Large Hadron Collider Confirms 'Star Wars' The Force Is Totally, Completely Real, Says CERN

We now know the answer to "What's next for the Large Hadron Collider after the 'God Particle?'" In a completely real press release published on Wednesday, CERN announced that a LHC experiment has confirmed the existence of "the Force" from "Star Wars." The discovery of the Force exponentially expands our understanding of physics and the universe.

According to the Standard Model of Physics, everything is controlled by four fundamental forces. The strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force are all accepted by science. Physicists have been working hard to create a unified model of physics since the standard model does not account for gravity, but the CERN researchers may have stumbled on the next best thing.

"It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us; and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together," CERN theorist Ben Kenobi, from the University of Mos Eisley, Tatooine, said in a statement. The theorist said he began teaching the Force to a woman who had run out of options, and his knowledge was her only hope for passing her tests.

You would figure the great minds at CERN would harness the Force in unimaginable ways, but it turns out they're like us and just want to make their daily lives easier. Long-distance communication, persuasion, reheating coffee and moving things around without getting up from your seat are just a few practical uses of the Force. But new discoveries always have a dark side, and researchers are concerned about misuse of the Force.

"Right now, to be honest, I don't really care how it works. The theory department have some crackpot idea about life forms called midi-chlorians, but frankly I think that poorly thought-out explanations like that just detract from how cool the Force really is," Fan Buoi, a TIE experimentalist at CERN, said in a statement.

Of course, it's April Fools' Day and CERN is just having a bit of fun. Some of the conspiracy theories surrounding CERN and the LHC make the confirmation of the Force seem almost reasonable. When the Large Hadron Collider started up, there were fears that the giant particle smasher would create a black hole and destroy the world.

To date, the LHC has only confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, which led to a Nobel Prize for the physicists who predicted the existence of the "God particle."

In all seriousness, the Large Hadron Collider is more powerful than ever after getting a series of upgrades and will restart as soon as this weekend, Nature reported. In many ways, what the LHC is looking to find in 2015 is just as exciting as the Force. Whether it's dark matter or what happened just after the Big Bang, you should be excited for the LHC restart. A short circuit briefly halted the reboot, but CERN fixed the problem. "The largest collider in the world should be ready for beam in a few days’ time," CERN said in a statement.