You may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider or perhaps concerns about its safety, and if not you may still have come across this funny web page to test if it has destroyed the world yet.

Check the source for the last one as well, there are a few laughs. Their test to see if the world has ended is:

if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
    document.write("YUP.");
} else {
    document.write("NOPE.");
}

If the undefined variable worldHasEnded is not “undefined” then there’s some really spooky stuff going on… like the end of the world… otherwise we’re all safe and sound. In the same spirit I’m offering a test for world destruction for Java (and possibly C++ and other object oriented languages as well):

System.out.print("Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet? ");
if (this == null) {
    System.out.println("Yes!");
}
else {
    System.out.println("Nope");
}

Is the object running this test not existing any more… then risk is neither is the rest of the world…

Of course, we’ll have to wait until sometime in the end of October or beginning of November before they actually start colliding protons… and then perhaps the world will end…