Friday, August 08, 2008

The End Is Nigh

 

The Large Hadron Collider is due to be activated on September 10th. Estimates on how long it will take to create a black hole vary from microseconds to about 24 hours. Let's be optimistic and assume that it will take until Thursday morning (September 11th).

I figure the airport (Cointrin) will be sucked in before noon and Geneva should be swallowed up by at least 2pm. France will be gone by 4pm and we in Toronto will encounter the event horizon at midnight.

The good news is that I won't have to buy Ms. Sandwalk a birthday present on Friday. The bad news is that we may be spending an infinite amount of time together as we cross the event horizon so I might wish I had.


nigh: Common Teutonic: OE. néah, néh = OFris. nei, nî, MDutch na, nae (Dutch na), OS. nâh (MLG. nâge, nâ), OHG. nâh adv., nâher adj. (MHG. nâ, nâh-, nâch, G. nah), ONor. ná- (in combs. like ná-búi neighbour; Sw. and Da. na-), Goth. nêhwa (nêhw): the stem appears to be unrepresented outside Teutonic. OHG. is the only one of the older languages in which a fully developed adjectival use of the word exists along with the adverbial. In OE. there are very scanty traces of adjectival inflexion, néah being commonly employed either as a simple adv. or with a dependent dative: in predicative use it may sometimes be taken as an adjective, but it is more probable that in such cases also it is an adverb. It is not till the 14th or 15th cent. that the attributive use becomes common.

The original comparative of néah as an adv. is néar, néor, near adv.1, while the adj. form néarra finally became ner, nar a. The OE. superlative níe(hook)hst(a is latterly represented by next a. and adv. After phonetic changes had obscured the relationship of these forms to the positive, a new compar. and superl., nigher and nighest, were formed, and have been in common use since the 16th cent.

= near adv.2 and a. (which in all senses has taken the place of nigh except in archaic or dialect use). [Oxford English Dictionary]

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