Rubberduck Tuesdays: Winter, CERN (again), Being Yourself, and a Bit of Romance...

In honour of the cold outside my window, the first link I shall present you with is a beautiful selection of comics from a duo you probably know and love. Yes, my pretties, Calvin and Hobbes, all of the best winter comics, in one spot! I know, it`s beautiful. What would you do without me, I wander...

In keeping with my rather physics-y theme, I wish to present something rather funny I discovered on the CERN website. It`s a description of a theoretical physicist, by a theoretical physicist. It made me giggle at the over-all silliness of it all, and I think it proves rather well that you don`t every have to grow up if you don`t want to. :) Take this to heart, Ladies and Gents! Growing old is mandatory, but growing up has always been optional.

Another theme which seems to be returning on this blog is human rights. More specifically, the right to be who you are without discrimination (except if you`re a psychopath. In that case, please keep it way down deep inside of you). About a week and a half ago, I read a newspaper article on a pair of biologically male twins. One, Jonas, loved spiderman and pirates, the other, Wyatt, loved tutus and beads. It became obvious to Wyatt`s parents over time that Wyatt was not their son. She was their daughter. Wyatt now goes by the name Nicole, and she says that she`s happy who she is. Nicole just knew who she was, and when her parents realized that, they made certain to support her and help her out. It was at that point in the article that I broke down. I see too many articles about cases where people hurt or kill other people who can be perceived as different. It`s nice to see a bit of humanity in the world, for a change. For those interested, the article is here. It`s a brilliant read, I recommend it for pretty much anyone with a heart.

And finally (my my, this was a very short blog...) a bit of sappyness, courtesy of China. A young man fell in love with a widow who was 10 years older than him. knowing that society would have trouble accept them, they eloped to the mountains where they lived together for the rest of their lives. To help his wife get down the mountain, he carved out over 6000 steps into the side of the mountain where they lived so that she could get to the town below.

can I hear an awwwwww?

Until next time, Rubberduck out!

Rubberduck Tuesdays: My Physics Craziness

So, today I was going to do the same thing as I did last time and post some neat little links, some of them nerdy, some of them quirky, and then something happened. Then I went on a minor physics binge.

It all started yesterday, when two things happened.

1) I read this article, which, for those of you who don't want to click out of sheer laziness, states that we might not need dark matter for the universe to work the way it does. WHOA! For those of you uncertain about what dark matter is, I suggest reading the article - it explains it heaps better than I can. The gist of it, though, is that we may have to redesign our current theory of the universe.

2) My physics professor told our class that he wouldn't be here come December 13th because he'd be in Europe.

At CERN.

For an event that he wouldn't tell us about (this story just keeps getting more intriguing, no?).

He then urged us to read up on the CERN blogs that are kept. Being the person that I am, I did just that.

I currently attend a university which is very involved in the ATLAS experiment. for those curious, the ATLAS experiment is a part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which, apart from also looking for the Higgs boson, also looks at antimatter, extra dimensions, and examines the origins of the universe by simulating the big bang in the LHC. A quick note here: this is from what I understand from reading about ATLAS and, once again, I am open to being corrected.

Here is a picture I found of the machinery behind ATLAS. Yes, that is a model made entirely out of lego. Isn't it awesome?

Another definition which you may or may not need is the Higgs boson particle - it is the particle which gives us mass. If my explanation isn't satisfactory (and I know that it isn't) I'd recommend that you go here, which is a very neat description of what our dear Higgs boson is. My writing here is the summary of their summary, so naturally, there is a fair amount missing.

So, while reading up on the blogs, I found this entry very interesting. According to this blog, we still haven't found the Higgs boson, even though we've done quite a fair amount of searching for it. However, there is only a small area left for it to hide in, which makes me excited. You see, one of two amazing things will happen.:

       One: we find the particle, and we start experimenting and re-writing physics as we go along.

       Two: we fail to find it, at which point we have to re-write a huge chunk of modern theories
            regarding physics and the way the universe works.

So, no matter which way you put it, physics is going to be re-written and science history will be made!

It was at this point in my search that I realized that I could type 'December 13 CERN' into Google and find out what my professor was talking about.

So I did exactly that.

And that's when I found this awesome article and several others like it. Yes, apparently there might be news regarding the Higgs boson soon!

My reaction:

Oh. My. God.

Side note: I love this picture of Bush. He looks more like an overgrown monkey than he usually does.

Anyway!

Think of the things that have been happening in physics lately!

Neutrinos might be faster than light (I covered the reason this might be big news in my last Tuesday entry)!

There might not be such thing as dark matter (though this one is new, so I'm not sure how much I should freak out about it)!

And soon there could be big news about the Higgs boson!

If things continue as they are, physics could be in for a bit of an information revolution soon. Our entire understanding of how the universe works might have to be rewritten!

Take a moment to consider the implications of this.

Several theories with which we've built our knowledge of the universe might have to be scrapped. we'll have to rebuild several models from scratch. Wow, right?

And now, for a note that is only vaguely linked to physics: a theory regarding the Lascaux Caves in France. The Lascaux Caves are a series of caves which have some of the oldest artwork in the world painted on to them. You'll probably recognize the art, it's referenced in pop culture quite a fair amount.

Someone noticed recently that some of the mysterious dots on the walls align with constellations that we know today.
The full article is here, if you're interested. It's fascinating! It gave me shivers. Can you imagine?
Before cities! Before the roman's built roads! Before empires, and astronomy and calculus, and even before agriculture, 17000 years ago, our ancestors stared at the stars.

Rubberduck Tuesdays: Some internet nonsense

*Epic theme music*

So! For my incredible, amazing, daring, sexy and, not least of all, riveting blog today, I figured I should share some interesting bits that I've picked up on the intertubes through the last week.

First off: the invention that you never knew you needed: sleep headphones. That's right! I'll let you take a moment to absorb how utterly awesome that is.

The second thing is something that I only found this morning: How statistics-based translators (like google translate) helped to break a code from the 18th century. This, folks, is the power of applied math. Looking at a language statistically helps you work out what words might be used for what, depending on how commonly they occur throughout the manuscript, what words they might be placed with, the context of the surrounding sentences, and tonnes of other mathematical cues.

I'd very much like to point out that this is proof of the universal application of math. Roomie says it's useless, simply because (I am quoting her here) she's probably never going to have to go much father than addition in her lifetime, but maths runs through everywhere. Even if you never do the math yourself, everything you do has a mathematical current running through it. You buy a rubber duck: that goes into statistics for the demographic that buys rubber ducks, how many rubber ducks were sold, whether placement affected product sales, and a heap of other stats like that. using those, they calculate the size of the market, what price they can get away with selling them for, what placement would maximize profits, whether they should carry them at this store at all, and other decisions are made based on these stats.

You see what happened? You made a decision which influenced the statistics, which were then turned into maths (sweet, sweet math) and finally came right back around to impact the supermarket you shop at. You influenced math which influenced you.

My third piece of internet nonsense is a physics-y bit. OH MY DEAR GOSH, THEY RAN THE NEUTRINO EXPERIMENT AGAIN AND THE RESULTS WERE THE SAME. My physics class had decided that it was probably an error in calculations or an undiscovered experimental error that no one had made allowances for in the math, but the likelihood of that seems to be shrinking. Can you imagine what would happen if this is true? For neutrinos to be going faster than light, they would have to have a smaller mass than light. This would mean that light would have to have mass!   
(for any physics students reading this now: I realize that light having mass is a little more complicated than that, but I have tried explaining this to non-physics/maths students and got met with empty stares, so for now, the short answer is 'no'. Also, I am only a first year, so what I know I know from interpreting books, not actually having done the math myself. On top of this, I sometimes interpret wrong)

To explain my excitement behind light having mass, I need to very quickly explain something about the universe. If something has mass, it has it's own gravitational pull. If we envision space like a big rubber sheet (thank you, Stephen Hawking) then placing an object on the sheet warps it, creating a big dip. This dip in space is basically gravity. If light has mass, that means it has gravity, which in turn means that it is warping the fabric of the universe. When I worked this out, my initial reaction was "holy shit!"

The results are probably the result of an error, but if it isn't then this could be huge in physics! can you imagine the books that would have to be re-written, the equations they would have to change? The mind boggles!

And my fourth and final  piece of internet nonsense is yet another proof of the power of maths: the lottery. Or rather, the lottery being won 4 times by a woman with a PhD in maths because she worked out the algorithm.

Right? Who ever said maths was boring? Not me.


On that note, I finish with a quote by Richard P. Feynman, which I found on the back of our physics society shirts (I really, really want one of those shirts):
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.”

Before I leave, I want to quickly note the reason why I'm not tagging this post: Heather told me that if I didn't tag this, then she would, and that apparently that would be a problem. So I challenge Heather, with you all as my witness: Do your worst!

Rubberduck Out!

Edit by the Heather: So, I totally came here with the intention of tagging this thing with a lot of stuff and awesomeness. But blogger has a character limit for tags. Who knew? But I wrote them down, and here they are: math, sleep headphones, rubberduck, tuesday, language, statistics, Roomie, physics, neutrinos, complicated things that are crazy, lottery, badass science people who are badass, sex, Tanya I'd just like to say that I really enjoyed this post, I want sleep headphones, I would also like some chocolate cake, would anyone else like some chocolate cake?, there was a spelling mistake here that I noticed but I can't find it, I have a rainbow flag, that is awesome, I like it, well I shall leave you here, have a nice day

Rubberduck Tuesdays: Crocheting

So, it was decided that Tuesday would be the day when I could post whatever I wanted and no one could say "no! that's too nerdy!" or "I don't know, that's a little weird to me..." and I decided to celebrate with a badly drawn comic!
Over the weekend, I taught Roomie to crochet. Hilarity ensued. Thankfully, since this comic was drawn, she has gotten better, though by "better" I mean that I'm only called over to untangle her from the yarn every 15 minutes. This is (surprisingly) much better than the weekend, where I couldn't let her out of my site for fear that she would crochet herself into the hat.