The Cellar Image of the Day

aka faking an orgasm?

The image is of the Large Hadron Collider built by CERN, which the BBC reports is ready to be powered up after 30 years of planning and construction. It will be the world's most powerful physics experiment.

More on the Science of it all here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7604293.stm I just think it looks cool

There's a passably cool/nerdy rap on youtube explaining it all.
I can't link for you cause I am at work, don't want to look toooooo idle. Some keyword searches should find it.

Black holes drag in matter from their surroundings. Some critics fear the collider could create a miniature black hole that could swell and swallow the Earth

Particles liberated in this new superdupercollider will exist only for miniscule fractions of second, and they will be the much the same as zillions of particles that zip through us and the planet every second of every day, totally unnoticed. They will simply be liberated where they can be studied.

Hawking has long proven that mini black holes must exist if the rest of black hole theory is reasonably correct, so it is rather likely that we've encountered them before and didn't even realize it.

...or we might all wake up in the 11th dimension in a few days.

Actual conversation in my household when I brought up this thread:

Me: Cool. Hey, want to see a picture of the Large Hadron Collider?
Him: Sure, I guess... Yeah, it looks like pretty much any other particle accelerator.
Me: I've never seen a particle accelerator before.
Him: [laughs]
Me: Why is that funny?
Him: I don't know. It just is.

Well I imagine when you've got large Hardons colliding you'd get a big bang. Am I missing something here?

If they painted it silver and black, it'd only find 14 particles, vs the 41 it'll find in orange and blue. Go Broncos!

Sorry, couldn't help it.

Well, in case the resonance cascade hits us, you would be well adviced to have your red crowbar handy.

Well, I am a science geek.. This was a truly big and anticipated event in the history of science. I'm just drooling and sneaking and hopping around any news concerning all the multiple experiments at LHC like a squirrel around a nut he can't get.

Or whatever...

I have lots of experience with mini black holes. Nearly everything I drop disappears into one of them, along with a fair number of mundane household objects on a daily basis.

When it fails to work as planned, it'll probably make a great microwave .... I mean to say ... can you imagine the SIZE of the pizza, you could reheat in THAT!! ..

I think one electronvolt is the same as a normal volt (like in a 9-Volt battery,) but I could be wrong.

It is the amount of energy an electron picks up accelerating across an electrostatic potential difference of one volt.

There, did that make your life better?

[tw]of course! this is real science the basic kind that matters without that useless human stuff[/tw]

That's because after they're done with it, there won't be any useless human stuff left anywhere.

I hate to throw a simple statement in here, but isn't this sort of like an investment?

Is the test this friday as in the next friday or next friday as in next week. I need to schedule my time accordingly. kthxbai

Seriously, if we could create a pet black hole and contain it in some kind of toroidal magnetic field, that would solve all of our toxic waste disposal problems.

And unemployment, Camp X-Ray, and what to do with Sarah Palin all in one...

Puh...don't know how many times I have to tell you guys the aliens are coming back for us in 2011. I'll be laughing as my bags are packed and I'm ready to go, and y'all are running around looking for your favorite socks.

You may have seen this in the news, but it's really amazing/interesting/confusing.

Researchers at CERN have successfully made nutrinos travel faster than the speed of light, which is impossible. Fermilab in Chicago had reached similar results a few years ago, but their antiquated american equipment is so crappy, the margin of error was greater than the amount by which nutrinos exceeded light speed, so they tossed out the results. The newer CERN facility is much better and its margin of error is smaller, so they are certain that their results are accurate. Except for the little matter of it being impossible.

I really wish we hadn't scrapped our half built super collider in Texas. it would be useful to have a state of the art facility to compare the CERN results to.

Quote:

GENEVA — A startling find at one of the world’s foremost laboratories that a subatomic particle seemed to move faster than the speed of light has scientists around the world rethinking Albert Einstein and one of the foundations of physics.

Now they are planning to put the finding to further high-speed tests to see if a revolutionary shift in explaining the workings of the universe is needed — or if the European scientists made a mistake.

Researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva, who announced the discovery Thursday are still somewhat surprised themselves and planned to detail their findings on Friday.

Quote:

The claim is being greeted with skepticism inside and outside the European lab.

“The feeling that most people have is this can’t be right, this can’t be real,” said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN.

CERN provided the particle accelerator to send neutrinos on a breakneck 454-mile (730-kilometer) trip underground from Geneva to Italy. France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research collaborated with Italy’s Ran Sass National Laboratory for the experiment, which has no connection to the atomic-smashing Large Hadron Collider, which is also located at CERN.

Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that “they are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they’ve done and really scrutinize it in great detail.”

That will be necessary, because Einstein’s special relativity theory underlies “pretty much everything in modern physics,” said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. “It has worked perfectly up until now.” And part of that theory is that nothing is faster than the speed of light.

CERN reported that a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant.

Given the enormous implications of the find, they spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment.

A team at Fermilab had similar faster-than-light results in 2007. But that experiment had such a large margin of error that it undercut its scientific significance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barenaked Ladies

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

senior health official Tara Chinakarn admitted that policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret

I hear that everytime I watch The Big Bang Theory, but I only now learned that it's by The Barenaked Ladies! Who'dathought.

My ex-roommate got sick of me saying, every time, "That's the Barenaked Ladies, you know."

The Big Bang Theory makes me cringe.
To me it's a typical American comedy in that they forgot to put in the comedy and instead just used stereotypical characters, some shouting and occasional gay innuendo.
(John Barrowman auditioned as Will for Will and Grace - he was rejected for being too straight. So they employed a straight actor instead. But hey, thank FSM)

Sorry.
I thought Friends was awful, so what do I know?

ETA - to balance, there are British comedy shows that I find lame too.

Try watching Keeping Up Appearances with a straight face.
You'll think the wind has frozen it there.

Or My Family.
Or many more.

I might pooh-pooh. But I pooh-pooh on merit according to my own tastes, not according to awards or critics' choices or longevity. I pooh-pooh as I see fit. Etc etc

Does this not look like some sort of disgusting sea creature? Its mouth with teeth? Every time I see this that comes to mind. Too much SciFi perhaps.