World's geekiest app?

Alternate titles: "Apps that go BOOM!" "An app only a physicist could love?"

"Want to find out how to Hunt the Higgs Boson using your phone? Ever wondered how the Large Hadron Collider experiments work, and what the collisions look like?"

If you answered "yes" to either or both questions, then have I got an app for you!

Introducing LHSee for the Android (click on the link to read the, to me, hysterical user reviews) -- a new free app for those of you who, like me, are obsessed with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant particle accelerator (or as Gail Collins and I like to refer to it, the Life-Extinguishing Black-Hole Maker) located under the border of France and Switzerland*.

Not only is the new LHSee app educational, but, and I quote, "the application allows you to interact with the collision events in full 3D graphics." (I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds kind of painful.) You can also test your knowledge of physics by playing the Hunt the Higgs game!

Btw, the app is categorized under "E," for Entertainment -- or End of days, depending on your point of view. And you can find out more about how it was created here.

*For those non-physicists in the audience, I have included this helpful video which explains what the Large Hadron Collider does in rap form. Enjoy.

Particle physics meets the Jersey Shore?

Okay, so I am "slightly obsessed" with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator (affectionately known as the "Big Bang Machine")....

[If you are wondering about the Jersey Shore reference, keep reading.]



And now comes word from Geneva, where the Large Hadron Collider (aka the Black Hole Maker) is located, albeit 100 meters underground, that scientists there are on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough, which, considering that they are trying to recreate the Big Bang, does not strike me as good news. Specifically, scientists are on the hunt for "hot dense matter."

[FYI: The picture above is a computer-generated graphic showing the tracks of more than 100 subatomic particles resulting from the collision of protons in the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid at an energy of 7 trillion electron volts. Talkin' 'bout some "Hot Stuff"*...]

Now, I am not a scientist, but I do try to stay informed on what's going on in the world, and if scientists really wanted to find "hot dense matter," they could have saved $10 billion and just watched a couple of episodes of Jersey Shore. (Talk about a void...)

Note to CERN scientists: If you do find "hot dense matter" how about naming the new subatomic particle (that goes out with a bang) a "Snooki"?

In related news, for those of you wondering what would happen if you put your hand inside the Large Hadron Collider while it was accelerating particles, wonder no more! (Maybe.)



*Bonus points if you got the Donna Summer reference.

The two biggest threats to civilization

No, it's not the passage of the health care bill and reality TV (e.g., The Jersey Shore). I am, of course, talking about CERN's Large Hadron Collider and topless gardening.

Let's cover the latter subject first, shall we?

Bet you didn't know that it was perfectly legal to garden without a top in Colorado, did you? And if Boulder resident Robert P. has anything to say about it, things will stay that way, so his 52-year-old wife can continue to tend to his garden in only pasties and a thong -- the neighbors be damned!

But apparently Mr. and Mrs. P.'s neighbors in Boulder think otherwise, and, as a result, the Boulder City Council is considering expanding the city's anti-nudity ordinance when it meets next month, though according to one report, young, good-looking women will still be allowed to go topless in public.

In other alarming news, this past Friday CERN's Large Hadron Collider set a new world record, accelerating proton beams to 3.5 trillion electron volts, which is more than three times the previous record for any Earth-gobbling, black-hole-making particle accelerator. (Maybe when Geneva disappears, scientists will finally see the error of their ways.)

But are CERN scientists satisfied with the Large Hadron Collider's latest feat? HA-rdly. They want the LHC to ram particles together at a crushing 7 trillion electron volts, recreating conditions when the universe was supposedly created (i.e., the Big Bang).

Now I am not a scientist (nor do I play one on TV), but I know a bit about the Big Bang theory (both the event and the TV show), and I just don't think it's a great idea to replicate the Big Bang -- the words big and bang being a big clue as to what could go wrong.

Moreover, according to a recent New York Times report, the Large Hadron Collider "is riddled with thousands of flawed electrical splices and underperforming magnets, which will require a year’s shutdown in 2012 to fix." Would that be before or after 12/21/2012, i.e., the day the world is supposed to end? Just askin'.

Oh, and have a nice day.

UPDATED: THE END JUST GOT NEARER!!! Per this report, those wild and crazy CERN scientists are going to start smashing protons together -- at a shattering 7 trillion electron volts -- next Tuesday, setting off a series of mini big bangs. On the plus side, if the LHC creates an Earth-gobbling black hole, it means I won't have to worry about writing an American Idol post next Tuesday night. ;-)

The end is (not as) near! (Maybe.)

First, the good news: According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Large Hadron Collider will not be making any black holes (or anything else, apparently) any time soon.

Now the bad news: According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Large Hadron Collider will not be making any black holes (or anything else, apparently) any time soon. (Okay, the part about the Large Hadron Collider not making any black holes is not bad news, but the fact that this $9 billion hunk of particle accelerating junk -- I mean expensive metal -- is still not operational, i.e., not colliding anything, after 15 years is.)

Now the REALLY bad news (if you consider Item #1 to be, in fact, good news): Due to the failure of or delay with the Large Hadron Collider over in Europe, good ole American scientists at Fermilab have been revving up the Tevatron, located under the Chicago suburb of Batavia, to more than 2000% of its original capacity. Definitely not good. (FYI: All you science geeks -- i.e., my male readers, especially those over at Potpourri for $500 -- can read more about the Tevatron here. You can also become a fan of the Tevatron and/or a fan of the Large Hadron Collider on Facebook.)

For those of you new to this blog, a bit of background: I am somewhat obsessed with the Large Hadron Collider, located under the border between Switzerland and France near Geneva, and have written many posts on the subject, though this one neatly sums up my feelings about the Large Hadron Collider's life-destroying potential. Which is why I breathed a big sigh of relief when I read it would be offline for at least a few more months, if not years, or indefinitely. But that relief was short lived.

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else out there think replicating the Big Bang is a bad idea, especially when it has the potential to swallow up the Midwest (and the South and the North and the West of the United States, as well as Canada and Mexico, too)? Do we really need to be spending billions of dollars searching for "the God particle"?

Personally, I think the money would be much better spent creating a device that would help people find their keys and/or glasses. Or finding a cure for baldness -- the Big Bang of hair growth.

Got an opinion? Leave me a comment...

More powerful than the Large Hadron Collider, it's Facebook! Plus, a stimulating new migraine cure!

While scientists and journalists have been debating whether the Large Hadron Collider, the gigantic particle accelerator located under the border of France and Switzerland, could create a life-sucking black hole that would slowly pull all of mankind into its maw when it is finally switched on in September (by actor Tom Hanks, no less), they have entirely neglected an existing, much more life-threatening, life-sucking, gigantic instrument of destruction. I am, of course, referring to Facebook.

Don't believe me? Well then, what about the numbers? And we all know numbers don't lie.

Facebook currently has more than 175 million active users (including yours truly), with the over 30 crowd being the fastest growing user group. If Facebook was a country, it would be the sixth most populous, just behind Brazil and ahead of Pakistan. And according to Facebook, its citizens spend more than 3 billion minutes (combined) each day on the site. Three billion minutes, folks, gone. Never to return again. Scary.

And just like the Large Hadron Collider has lured scientists to do unspeakable things in the name of science, Facebook has lured hundreds of thousands of application developers and entrepreneurs to create unspeakable applications and tools for the site. But that's just the tip of the iceberg -- or event horizon of the black hole that is Facebook (to not mix metaphors).

Every day, millions of Facebook users go to the site, ignoring their work, their families, and loved ones to post photographs (more than 850 million photos are uploaded to the site each month), videos (more than 5 million of which are uploaded each month), leave comment-inducing status updates (more than 15 million of them each day), form or join groups, and create fan pages.

Can this be good for productivity? I think not.

Case in point, on Friday I was writing an article, which happens to be about managing social media (i.e., Facebook) in the workplace, when I get a ping from Facebook, from a girl I went to elementary school with, who I haven't heard from in, like, over 30 years, who commented on a picture of me from third grade, which a mutual Facebook friend put up.

So I, of course, had to write her back.

Then I go back to my article and the spouse walks into my office. And, of course, I now have to show him the photo of me (and this girl), which I put on my Facebook profile, again taking time away from working on my article.

The spouse looks at the photo, then looks at the notes on my desk, and he says "Facebook is the reason this country is in a recession." I think that might be a little harsh, but I'm going to put the question up for comment on my Facebook page and see if others think it's true.

In other scientific news... As many of you know, I suffer from migraines. I have tried many cures and methods of prevention over the years, with varying degrees of success, but it never occurred to me that a cost-free cure had been right next to and available to me all the time. I am, of course, referring to sex.

Yes, dear readers, scientists have found that having sex may actually alleviate a headache, especially a migraine. Of course, when I first heard about this new cure, I thought it was simply a male plot, but I have actually experimented with this concept several times now and it does, in fact, work, or at least alleviate the pain temporarily. (For more on this stimulating topic, click on the link, which includes a short video.)

I would write more, but I feel a headache coming on, and I have yet to check Facebook this morning.

Large Hadron Collider not responsible for financial black hole; the Mohegan Sun report; and why Friday's presidential debate should go on as planned

As some of you may already know, the Large Hadron Collider, over near (or rather under) Geneva, Switzerland, has been shut down for at least two months due to a) a broken 30-ton transformer that cools the system and b) a large helium leak that has caused scientists and technicians to speak in falsetto voices for the last few days.

As a result, the Large Hadron Collider has not been able to collide anything, meaning (and it pains me to type this) there is no way it can be held responsible for the black hole that is currently sucking up (or down) the world's financial markets. That black hole, which has been rapidly expanding, despite government efforts to contain it all costs (or at least $700 USD), I am afraid, was caused by the collision of other forces, mostly economic in nature.

Equally, if not more, disappointing, scientists will now have to wait at least a few more months to test how long it would take the particle accelerator to defrost a pizza.

I know, I know: You are as disappointed as I am, though perhaps not more so than the intrepid editors over at Scientific American who "made an estimate based on the rate and energy of particle collisions when the machine's two beams meet head on" as to how fast the LHC could defrost a pizza.

Based on certain suppositions (which you can read about in the article, which I link to above), it would take 30 nanoseconds to defrost a frozen DiGiorno's Microwave Rising Crust Four-Cheese Pizza, though, theoretically speaking, the collisions required to heat the pizza could unintentionally create a black hole and suck the pizza into another dimension or just vaporize it.

In other news... I won $100 (actually a bit more) in just a couple of hours yesterday at Mohegan Sun. And my buddy, G., won almost $400! Talk about a good return on your investment! And let me tell you, I had waaaay more fun playing blackjack (with a CPA and a college computer science professor and my buddy) than I've had watching my money managers gamble with my savings the past few months. My outing at Mohegan Sun was also more profitable.

Finally, as many of you have probably now heard, earlier today Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for postponing Friday's presidential debate (the first of three scheduled debates) until the resolution of the financial mess on Wall Street, and also vowed to suspend his campaign to concentrate on finding a solution.

While I honestly believe McCain is dedicated/committed to finding a quick and even bipartisan resolution to the current Wall Street crisis, I agree with the Boston Globe that this is (in some part) a stunt to delay the upcoming presidential debate this Friday.

Barack Obama, who had phoned McCain this morning to discuss issuing a joint statement regarding the current financial crisis, had no idea until this afternoon that McCain wanted to delay the first debate -- and rejected McCain's call to do so, stating: "It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," adding, "I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once."

I agree, as has, apparently, the Commission on Presidential Debates, which, as of this afternoon, had not heard from anyone in the McCain campaign and said it was going forward with the debate as scheduled.

Will the debate go forward as scheduled? Will the Large Hadron Collider go back online before the year is out? Will I quit my day job and become a professional gambler? Stay tuned...

That's all fine and good but WHAT ABOUT THAT BLACK HOLE?

What, me worry?! You betcha. However, the very fact that you are reading this post means that the world has not been swallowed up by a globe-gobbling black hole. Yet. But that is only because CERN's Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator won't start colliding anything until next month.

As you may have already read, this morning scientists at CERN (which stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research -- it's French, OK?) switched on their newest toy, the $10 billion "Big Bang Machine," "the biggest, most expensive science machine on earth," according to reports.

As reported in an article by MSNBC science editor Alan Boyle today, "former CERN chief Luciano Maiani noted that the money spent on the project over 14 years was a mere fraction of the $40 billion that China spent for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. 'These are the Olympics of science," CERN spokeswoman Paola Catapano replied during a Webcast interview.'"

Well, that just makes it all better, doesn't it? No, it does not.

While I will not deny the cool factor of beaming protons around a 17-mile underground racetrack at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light and then slamming them together to recreate the Big Bang (and hopefully find the elusive Higgs boson), isn't there a better way -- make that a million better ways -- for scientists to spend $10 billion dollars than to try to blow up things?

And then there is the matter of those pesky little globe-gobbling black holes.

Per Boyle's article from September 9, CERN theoretical physicist John Ellis thinks it would be "extremely exciting if the LHC did produce black holes."

I, however, have a slightly different definition of "exciting," but let us hear what Dr. Ellis had to say.

"OK, so some people are going to say, 'Black holes? Those big things eating up stars?' [Like me!!!] No. These are microscopic, tiny little black holes. And they’re extremely unstable. They would disappear almost as soon as they were produced."

Or not.

According to one Walter Wagner, a plaintiff involved in a federal lawsuit to shut down the Large Hadron Collider, the mini-singularities (that is, black holes) produced by the Large Hadron Collider (which is located on, or really under, the border of France and Switzerland) could fall to the center of the earth, grow larger, and swallow more and more of Earth's matter until all the bloggers (and everyone and everything else, including Alaska) have been sucked into its maw.

But for now, scientists, journalists, and dignitaries over there in France (okay, Geneva, Switzerland) are sipping Champagne and sucking on each others toes, toasting to a bunch of invisible particles, pretending the end is not near. As for me, I'm off to smash me some Cheerios together in a bowl of milk.

UPDATED AT 11:00 AM: Still confused? Watch this:



Those wacky CERN scientists! To the L, to the H, to the C!

You could win the lottery, or CERN could create a life-sucking black hole -- same odds

Here I am in London (currently hiding out in the loo while the husband and child sleep in), having a jolly good time (not in the loo but on the trip in general) when my spouse asks me last night, "Hey, have you seen this article about the collider?" (as in the Large Hadron Collider CERN is building under Switzerland and France).

Of course, I hadn't seen the article as a) we have been in the UK madly running around with little time to read anything; b) although we have a computer (his), I have barely been on it; and c) if I have gone on it, it is only to briefly check email, not to search out articles about the Earth's impending demise. But once you open Pandora's Box...

So I read the article, an essay by the New York Times's Dennis Overbye titled "Gauging a Collider's Odds of Creating a Black Hole." The good news: According to one report Overbye sites (about the Brookhaven, NY, collider, which, as far as the general public knows, has not created a non-evaporating black hole that is slowing sucking Long Island into its maw -- though some would argue that would not necessarily be a bad thing, though the beaches are quite lovely), the odds of a major disaster occurring due to a collider experiment are just less than one in 50 million, or put another way, about the same as an asteroid crashing into the Earth (the reason why we currently exist, btw, and why there are not T-Rexes still roaming around the Dakotas) or just less than a chance of winning some lottery jackpots.

Some may find this risk analysis comforting. Not me. Have you seen (or heard about) the number of Powerball and Mega Millions winners out there?! Just in the past year alone there had to have been a least a half dozen. That said, if we are destined to be sucked down a black hole, Lord, could I win the Powerball first? Please? (Though I know I can't take it with me. Still... )

Okay, okay. I know that I may be overreacting to all this. (Shocking, I know.) But my attitude (and apparently the attitude of some scientists) is why take the risk? And why spend billions of dollars on such an endeavor when the money could be used to save lives -- and discover things like fresh sources of water, clean sources of energy, the cure for cancer and other diseases?

I am all for scientific discovery and understand that many great inventions have come from things like the space program (though apparently Tang wasn't one of them -- it was invented before and only became popular after the astronauts made it to the moon and back), but the Large Hadron Collider, even with its enormous cool factor, seems unnecessary and unacceptable, especially as we already have a perfectly good dollar-sucking collider right here in the old U. S. of A.

Well, my daughter just got up, which is my cue to end this post. Gotta spend time with her while I can.

"Why do little boys want to blow up frogs?"

The title of this blog post is in quotes because I did not say it, my spouse did -- in response to my somewhat rhetorical questions regarding the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which I posed to him over breakfast Friday morning.

"Why are these scientists spending BILLIONS of dollars to see a bunch of subatomic particles fly around and smash into each other?" I asked him while sucking down some Cheerios. "What is that going to get us?" To which he calmly replied, "Why do little boys want to blow up frogs?"

After more than 17 years, he finally found a way to (momentarily) shut me up. And I still don't have an answer. (Btw, if anyone reading this -- Dave S.? -- knows why little boys want to blow up frogs, please do leave a comment.)

In fact, the more I have thought about it, the more I am 99.9% certain that it never once occurred to me to blow up a frog. (Men, on the other hand, are a different story.) In fact, I would hazard that most females have not given much thought to frog demolition. But I digress.

The subject I am trying to get at (or to) is the Large Hadron Collider, which, per CERN's website (see link above): "is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe."

It could also create a tiny black hole that could quickly grow and reduce our big blue marble to a little black cinder . Pretty cool, huh?

Apparently, I was not the only NY Times reader who was morbidly fascinated and more than slightly unsettled by (What, me worry? You betcha!) the thought of the Earth being "eaten" by a man-made black hole. My favorite NY Times columnist, Gail Collins, also read the article by her colleague, Dennis Overbye, and then wrote a column about it, which appeared on Thursday.

As I already have enough to worry about, and am quick to worry (though strangely the thought of being sucked down a black hole, along with everyone I love, doesn't worry me as much as the thought of terrorists blowing up my flight to London next week or the possibility that the 757 we are scheduled to take is one of the ones American decided not to perform a necessary safety inspection of), I wasn't going to read Ms. Collins's column. But I happened to have "Morning Joe" on as I was getting ready Thursday and who should Mr. (Joe) Scarborough have on as a guest but -- you guessed it, Gail Collins. I reached for the remote to change the channel, but it was too late. I was sucked in.

I really do hope that the folks at CERN know what they are doing and that the safety inspectors aren't the same guys responsible for making sure airplanes are safe to fly. But I would feel a lot better if instead of trying to smash together subatomic particles those European scientists would have stuck to blowing up frogs (though I quite like frogs and do not wish them harm).

[For the record, my husband, who is reading this post while standing over my shoulder, just informed me that he did, in fact, once blow up a frog. Furthermore, he suggested I find an image of a frog with a firecracker in its mouth. I looked but could not find one. I am so ashamed... for so many reasons.]