No, CERN won't open a portal during the April 8 eclipse. That'd be impossible | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: CERN will start up April 8 to open a portal during the eclipse

An April 1 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a man telling viewers about his visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, and what he thinks the organization will do on April 8.

“They’re going to open up and start using CERN and testing it the day of the eclipse,” he said. “Here’s what I think is going on. They, the powers that be, are opening up CERN in coordination with the eclipse, to open up a gateway, a portal.”

The post was shared more than 1,000 times in four days.

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Our rating: False

The post is wrong about both the timing and the nature of CERN's work. CERN's equipment began operating in March, a month before the eclipse, and the technology is nowhere near strong enough to open a portal or a black hole.

CERN’s collider was restarted in March after a winter break

On April 8, people across 13 states will see a total solar eclipse, when the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun. But CERN’s technology has nothing to do with the astronomical phenomenon.

CERN uses its Large Hadron Collider to study matter and is responsible for finding the Higgs boson particle, or God particle. ​​Scientists say the finding helps explain the Big Bang theory and how the universe was formed.

Sophie Tesauri, a spokesperson for CERN, told USA TODAY there is no link between what CERN does and the upcoming eclipse.

“What we do at CERN is doing particle physics with accelerators such as the (Large Hadron Collider), and this has little to do with astrophysics in a direct way,” Tesauri said.

And CERN couldn't create a portal even if it wanted to, Dejan Stojkovic, a physics professor at the University at Buffalo, previously told USA TODAY.

"To create a black hole or a wormhole, even microscopic ones, with our current technology, in the context of our standard theories of gravity, we need an accelerator as big as the whole universe," Stojkovic said. "So there is no chance whatsoever to create such a portal at the (Large Hadron Collider)."

The claim is also wrong about the timing of CERN's testing.

Each year after a brief winter technical stop, CERN restarts its accelerator complex and the collider, Tesauri said. This year it was restarted on March 8 – a full month before the eclipse.

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USA TODAY has debunked other false eclipse claims, including assertions that the rockets NASA will launch during the event are part of a "sex magic ritual," that the eclipse is manufactured and that it will cause days of darkness.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, CERN will not open up a portal during solar eclipse | Fact check