IRC-Galleria

"If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell "friend," I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend."

http://arbesman.net/milkyway/

Computational sociology student Samuel Arbesman from Harvard University has created a "route map" of the Milky Way based on the London Underground subway map. By simplifying the "vast and complex interconnections" of the Milky Way, the map is "an attempt to approach our galaxy with a bit more familiarity than usual".

On his schematic representation, each line corresponds to an arm of the galaxy, and the "stations", which are thousands of light years apart, show important "destinations" such as stars, nebulae and other astronomical objects. Samuel has purposely omitted the Earth to show that we "aren't the centre of the universe".

The map is not intended to be accurate: Arbesman sees it as a "useful shorthand for our place in the Milky Way, [making] the important sights and inconceivable distances a bit less daunting".

(Image: NTI Media/TRex Features)

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrows
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very very,
Mad world, Mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
May they feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very very
Mad world, Mad world
Mad world, Mad world

Thirty-one years ago [1949], Richard Feynman told me about his "sum
over histories" version of quantum mechanics. "The electron does
anything it likes," he said. "It just goes in any direction at any
speed, forward or backward in time, however it likes, and then you add
up the amplitudes and it gives you the wave-function." I said to him,
"You're crazy." But he wasn't.

* Freeman J. Dyson, 1983

http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2009/091106b.html

"On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a short circuit in an electrical outdoor installation that serves sectors 7-8 and 8-1 of the LHC. The knock-on effects included an interruption to the operation of the LHC cryogenics system. The bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread."

http://www.digitoday.fi/tiede-ja-teknologia/2009/11/06/linnun-pudottama-leivanpala-pysaytti-hadronitormayttimen/200923334/66

"Aiemmin tällä viikolla CERN:n Suuri Hadronitörmäytin eli Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ylikuumeni osittain. Syyksi on epäilty leipäpalaa, jonka luultavasti pikkulintu on pudottanut laitteen hiukkaskiihdyttimen ulko-oven koneiston väliin."

Experiment to simulate conditions in an exploding star slowed down millions of times.

The world's most powerful laser (covering the area of an American football field) is focused onto a sample of calcium, sulfur, carbon and iron the size of a pinhead. These materials are thought to be the same as a star's nucleus. At the instant of ignition the laser runs at a power output (wattage) twenty times larger than the electrical consumption of the USA.

Shock wave tears the atoms apart, and the superheated gas plasma explodes outwards coalescing into fractal tendrils reminiscent of an astronomical photo of a nebula.

Music is Portishead - Wandering Star (1994)



More about the Super Laser at the National Ignition Facility
http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/super-laser-at-the-national-ignition-facility