Yes, it is now longer summer, nor relaxing now (as a friend pointed out).
No, I don't really feel bad about it.
I was going to write a post about the desertion of this blog - although things are fairly active over at the 100 Hour Board - but I feel we need a little humor is in order. However I warn you, this requires the ability to poke fun at modern particle physics, theoretical physics, philosophical debates and even some Star Wars trivia.
A month ago the Times printed an article discussing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. To recap, the LHC is designed to spin particles around so fast and than crash them together. In doing so they can look at the parts that fly off and learn from it. I point to this great Abstruse Goose Comic that demonstrates it through the science of biology.
Scientists are trying to find the Higgs Boson Particle - an elusive creature. Please see here and here (It is well worth it). But they haven't been successful getting the LHC started. A whole lot of issues have caused nearly a year delay. The article discusses that two physicists "hypothesized [the] Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather." Or better yet, going back in time to keep grandpa from being hit by a bus.
They believe ALL attempts to find the Higgs Boson will fail - like the US dropping a collider after a large budget spend. They say "Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”
Physists are torn on the matter. To parse Neils Bohr "We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”
This last week the proponents won another point of proof when a bird dropped a bit of plain baguette (those French!) into an unprotected vent that landed on equipment and fried it. Lucky? Impossible? I like Crunch Gear's look at it. "I used to bulls-eye whomp rats in my T-16 back home." To quote Luke.
It may be complex but "but they didn’t count on the possibility of a 
I think it is the future reaching back in time and slapping us silly once again. Although I believe the bird was supported by a rogue falcon that swopped on in at the right time to buy some time. There will be some celebrations and medals.HRP
1 comment:
It will be interesting to see what results come out of the LHC. There are over 500+ faculty from across the world banking on their new research papers with that thing.
I personally would like to see the furthering of the elements chart with stable new elements. Possible?
In truth the thing keeps breaking and that is really funny.
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