Technophilia

[lproven]

The Large Hadron Collider is approaching completion, and these spectacular photos give a beautiful glimpse of this incredibly vast machine. Yes, beautiful. Even if you don't normally get off on machinery, have a look. You will be surprised, maybe amazed

Comments

[hobnobs]

Ah... songs from my Youth, number 42,209.

Apparently Magnus got quite annoyed with people shouting "Science!" at him in the street.[citation needed]

[lproven]

It's one of my all-time favourites, but then, Mr Dolby is one of my 2 all-time favourite recording artists.

Other top Dolby tracks include /Hyperactive/, /Flying North/, /Screen Kiss/, /New Toy/, /The Keys to her Ferrari/, /Airhead/, /I love you, goodbye/, /Close but no Cigar/, /Europa & The Pirate Twins/... Oh, lots of them.

The other of the top fave artists is so very different it might be a tough guess...?

[hotel_noir]

>And no, it's not going to make miniature black holes, new pocket universes
>or destroy the world.

This gives me a strange urge to wave my hands around and exclaim "FAITH!" :-)

More seriously, the new safety report is excellent and I think puts all the major safety issues to rest, though up until that report the massive gaps in the 2003 report mean that anyone up until a month or so ago that wasn't concerned by CERN was either entirely in the grip of faith and didn't bother to read the report or read it carefully, or perhaps was such a genius that they personally calculated the extensions of the 2008 report in their living room - most I'd hazard were the former.

[lproven]

Well, I'm no particle physicist, but I've read a number of write-ups by people who /are/. My take on it is that it's just not big enough. If the US Superconducting Supercollider had been build, it might have been, AIUI, but I don't think the LHC will create any strangelets or anything like that.

[lproven]

There was meant to be a [Grin] on the start of that... I blame sleep-dep. I'm still up & running from yesterday at the moment...

[the_magician]

Fantastic photos, but I kept expecting there to be a man in a beard stroking a white cat and saying ...

... "no Mr. Bond, I expect you to discover the Higgs Boson! Bwa-ha-ha... " etc.

:-)

[lproven]

Yes, there ought to be! Although this would be less of a laser beam creeping towards the crotch of the helpless Bond than:

"The light... is... tearing me apart..."

[tacit]

Beautiful photos. The images and potential make me sing for humanity; the comments attached to the photos make me weep for humanity. We hate and fear technology so much, and our tendency toward anti-intellectualism is so strong, it's heartbreaking.