raised the current while testing the magnets and an electrical connection failed. Helium flooded the tunnel, damaged equipment, and forced CERN to stop the machine for more than a year.

Those two dates form the opening of a famous rumour: the LHC did more than collide protons. It shifted the timeline into another version. In this story the world was not destroyed. Most things remained familiar, but some names, logos, film lines, and historical details no longer matched what many people remembered.