Science is Drokking Fantastic Because...

[The Legendary Shark]

How Big is Big?

A scale comparison chart showing lots of big stars - but note that after Rigel (frame 5) they are all red giants. When the Sun goes red giant it will become about the size of Arcturus (frame 4) - so maybe this kind of 'snapshot in time' comparison is misleading? Credit: Wikimedia.

[Emperor]

Anyone worried about the mass of the Higgs Boson yet?

The rumours tell us that next week ATLAS and CMS will announce a strong but inconclusive signal for the Higgs boson at about 125 GeV. This may be wrong and even if it is right there may be other candidate signals to think about, and it will take much more data to verify that the signal is indeed correct for the Higgs, but if it is right, what then are the implications of the Higgs at this mass?

This question will be the subject of much discussion in the coming months and I can only touch on it here. Certainly the central topic of the debate will be the stability of the vacuum and whether it implies new physics, and if so, at what scale?

It has been known for about twenty years that for a low Higgs mass relative to the top quark mass, the quartic Higgs self-coupling runs at high energy towards lower values. At some point it would turn negative indicating that the vacuum is unstable. In other words the universe could in theory spontaneously explode at some point releasing huge amounts of energy as it fell into a more stable lower energy vacuum state. This catastrophe would spread across the universe  at the speed of light in an unstoppable wave of heat that would destroy everything in its path. Happily the universe has survived a very long time without such mishaps so this can't be part of reality, or can it?

http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/04/what-would-a-higgs-at-125-gev-tell-us/

Via

[Spikes]

Anyone worried about the mass of the Higgs Boson yet?

I am now, 

[vzzbux]

After looking at all the data collceted so far on the Higgs Boson I can safely say that I don't have a fucking clue and my brain has just fell out of my arsehole.




V

[Albion]

.........you can have a poo transplant. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15113440

[Emperor]

Iran have hacked America's best killbot:

The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel is still highly classified, yet since one came down in Iran five days ago, it's a lot less secret.

Three U.S. defense officials said the plane the Iranians displayed on television yesterday appears to be the Lockheed Martin Corp. RQ-170 that controllers lost contact with on Dec. 4. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have declined to comment on the matter.

Three U.S. intelligence officials said the greatest concern now is that the Iranians will give Russian or Chinese scientists access to the aircraft, which is designed to be virtually invisible to radar and carries advanced communications and surveillance gear.

...

Reverse engineering the Sentinel or its components would be difficult and time consuming, the intelligence officials said. The most troubling prospect is that the Iranians' second claim about how they brought it down -- by hacking into its controls and landing it themselves -- might be true, said one of the intelligence officials .

The official said the possibility that the Iranians, perhaps with help from China or Russia, hacked into the drone's satellite communications is doubly alarming because it would mean that Iranian or other cyber-warfare officers were able to disable the Sentinel's automatic self-destruct, holding pattern and return-to-base mechanisms.

www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-12/iran-shows-downed-spy-drone-as-u-s-assesses-technology-loss.html

Could Skynet emerge as collateral damage from the upcoming cyberwar?

.........you can have a poo transplant. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15113440

I have signed up to be a poo donor.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

A Higgs-Boson walks into a Chapel. When the priest catches sight of it, he is furious.

'You're the one that calls himself the God Particle,'
declares the priest 'We don't want your blasphemous kind in here begorrah, bayjaysus!!!'

'But without me,'
replies the Higgs-Boson, 'Mass won't make any sense.'

[TordelBack]

Love it.

[von Boom]

Perfect with the Irish accent. 

JvB

[Emperor]

Brilliant, it is like NASA is being run by 8-year-olds:

NASA Builds Six-Foot Crossbow to Harpoon Comets

the Goddard lab now houses a monstrous six-foot-long crossbow, with a bow made from a pair of truck carriage springs, and a string made from a half-inch-thick steel cable. This industrial-strength ballista can generate a level of force up to 1,000 pounds.

The engineers only point the bow towards the floor, for safety reasons. "It could potentially launch test harpoon tips about a mile if it was angled upwards," said NASA's Bill Steigerwald in a press release.

www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/nasa-comet-harpoon/

Surely they should just admit they did it because it sounded cool.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Brilliant, it is like NASA is being run by 8-year-olds

The their budget has been slashed, they probably can't afford to pay real scientists and child labour is free

Surely they should just admit they did it because it sounded cool.

It does sound cool doesn't it? We need more stuff like this to inspire the next generation. The LHC is cool and all, but it's difficult enough to explain it to grown ups never mind kids.

[vzzbux]

They will be using them to down ATAT's next.





V

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Brilliant, it is like NASA is being run by 8-year-olds Moomins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIqGvu39muo

[Roger Godpleton]

I'm wearing boxers that are too small. Now all of my clothes feel like they are too small. Science is a dick because it tells my brain that my clothes are all too small when only one of them is.

[The Legendary Shark]

Science gives us some truly cool locations. I had never even heard of this until today, when I stumbled on it by accident:

The IceCube South Pole Particle Detector.



How cool is that? I'm imagining one of these way out on Pluto or drilled into a distant comet with a small crew of bearded, freyed scientists who have just discovered something a bit odd in the ice...