From the monthly archives:

July 2008

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

by alex on July 23, 2008

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

Based underneath the line that separates France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider has become the center of scientific endeavor for the general public to focus on. First prophesied to bring ruin to the whole universe (or at least that little bit that surrounds us), the LHC has now been deemed safe. Subsequently, knowing that it won’t blast us all (or suck us all) into a black hole, the LHC has begun commissioning.

Set to have its first particle beams injected in August of this year, the LHC must first bring its temperature down, so as to obtain the highest possible magnetic fields while consuming the least amount of power.

In other words, the over 1600 magnets that make up the 27 kilometer long tunnel must be brought to low temperatures so that the electrical current being channeled along its length experience zero resistance and very little power loss.

Currently, six out of the eight sectors making up the LHC have been brought down to between 4.5 and 1.9 Kelvin, which equals out to be around -270C and -454F. The commissioning cooling will be complete when all eight sectors reach 1.9 Kelvin. For comparison, the temperature in deep space measures in at about 2.7 Kelvin.

Needless to say, given the time that it takes to cool these objects down, and the delays that could occur if a mistake is made, the LHC teams are meticulous. “We have a very systematic process for the commissioning of this machine, based on very carefully designed procedures prepared with experience we have gathered on prototypes,” said Roberto Saban, the LHC’s head of hardware commissioning.

“Our motto is: no short cuts… exchanging a single component which today is cold, is like bringing it back from the Moon. It takes about three to four weeks to warm it up. Then it takes one or two weeks to exchange. Then it needs three to six weeks to cool down again. So, you see, it is three months if we make a mistake.”

Obviously one of the most high profile searches that the LHC will be conducting is for the fabled god-particle, the Higgs Boson. The discovery of this particle would go a long way towards the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity.

But there are other discoveries hoping to be made through the whizzing and crashing particles bouncing around inside the LHC; questions such as “are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons?” and “what is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?”

Posted by Josh Hill.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7512586.stm

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

Note:

Collider’s launch was postponed for a whole month and now it’s to be launched on 08.08.08.

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Social activities. What Web2.0 provided us with.

by alex on July 21, 2008

By meaning 2.0 I am not talking about long-lasting review of all the web 2.0 features as Wikipedia, Digg and other boring well-known stuff. Some people are smart and every day they come up with a new idea how to fill their pocket with coins or how to make fun out of the internet community.

Number one: Trading. Kyle MacDonald had one red paperclip on July 12th year 2005 - he came out with the idea to trade this red paperclip for other stuff. By July of 2006 he had a huge bad-ass house! Sounds insane - but it is true (no one would trade a house for a red paperclip of course, there were lots of different trading things before the house). If you are interested in reading about each trade and the whole story - follow here.

Number two: Onemilliondollar idea. One smart-ass student decided to create an ‘internet history’ by selling each pixel on his homepage for $1. As you could have already guessed, he created 1,000,000 pixels. If you had came with the idea, I would have never made a thing out of it - who would by a damn pixel for $1? Not me, definitely. But thousands of others thought differently - the student is a millionaire. The main motivation of his is paying his studying expenses. By now there are dozens websites with exactly the same idea - clones. Not as popular - but still making huge amount of money out of this.

According to Warren Buffet’s theory there are three types of enterpreneurship steams:

  1. Idea creators
  2. Imitators
  3. Idiots

First ones make something up, advertise it and sell it. Imitators see the idea, create a clone, advertise it, sell it and still making money out of it. Idiots see the idea, invest into it, advertise it and can’t sell it, so they are only ones who lose money.

Propositions is to be the first ones and not the last from the list :)

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How do I get into `green` trend?

by alex on July 7, 2008

There is an interesting article about Mercedes-Benz to deprecate all fuel-powered motors by 2015, General Motors is selling their most famous Hummer brand and Mozilla declares their browser (Firefox) as 100% Organic Software (their understating of organic sofware is very perculiar, though).

So, what’s the all ‘green’ stuff about?

Many people become really annoyed with this trend, some say unless it makes money for businesses it fades away. Well, they are right, but they are not!

‘Greeing’ everything around IS a trend, no one can argue that, but we cannot say it doesn’t affect society. People start thinking in more green way than years before. I’ve talked to one pessimist who says ‘green’ is all about money, but he himself has ordered a basket full of vegetables from an online shop without any piece of meat in it! Answering my question “Why, if you think it’s all about sucking money from people” he said it’s about being too lazy to buy everything separately.

So if it’s really only about getting money - in passive way it does help to improve our environment state.

There is a huge number of different `green` trends around you.

First of all - gas consumption. As already has been mentioned huge motor companies do everything to decrease gas consumption. Different types of hybrid engines being promoted, neat numbers showing that their vehicles use less, more powerfull and much more `green` than any other.

The second is buying stuff that is said to be prepared from potatoes peelings, even if it’s made from 100% pure plastic.

And the last one, most ridiculous in my opinion - telling that your software is 100% organic - whatever it may mean! Although, the idea itself is very interesting. First of all, you have to declare what software is organic.

Let’s use the definition from Mozilla’s team:

Our most well-known product, Firefox, is created by an international movement of thousands, only a small percentage of whom are actual employees. We’re motivated by our mission of promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the web rather than business concerns like profits or the price of our stock (guess what: we don’t even have stock).

And that’s it. There is nothing really special about Mozilla’s open-source software, it’s just they are really first to declare it they way they did. Maybe it’s a new approach for software development and even overall - people driven by idea, not by money ? Uthopic!

Greets Mozilla team for being unique not by the software they release, but the way they present it.

Interesting fact is that you can create a new `green` trend yourself. It’s everywhere, it really is! Looka at Mozilla, look at Mercedes-Benz! One they their creative team was sitting, just as you and thinking how to motivate society to use your production? Well, saying that you’re 100% organic and environment friendly is not enough, it’s that you have to create a strategy and the most important thing is that you have to believe in it yourself.

Don’t forget - don’t just create a trend, follow it.

Interesting resources about greeing the way you live:

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