CERN didn't have opening ceremony, goat-head dance from Swiss tunnel | Fact check
Gabrielle SettlesThe claim: CERN had 'demonic' opening ceremony that included a séance
A May 15 post on X, formerly Twitter, (direct link, archive link) shows a video of scantily-clad people dancing and writhing on a stage before a person in a goat-headed costume comes out shouting.
"The CERN opening ceremony was so demonic," the post reads. "Why would they perform a 'Bride of Baphomet' séance while opening a scientific lab that tries to recreate the 'God particle.'"
Other posts on Facebook also shared the video.
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Our rating: False
The video is from 2016 and shows an opening ceremony performance for the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland, not the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, otherwise known as CERN.
No open ceremony dance involved with CERN's restart
The video shows scenes from the opening ceremony for the world's longest railway tunnel. The performance gained widespread attention for being... interesting.
But it had nothing to do with CERN. The organization uses its Large Hadron Collider to study matter. CERN was responsible for discovering the Higgs boson particle, known as the "God particle." Scientists say the finding helps explain the Big Bang theory and how the universe was formed.
Each year after a brief technical stop in the winter, CERN restarts its accelerator complex and the collider. This year the equipment was restarted on March 8 – but there was no dancing involved, said Anaïs Gerard, a spokesperson for the organization.
"Switching back the accelerator after a winter technical stop is usual business for us. We do it every year," Gerard said. "The only times that we have some sort of 'celebration' is when we start a new physics run after a long shutdown," she said, pointing to one in July 2022.
"But even in that case, they are not opening ceremony with dances, but rather science events streamed on social media where we discuss our research," Gerard said.
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USA TODAY has debunked previous conspiracy theories that falsely tie CERN to the occult, including claims that scientists were opening a portal to hell. CERN doesn't have the power to open any portal or create a black hole, experts have previously told USA TODAY.
USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
- Anaïs Gerard, May 31, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- BBC News, June 1, 2016, Switzerland tunnel: The oddest moments of the opening ceremony
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