Large Hardon Collider

[Kaylia]

Medical studies are very often biased. There is so many factor that aren't considered (food habit, living style, polution, detection rate, etc) it seem very easy to write the conclusion before the actual search. Hell, just find a list of every brain cancers, pick one that increased over the years, and say it's caused by cellphones. I'm not exactly sure how they proceeded, and I have no intention to find out, but I don't know, it need to be taken with a grain of salt. I would be more worried if they found out it increased the rate of cancer on rat.

Also, we are talking about a 100% increase of a cancer type that isn't quite common. Everyone will die someday, from something...you should worry about the high % before trying to improve the incredibly low percent.

[Woozie]

Very old, but I've never seen this before

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3492919.stm

Diamond star thrills astronomers

Spoiler: show

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.

The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.

Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Twinkle twinkle

"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.

The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.

The huge cosmic diamond - technically known as BPM 37093 - is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.

For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.

The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.

"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.

"We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.

Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallise as well, leaving a giant diamond in the centre of the solar system.

"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.

From another source:

It is 4,000 km across and weighs 2.27 million trillion trillion kg

Miz, you should totally get one of those for your wife on your anniversary.

[Mizango]

Very old, but I've never seen this before

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3492919.stm

Diamond star thrills astronomers

Spoiler: show

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.

The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.

Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Twinkle twinkle

"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.

The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.

The huge cosmic diamond - technically known as BPM 37093 - is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.

For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.

The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.

"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.

"We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.

Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallise as well, leaving a giant diamond in the centre of the solar system.

"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.

From another source:


Miz, you should totally get one of those for your wife on your anniversary.

lol who will help me carry it?

[zoobernut]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...degrasse-tyson

You heard it here first folks. Neil deGrasse Tyson IS GOD!

(Hope this isn't a repost but it made me laugh)

[Eliseos]

Kneel before Neil!!

That hasn't been posted yet, and people could repost it 1000 times and I wouldn't ever tire of NDT droppin bombs.

[Ferion]

Figured I could try asking about this here since I've been struggling with this the past couple days and still have no idea what's going on. When trying to estimate a probit model, does anyone know why you would get coefficient estimates with a standard error of zero? For some reason, almost every variable I have in my model that isn't a dummy variable or categorical dummy variable I created is coming up with a standard error of zero, which makes it impossible for me to compute p-values. I can post a sample of my results if it helps, but I honestly have no idea why this would be happening.

[Kaylia]

Mind posting your data ifs its not too long to copy paste? I doubt I can be of any help here since I haven't done this before, but it made me curious after reading wiki entries.



[edit]

Also, anyone see a way to simplify this even more?
x(y-1)/(1+x(y-1)) + x/(1-x)

It feel like i could do something more with that...I just dont see it.


[edit2]
Don't mind that, the simplification was related to the physics stuff followed by a geometric progression.

[Ferion]

I figured out the issue. A lot of my variables' distributions were highly skewed towards zero (I have no idea why), which the code I was using had a problem with. So taking the natural log of these variables made them much more normally distributed and fixed the problem. This link can probably explain it a lot better than I just did, but basically the procedure I was using has a problem with variables that aren't scaled very well.

http://support.sas.com/kb/31/714.html

[Cruzizzle]

ISS Solar Transit during partial solar eclipse

[Khamsin]

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.

It is 4,000 km across and weighs 2.27 million trillion trillion kg

What's with these weird "million billion trillion gajillion" numbers they're throwing out there? I thought it was a science article, just call it 10 decillion carats and 2.27 nonillion kg.

[Max™]

10^34 and 2.27x10^30 you mean?

[Khamsin]

10^34 and 2.27x10^30 you mean?

You got me! Well, then, if they want to name the number for the public to appreciate, they can use the actual name of the number instead of billion trillion gajillion.

[Eliseos]

lol who will help me carry it?

You have my sword.

[Max™]

http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/c/0/0...=1247370890000

They could make up names, bajeezusillion, wtfhugeillion, holydammitillion?

[Kaelan?]

Billions and Billions

[kuronosan]

So did it collapse the galaxy yet or not?

[Woozie]

We're not actually sure yet. The LHC scientist never thought things through enough to come up with a test to see if we still exist. I don't see how they could have overlooked something like that. It's a pretty obvious flaw in their work.

[Mizango]

Billions and Billions

You know what's funny about Carl Sagan, he was credited with saying that and never once said that in serious context. He said it once on the radio at the request of a fan, but never once said that phrase even though it is credited to him lol. Animanics really brought in that into the main stream and forced it in to the lexicon of the American youth of the past 20 years. Thankfully Sagan had an incredible sense of humor, Id kill to hear some of his jokes in his drab monotone voice.

[Mizango]

You have my sword.

Froinlaven!

[Max™]

We're not actually sure yet. The LHC scientist never thought things through enough to come up with a test to see if we still exist. I don't see how they could have overlooked something like that. It's a pretty obvious flaw in their work.

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/