LHC
science
Particle Accelerators 101: If Only Every School Lesson Was Animated

Are you still scratching your head over what a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider actually does? Don't feel bad, the LHC is the most complicated piece of scientific equipment mankind has ever built. And unless you're a physicist, you'll probably never understand its intricacies. But if you're curious, take a few minutes to watch this animated Particle Accelerator 101 by Don Lincoln. You won't be applying for a job at CERN afterwards, but you should at least get the gist of what's going on at the LHC. [YouTube via Geekosystem] Read More >>

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gadgets
The Large Hadron Collider Just Started Its Two-Year Holiday

The Large Hadron Collider has been pretty busy lately, probably discovering the Higgs Boson, and definitely not destroying the world and whatnot. It's probably earned a little time off, right? You bet it has, which is why it's going down for a two-year nap. Read More >>

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science
Large Hadron Collider Does the Job — Higgs Boson Particle Discovered

The Large Hadron Collider has been busily zapping very small things into other things for quite some time, in the hope of finding the prophesied Higgs boson particle. And now it looks like it actually has, with CERN announcing the discovery of the "heaviest boson ever found." Read More >>

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storage
The Large Hadron Collider Throws Away More Data Than It Stores

You'd think that with a price tag of billions of pounds the LHC would have more storage capacity than it could ever use. But with the machine producing a petabyte of data every second, the researchers simply can't store it all. Read More >>

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image cache
A Large Hadron Collider Would Be Easy to Build If Ikea Made It

So why exactly did CERN spend billions and billions of pounds building the Large Hadron Collider when Ikea sells a perfectly good alternative, the Hädrönn Cjölidder, for considerably less cash? Sure, its Compact Muon Solenoid is made from ugly particle board, but think of the money you'll save by building it yourself. Read More >>

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physics
Why God Particle Is a Perfect Name For the Higgs Boson

I prefer to call it The Force — a particle that "surrounds us and penetrates us" binding the galaxy together — but Czech physicist Luboš Motl makes a good case as to why the Higgs boson should be called the God Particle. Read More >>

186 Gbps
internet
Researchers Shatter Internet Speed Record: 186 Gbps

As if I couldn't hate my ISP any more, boffins at the SuperComputing 2011 conference set a new internet speed record transferring data with a combined rate of 186 Gbps, 67 Gbps faster than the previous record set in 2009. Read More >>

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science
Scientists Still Chasing The Force, Getting Closer

After much excitement, the Force has not been found. But don't be sad, my fellow nerds. Scientists may not have found evidence of the Higgs boson yet, but they have discovered "tantalising hints" that may indicate its presence. Read More >>

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science
Scientists About to Find The Force

If confirmed next week, this will be the biggest news in the history of physics since the birth of the Theory of Relativity: CERN scientists may have already found evidence of the existence of the elusive Higgs boson. THE FORCE, dudes: Read More >>

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android apps
LHSee for Android: Find Out What’s Going On Inside the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider scares me. It's the baddest monster machine on the planet and it's capable of creating material that's denser than anything but black holes, it possibly found the Higgs Boson and probably can destroy humanity. It's an unknown beast. How do you make it less scary? Get to know it. LHSee (heh) for Android shows you what's happening inside the LHC. Read More >>

tevatrontop
science
How Do You Shut Down the Second Most Powerful Particle Accelerator?

The Tevatron shut down yesterday. Before its duties were taken up by the the Large Hadron Collider, it accelerated highly charged particles through 4 miles of electromagnetic coil and vacuum tubes to discover the secrets of the universe. How do you turn a beast like that off? Read More >>