Topic: SCIENCE - on September 29, 2008 at 3:57:00 PM CEST
Einstein's green refrigerator making a comeback
While almost everybody knows how Einstein revolutionized physics with his theories of relativity, many people may not know that the great scientist had a domestic side, too. Well, sort of - in 1930, Einstein and his former student Leo Szilard designed a refrigerator that required no electricity and had no moving parts. However, as refrigerator technology became more efficient, Einstein's design was nearly forgotten.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 23, 2008 at 12:25:00 PM CEST
NASA Uses 90 Rubber Ducks to Study Global Warming
NASA scientists have dropped 90 yellow rubber ducks into holes in Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier in an attempt to understand why glaciers speed up during summer months as they slip into the sea. The ducks, attached to a football-sized probe, have an email address and message prompting anyone who discovers the ducks to contact NASA to reveal where and when the duck was found. There is an undisclosed award for anyone who finds one of these rubber global warming crusaders. The NASA scientists, based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, hope this campaign will shed new light on the melting mechanisms behind Greenland's fastest moving glacier…
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 22, 2008 at 5:00:00 PM CEST
Masturbating elephants for science
MASTURBATING an elephant in the cause of science isn’t an easy job ? just ask wildlife expert Dr Thomas Hildebrandt.
Just touching a jumbo penis ? they measure more than 1.5metres when aroused ? can have painful consequences as German scientist Dr Hildebrandt reveals.
He said: “One guy I know got a black eye from being hit by an elephant’s penis.
“When you touch an elephant there it starts to flick backwards and forwards and it’s so strong it can knock you off your feet. It’s such a strong movement.”
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 22, 2008 at 11:27:00 AM CEST
Top 8 Large Hadron Collider Videos
The Large Hadron Collider has become fodder for tons of viral videos. Some are hilarious, others are informative, and the best are somewhere in between.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 22, 2008 at 11:22:00 AM CEST
Hadron Collider halted for months
On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.
The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 22, 2008 at 11:20:00 AM CEST
Large Hadron Collider: Public chooses 'Halo' as its new name
The name "Halo" sounds much catchier and should adorn the £4.4 billion experiment, according to a poll organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London
The Large Hadron Collider does what it says on the tin, since hadron refers to the subatomic particles that the giant machine smashes together at a shade below the speed of light.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 18, 2008 at 10:54:00 AM CEST
LHC Fails Thunderstorm Test
Nature had her own ideas about testing LHC safety. A thunderstorm last Friday knocked out some transformers at the LHC near Geneva that are part of the helium cooling system, that cools the magnets that keep the proton beams travelling (near light speed) on a circular path through the collider. Technicians have been scrambling to fix the problems, but not before some magnets warmed well above standard operating temperatures, some reaching almost 7K from the usual ultra cold 1.9K .
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 18, 2008 at 10:50:00 AM CEST
Large Hadron Collider Renaming Contest
After a full week of operation, the Large Hadron Collider has yet to swallow the world, leaving humanity free to concentrate on its rather geeky name.
Unimportant, you say? Well, people who were excited when physicists flipped the LHC's switch might be less enthusiastic if, a year or two down the line, nobody's actually found Higgs bosons or sparticles or gluinos or other assorted dawn-of-the-universe dust bunnies.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 15, 2008 at 10:28:00 AM CEST
Large Hadron Collider's Hacker Infiltration Highlights Vulnerabilities
Though the Large Hadron Collider's infiltration by hackers did not disrupt the $6 billion project, experts warn that its computer systems are vulnerable -- though at least their exploitation won't destroy Earth.
Shortly after physicists activated the Collider on Wednesday, hackers identifying themselves as Group 2600 of the Greek Security Team accessed computers connected to the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of four key subsystems responsible for monitoring the collisions of protons speeding around the 18-mile track near Geneva, Switzerland.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 15, 2008 at 10:25:00 AM CEST
Urknall-Experiment nach Hackerangriff nicht gefährdet
Entwarnung nach dem Hackerangriff auf den Teilchenbeschleunigers LHC: Ein Cern-Sprecher in Genf sagte, es sei "nichts Schlimmes" passiert. Die Angreifer wollten offenbar nur auf Sicherheitslücken hinweisen.
Es war ein Schuss vor den Bug: Am Mittwoch hatte ein Hackerangriff gezeigt, dass die europäische Organisation für Kernforschung Cern bei Genf Sicherheitslücken aufweist, die den weltgrößten Teilchenbeschleuniger LHC und die zugehörigen Detektoren betreffen. Doch der Zugriff blieb offenbar ohne schwerwiegende Folgen: "Es sieht so aus, als sei nichts Schlimmes passiert", zitierte die britische Zeitung "The Times" am Samstag Cern-Sprecher James Gillies. "Scheinbar wollten die Leute beweisen, dass man sich ins Cern einhacken kann."
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 11, 2008 at 12:33:00 PM CEST
I Survived the Large Hadron Collider T-Shirt
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 11, 2008 at 12:25:00 PM CEST
The Large Hadron Collider - First Beam ( EXCLUSIVE VIDEO )
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