Yesterday morning, apparently fearing that the end of the world was approaching at the hands of mad scientists, a teenage girl in central India killed herself.

Chayya, 16, from Madhya Pradesh, drank pesticide. Her father said she had been asking him and other relatives “about the world coming to an end on September 10”.

The Indian media had been working itself into a frenzy as the switch-on time for the Large Hadron Collider approached. While some sought out one last fine meal, many thousands of others were praying and fasting for salvation. A temple in Orissa noted the arrival of 1,000 extra worshippers on Tuesday.

“I am observing the fast for safety,” said Rukmini Moharana, a housewife. “Only God can save us.”

In Israel, it was hoped that the start of the hadron collider could prove an agent for peace rather than catastrophe. Forty Israeli scientists had worked on developing the CERN facility, often side by side with scientists from enemy states such as Iran and Lebanon. The newspaper Yediot Aharanot reported that, at a celebratory party at the Swiss complex, Palestinian and Israeli flags hung side by side.

“Science knows no borders and no enemies,” said Professor Giora Miken-berg, of Israel’s Weizmann Institute. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

Somewhere between the terror of thousands in India, and the hopes of the media in Israel, were the European newspapers. They entertained the prospect of the end of the world without quite being capable of taking the matter seriously.

The Germans seemed particularly unruffled by the approach of The End, perhaps because they are the most heavily insured people in the world. The mass circulation Bild newspaper deployed its usual clunking humour. “Some black holes aren’t bad at all,” it said. “The ones that make our tax returns disappear for example, or irritating overtime, or annoying bosses.”

There was even less concern about the world’s biggest physics experiment in Kenya. Newspapers did not afford it so much as a single column inch.

Paul Onyango, a caretaker shopping for chickens in the slum of Dagoretti, expressed bewilderment after it was explained to him that scientists were seeking to answer the eternal, chicken and egg question of the Universe, and how it started. “This seems a very strange thing to spend money on,” he said. “We could use that money in a much better way.”

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