Large Hardon Collider

[BerenTebogo]

Yeah, is all a dream now.

[Flattus]

Aw man, did I miss the first collision?

[Woozie]

Lagrange/Hamilton mechanics are fun until you realize how much of a dick the differential equation it produce are.

In class, my professors rarely make us solve the actual equations that are produced (except the simple ones). Once we get the equations we're done. I would have flipped if my professor asked us to solve some of those equations we came across.

[Kaylia]

In class, my professors rarely make us solve the actual equations that are produced (except the simple ones). Once we get the equations we're done. I would have flipped if my professor asked us to solve some of those equations we came across.

And most are solved numerically anyway.

It's just that when you obtain this 3 lines long differential equation, it's nearly impossible to tell if you screwed up somewhere, or if it's actually what you're supposed to obtain.

[vivix]

In class, my professors rarely make us solve the actual equations that are produced (except the simple ones). Once we get the equations we're done. I would have flipped if my professor asked us to solve some of those equations we came across.

As one of my professors said: "The only differential equation we can REALLY solve is the harmonic oscillator."

[Quicklet]

As one of my professors said: "The only differential equation we can REALLY solve is the harmonic oscillator."

Lucky for us 90% of all physical phenomena can be modeled as a harmonic oscillator!

[Neosutra]

And by 90% you mean 100%.

Everything can be modeled as a harmonic oscillator. Just a finite portion of that first harmonic..

[Kaylia]

As one of my professors said: "The only differential equation we can REALLY solve is the harmonic oscillator."

When we arent using small angle approximation, which is never!

[Woozie]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...m?id=8-wonders

So awesome.

Edit: Wait, in each of these pictures wouldn't we just see total darkness? Or does the artist assume our spacecraft has some insanely powerful headlights lol?

Edit 2: Okay, this is starting to make me mad. Why don't we have anything like this on Earth? We're just a gigantic ball of water.

Edit 3: Well, our moon made the list. But for a somewhat boring reason.

[Max™]

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1255661

Video is up incidentally.

http://www.ucd.ie/physics/preston/re...texlocator.jpg

Here you can clearly see it vomiting dragons:

http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArc...-at-72-dpi.jpg

Spoiler: show

http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArc...at-144-dpi.jpg
http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArc...at-144-dpi.jpg
http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArc...at-144-dpi.jpg
http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArc...at-144-dpi.jpg

Large pics spoilered.

From:http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Photos?ln=en for small/medium/large/hi-res.

[Max™]

Incidentally, sometime last year my woman and I were reading magazines in a bookstore, I was reading through an LHC article, and I showed her this picture:

http://www.st.com/stonline/stappl/pu...2030shigh.jpeg

I didn't explain what I was reading, and she semi-sarcastically asked "...is it a hat?", to which I then pointed out the technician in the photo.

'Yes, it's a very large hat.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJDdaXcCy8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_CAufB7gow

[Eliseos]

Lee Smolin is giving a talk at my school this semester. Hopefully I can go to it.

EDIT: Blah, I can't go, I'll be at work

Friday, 2 April 2010, 3:00 PM in Physics 135
Using the Universe as a Microscope to See the Small Scale Structure of Spacetime

Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institure (Ontario)

I will review recent observations by the FERMI gamma ray observatory and other astrophysical observations which probe the structure of spacetime at Planck scales. These appear to be close to answering the question of whether the symmetries of special relativity are preserved, broken or deformed by the fundamental structure of quantum spacetime. Different approaches to quantum gravity lead to different expectations or predictions for these questions, making these observations highly relevant for the unfinished task of unifying quantum physics with general relativity. Among the approaches I will describe is deformed (or doubled) special relativity, which modifies the postulates of special relativity to preserve an energy scale as well as a velocity.

http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/physics/events/colloquia/

[Kryssan]

Lee Smolin is giving a talk at my school this semester. Hopefully I can go to it.

EDIT: Blah, I can't go, I'll be at work

They make this thing called leave/vacation. Its sometimes a rumor. Occasionally it takes on a corporeal body. There are things that are worth visiting upon however. I will never forget the experience of meeting one of the top workers for the Manhattan Project. I still think he's a wee bit out there since he walks (assuming he still is walking around, I should check on that, he's getting up there in the age dept. and this was 9 years ago now) around carrying a piece of the original pile in his pocket in a lead glass cube, but I'll never forget the seminar he presented that I got the chance to attend.

[Eliseos]

Interns don't get days off

[Kryssan]

Interns don't get days off. They have to make their own days off.

ftfy

[Eliseos]

I think I'm coming down with a cold.

[Khamsin]

So which of those dots is the higgs boson?

[Max™]

That one there, behind the little squiggly line, a little to the right of the other squiggly line.

[Correction]

Vids make me wanna go play through ReZ again.

[Woozie]

From the April Fool's Thread:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39...9305387,00.htm

http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/ga..._aprilfool.jpg
A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.


The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.

Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."


This isn't the first time time-travel has been blamed for mishaps at the LHC. Last year, the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya and Danish string-theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen put forward the hypothesis that the Higgs boson was so "abhorrent" that it somehow caused a ripple in time that prevented its own discovery.


Professor Brian Cox, a former CERN physicist and full-time rock'n'roll TV scientist, was sympathetic to Mr Cole. "Bless him, he sounds harmless enough. At least he didn't mention bloody black holes."

Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.