Jed Stoneham of Urlesque.com has created an awesome social media-themed remix of Daft Punk’s Technologic. Check it out, it’s quite catchy!
Ok, now everone repeat after me: Tweet it, rate it, like it, star it, digg it, tag it, zip – email it
Up it, down, it, vote it, link it, reddit, share it, quik – retweet it
Face it, book it, friend it, fav it, fan it, chat it, start – reblog it
Type it, search it, ask it, blog it, buzz it, stream it, paste – upload it
Add it, buy it, win it, tip it, bump it, flag it, App – download it
Pinch it, zoom it, swipe it, tap it, text it, post it, switch – delete it
Mix it, trend it, meme it, fail it, rage it, troll it, old – repost it
Join it, launch it, check it, badge it, herp it, derp it, no- submit it
Can you name them all? If you can, John Martz, the creator of this illustration, is giving away two free prints of this illustration! Be sure to check out his website for all the details.
Physicists in Illinois have found something that is at least a little unusual and at most a new force of nature.
Or to put that another way, the blue bump on the right-hand graph above could mean the entire rulebook of physics needs to be rewritten.
The findings came at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (also known as Fermilab), which specializes in high energy physics. It is home to the Tevatron, a particle accelerator second only to the Large Hadron Collider. As with the LHC, staff use it to carry out highly complex and sophisticated experiments that largely boil down to “smashing very small stuff together at high speed to see what happens.”
What’s raising eyebrows now is the results of a set of 10,000 such collisions between beams of protons and antiprotons. At the risk over simplification, in some cases, the results were two jets of light particles clustered around a heavy particle, with the heavy particle being around 144 times heavier than a proton.
While it’s not inconceivable such a result could happen, the physicists say such an outcome occurred around 250 times more than expected. They believe there’s around a 0.25% chance of that number of occurrences being a statistical quirk, which puts the results into the category of significantly interesting rather than a conclusive discovery.
So what’s causing the odd results, if it’s not simply chance? One possible explanation is that the experiment has uncovered a new form of boson. That’s a type of subatomic particle that, to again put things simply, plays a key role in theories about how, well, everything works — theories currently tied together in the “standard model” of physics.
Current theories have it that there are six types of boson, of which four have been observed and two (Higgs boson and Graviton) are still hypothetical. While the nature of the Graviton means it’s effectively impossible to observe, one of the main aims of the Large Hadron Collider work is to observe the Higgs boson.
In the case of the Fermilab discovery, what’s been found doesn’t appear to be the Higgs boson as the heavy particle that’s produced isn’t heavy enough.
Another explanation is that the cause isn’t a new form of particle, but rather a previously unknown force of nature, in the same sense as gravity or electromagnetism.
In the words of astrophysics professor and TV presenter Brian Cox, “And yes, if this stands up to scrutiny and more data (there is not yet enough data for a “discovery”), then it is RIP Standard Model :-)”
Whatever it is, the new discovery is certainly dramatically timed: under current plans the Tevatron is scheduled for decommissioning in September.
Unfortunately, back in the days when I was in this situation, laptops didn’t exist, and bringing a 75-pound TV outside along with my NES or VIC-20 was just not an option.
Big news for mineral scientists or collectors — a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1969 contains a mineral previously unknown on Earth. Dubbed Wassonite after John T. Wasson, a UCLA professor known for his achievements in meteorite and impact research, the tiny crystal comprises sulfur and titanium in an interesting new structure.
From the Live Science article:
Grains of Wassonite were analyzed from the meteorite that has been officially designated Yamato 691 enstatite chondrite. Chondrites are primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets. Most meteorites found on Earth fit into this group.
amato 691 likely originated from an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. It was discovered along with eight other meteorites by members of the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition on the blue ice field of the Yamato Mountains. They constituted the first significant recovery of Antarctic meteorites. Follow-up searches by scientists from Japan and the United States have recovered more than 40,000 specimens, including rare Martian and lunar meteorites.
All I have to say is: Wow. This brilliant commercial was filmed to promote NTT Docomo’s Touchwood SH-08C cell phone. I don’t know how long it took to set the whole thing up, but it must have taken a very, very long time. Enjoy!
