Dark Matter. . .

Nauti Girl sent me an email asking why I haven't commented on the giant particle accelerator that will fire up today in Europe. And honestly, the only reason I haven't said anything is because I'm patently lazy. And particle accelerators don't piss me off like a certain ultra-left Senator from Illinois does.

But I'll comment. . .

This contraption has been built with the ultimate goal of finding "god's" particle or the thing that makes up 90-someodd percent of our universe. Dark matter. The invisible (to date) particle that might be the root of all mass, not just the 90-someodd percent we can't see.

I scratch my head in amazement that there are people smart enough and mathematics complicated enough to develop a theorem built upon the idea of something that cannot be seen, has never been seen and is only visible on a mathematical level. Odd.

Stranger than that however, are these so-called "scientists" that are stamping their feet and jumping up and down in a cloud of fear predicting that once the atom smasher is fired off, a small black hole will be created that will eventually grow in size and swallow all of us up. I guess this is based on some mathematics also.

To this I say, as long as Europe goes first. . .I'm all for it.

Links from Nauti Girl:

Video at Metacafe

Boston Globe article w/awesome photos

National Geogrpahic article

One other thing, you just have to admit that no matter whether a threatening black hole is created or not, the name "Hadronic endcap Liquid Argon Calorimeter" is freaking awesome.

UPDATE: The answer to the burning question, "Has the large Hadron Collider destroyed the Earth yet?

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Check this out. . .

I found this really interesting blog about Science and Space. And what really makes it interesting are phrases like this:

On possible lakes on Saturn's moon Titan:

In a paper he published in the application the nature of the newspaper, of Thursday the data these scientists of the projection of image of the radar gathered during flyby of the moon by Cassini of the NASA that the spaceship demonstrated in 2006 July that the considered dark characteristics near the North Pole of the moon are explained more more good possible by them than they are lakes.

And this delightful tidbit about "The Nasa" and work on the ISS:

The NASA has decided to cause that a pair of astronauts examines a solar panel balky in the ISS during his spacewalk the following last Saturday.

Also, something about monkeys and perfume:

What can be the most natural Colony of the world was discovered recently in a Mexican forest. The ingredients? Spit of the chewed monkey and upon the leaves.

I don't know who the author(s) of this website is/are, but bonus points to he/her/them for trying. No write can you comedy this than better.

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