NATALIJA UGRINA

Standing outside CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation — right before the shutdown made headlines. There's a very specific kind of headline that makes my group chats explode, and "CERN shuts down" is one of them. Within hours of the news breaking, my feed was full of the same three reactions: relief jokes ("phew, no black hole today"), genuine confusion about what CERN even is, and — my personal favorite — a fresh wave of theories about portals, parallel dimensions, and what