BOOM: Anti-matter trapped for 17 minutes

We need to get some of this shit.

Talk of "annihilation events" in this article. It sounds dangerous:

"In our universe, for example, positive charges favor heavy particles, matter is favored over antimatter, and forward time is favored over reverse."

I'm assuming a Large Hadron Collider was used, and the AP dateline was from Geneva, near the collider. But articles I've seen don't say.

Marilyn: I don't get it.

Me: Exactly.

Navy laser to set pirate engines on fire

From The Associated Press:

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, said the test was "remarkable" for how the Navy was able to concentrate the beam over such a long distance at sea, and given how the boat was being tossed about in rough water.

"Hats off to the U.S. Navy because that is very, very impressive," he said. "It was pitching and rolling and yet they got this very fine beam to focus on one part of an engine casing. That they managed to keep the energy in one place is remarkable."

Joe: Sure. But can it stop Nick Saban?

Of bangs and whimpers

A couple of stories today that remind me, no matter how much we learn, we never know what we don't know, or how our actions will change things.

From The New York Times:

Growing scientific evidence suggests that felt, which helps anglers stay upright on slick rocks, is also a vehicle for noxious microorganisms that hitchhike to new places and disrupt freshwater ecosystems.

And, presumably far more disturbing, from The Raleigh News & Observer:

"We're seeing a transition from MRSA being an infection largely of chronically ill and hospitalized patients, to one of healthy children," said Dr. Mark Piehl, medical director of WakeMed Children's Hospital. "There's no question that the bacteria is more prevalent in the community now."

Given that we basically created these "super bugs" through use, and likely over-use, of antibiotics, you have to wonder whether our saviors will eventually kill us. And whether there's any way to avoid that.

Missing link found; one less thing to worry about

Have you heard about Ida? Said to be the missing link of evolution.

The New York Times says we'll see about that, as is so often true:

But despite a television teaser campaign with the slogan “This changes everything” and comparisons to the moon landing and the Kennedy assassination, the significance of this discovery may not be known for years. An article to be published on Tuesday in PLoS ONE, a scientific journal, will report more prosaically that the scientists involved said the fossil could be a “stem group” that was a precursor to higher primates, with the caveat, “but we are not advocating this.”

I tell you what, that science times is good.

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today.
- DOT Earth, The New York Times.

The Science Times comes out on Wednesdays.

Energy usage forecast 2030.

Progress on Giardia vaccine. I know, right? It's a water-born parasite.

"Cooler year on a warming planet."


Image: Nasa, via Dot Earth, The New York Times.

Football timeout: Super collider edition

Newsweek calls it "history's biggest and most expensive experiment," making the Large Hadron Collider possibly worth paying attention to during football season. After all, it's not like we play a good team this week.

To that end, you can find plenty of news coverage out there about tomorrow's switch on of the collider, it's search for the "God Particle," the secrets of the universe, an explanation of dark matter and the unlikely sequence of events that may lead to the end of the world through the creation of a black hole at roughly 3:30 p.m. eastern time Wednesday.

Wouldn't that be the way, too? A science project destroying the fabric of space time just as we're poised to make a real run at a National Title.

But I think the way to go, if you're interested in this thing, is to watch this rap video.


Hadron Collider: The perfect option.

UPDATE: Lame. The Times reports they will turn it on tomorrow, but won't be colliding stuff for a couple of weeks, and won't hit full power for a month or more.

AIDS research breakthrough

As my buddy who sent this to me said: "When the guy who discovers AIDS says this is one of the most important research projects on the virus in a decade, I consider it worthy of your review."

From the Washington Post:

A research team announced yesterday that it has identified about 270 human proteins that the AIDS virus apparently needs to infect a person, instantly providing researchers with dozens of new strategies for blocking or aborting HIV infection.

We should do that with Athens

Every now and then I read a sentence that just blows my mind. This one is from the September National Geographic, in a story about spiders that live in caves:

Evolved in isolation and unable to disperse, species often consist of just a handful of individuals in one cave, or one room of one cave.