After years of construction and months of testing, the LHC is going to get fired up for real tomorrow!! That's the Large Hadron Collider outside of Geneva, Switzerland (and under France). I can't pretend to really know exactly what the thing does, but I get the gist. I love the sciencey stuff, not enough to do it myself, but I think it is fascinating to read about, once its been translated for the masses—me. I like to know how to make stuff. Including the universe, that's interesting, too.
Aaaaanyway, there's finally a super duper particle collider that will answer some questions I guess have been pestering physicists for a while. For me, that means a ginormous interesting machine, and tons of fascinating science articles in my future after they fire it up and analyze the terabytes of info they get out of it every second or so (eek!). (And no, its not going to implode the planet, in case you were worried. Well. As if I know, but that's what I've read from the people who should.)
Incidentally, we were going to make an even bigger one of these here in the US—in Texas, of course—but our government decided it was too expensive to fund that and the International Space Station simultaneously in the early 90's, after they had already done a fair amount of digging. I can actually remember being disappointed when I read about it's being canceled.
Wait, how much have we spent on Iraq so far...I forget.
I wouldn't have even mentioned this minor fetish of mine, but some of the multitalented geeks at CERN have made this wonderful educational rap about their project. Enjoy!!
YouTube directly
More information is available at the LHC homepage, and the Wiki about it.
One of the great things about being a graphic designer (though you'd never know it from this site), is that I get to learn about what other people do, how things are made, and all kinds of obscure stuff about different industries. I've also been employed by a couple of software companies that did very different things, where I had numerous dealings with the technical staff, some of whom were academic refugees of the 80s government research funding cuts in the sciences. Interesting people. Turns out, I like to learn about all kinds of stuff that I was positively allergic to during my school years. I'm a dilettante, and proud of it.
I'm off to see if I can find another video on the human genome project. Or epigenomes!
Aaaaanyway, there's finally a super duper particle collider that will answer some questions I guess have been pestering physicists for a while. For me, that means a ginormous interesting machine, and tons of fascinating science articles in my future after they fire it up and analyze the terabytes of info they get out of it every second or so (eek!). (And no, its not going to implode the planet, in case you were worried. Well. As if I know, but that's what I've read from the people who should.)
Incidentally, we were going to make an even bigger one of these here in the US—in Texas, of course—but our government decided it was too expensive to fund that and the International Space Station simultaneously in the early 90's, after they had already done a fair amount of digging. I can actually remember being disappointed when I read about it's being canceled.
Wait, how much have we spent on Iraq so far...I forget.
I wouldn't have even mentioned this minor fetish of mine, but some of the multitalented geeks at CERN have made this wonderful educational rap about their project. Enjoy!!
YouTube directly
More information is available at the LHC homepage, and the Wiki about it.
One of the great things about being a graphic designer (though you'd never know it from this site), is that I get to learn about what other people do, how things are made, and all kinds of obscure stuff about different industries. I've also been employed by a couple of software companies that did very different things, where I had numerous dealings with the technical staff, some of whom were academic refugees of the 80s government research funding cuts in the sciences. Interesting people. Turns out, I like to learn about all kinds of stuff that I was positively allergic to during my school years. I'm a dilettante, and proud of it.
I'm off to see if I can find another video on the human genome project. Or epigenomes!
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