What I learned today…

• Could we possibly survive our sun swelling to a red giant in the not-so-relative-distant future?  Scientists have discovered a planet orbiting a little too close to an old red giant.  One possibility is that the planet drifted off its orbit as the sun swelled, and eventually picked up a new orbit further away.  Or perhaps an advanced civilization towed it to a safe orbit?  We will never know…

• Can you name 200 characters in the Harry Potter series in 18 minutes or less?  My wife and I were stumped at 56.  Not good…

• The weirdness of quantum mechanics is, in fact, not that weird…  Why does nature allow weirdness to exist in a limited form?  If chaos overshadows law and order, why doesn’t quantum mechanics blow our minds with rules we can’t possibly understand?  Oh, wait…

• Playing Pro Keys in Rock Band 3 is not as easy as it looks.  Although I do find some of the easier songs more challenging on this new instrument, it’s not that the songs themselves are harder, but rather having to deal with an extra finger – the thumb.  When playing guitar or bass, we are used to ignoring our thumb, but you need all 10 fingers to properly master the keyboards in this game.  What would make this the quintessential game?  Release the complete Dark Side of the Moon album by Pink Floyd, playable all in one setting.  Narcotics, anyone…?

• A microwave oven does not distribute microwaves in a uniform manner.  This might explain why it takes much longer to cook more than one item in the microwave at the same time.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger (the politician) probably has the best one-liners ever.  But does the actor have the best screams?  Nah, the politician always screams the loudest!

• I know how the Internet works, thanks to a new, interactive Google book called “20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Internet.”  Now, if I can only find out how that damned Thingamajig works!

16 Golden Retrievers teach about atoms

Interacting with a beam of light

[via Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory]

“A laser spot bounces on a figure being drawn on paper, trying to escape the labyrinth of lines. There is no camera nor projector; Sticky Light proposes an experience where the audience can touch and interact with a beam of pure light – and even play a pong game with bare hands.”

10 Things We Don’t Understand About Humans

“We belong to a remarkably quirky species. Despite our best efforts, some of our strangest foibles still defy explanation

But as science probes deeper into these eccentricities, it is becoming clear that behaviours and attributes that seem frivolous at first glance often go to the heart of what it means to be human.”

[via New Scientist]

The people behind the LHC [Colliding Particles]

I believe that most people understand that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at CERN, near Switzerland,  intends on smashing two particles traveling at high speeds, and analyzing the results of those collisions.  I also believe that most people understand the magnitude of such a project, such as the size of the collider itself (27 km of material spanning three countries, dug as deep as 175 meters underground).

So what about the people running the show ? As you can imagine, designing, planning, and successfully implementing such a project requires an enourmous amount of resources, including staff, expertise, money, and time.  It would seem that many of the key players involved in this project get overshadowed by the project’s purpose and magnitude.

Luckily, a site called Colliding Particles puts a face to the LHC.  In a series of well-documented webisodes, Colliding Particles provides a very interesting insight into the minds of the poeple behind the CERN and the LHC.

It is definitely worth seeing the first episode, at the very least.  I guarantee you will never look at the LHC without thinking of all the people supporting it at every stage.

Periodic Table of the Elements in Picture Format [PTotE]

“Click any element to see hundreds of pictures, stories and facts.”

[via Periodic Table]

Periodic Table of Awesomements [Periodic Table]

“In the 300 B.C., years before the birth of black Jesus, Aristole postulated that all good things were made of ‘win.’ That was a pretty good guess, but he was drunk and probably also having an orgy. Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental ‘awesoments’ that compose all good things. The Periodic table of Awesoments can be a very useful tool. It’s designed to show the relationships between awesoments, and often one can even predict how awesoments interact simply by their positions on the table.”

[via The Dapperstache]

ATLAS in Big Bang Theory

There is an ATLAS project poster in the engineering office at the University where the characters work.