The Reference FrameThe most important events in our and your superstringy Universe as seen from a conservative physicist's viewpointWhy the LHC will see the Higgs: Peter Higgs vs Stephen Hawking- September 11, 2008 Today, dozens of mostly British media including Nature, The Telegraph, The (London) Times, Register, First Post, and many others have exaggerated a story about a "battle of titans": Prof Peter Higgs "attacked" Prof Stephen Hawking, they argue. ;-)What actually happened was that Stephen Hawking wanted to be interesting, so he "conjectured" that the LHC won't find the Higgs boson. Instead, it could find SUSY or something completely different (or unfamiliar), Hawking claimed. The money he bet, USD.http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-lhc-will-see-higgs-peter-higgs-vs.html Ecovandalism becomes legal in the U.K.- September 10, 2008 Greenpeace celebrates that six ecovandals who have made about GBP 30,000 criminal damage to the Kingsnorth coal power plant (as counted by the costs of removal) were declared not guilty! The jury decided that they were saving the world, so it was fine to damage the smokestack by painting ("Gordon bin it", but they failed to write "bin it" in time). See Google News.Wow. James Hansen played an important role of an "expert" witness in this story. He has participated at many fringe left-wing events.http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/ecoterrorism-becomes-legal-in-uk.html Smartkit: Alien police of the chronic fellow game- September 10, 2008 Full screen...Click any square and the square plus four adjacent squares - in a plus-shaped cross - will change their state. Limited number of moves per level; 35 levels.http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/smartkit-alien-police-of-chronic-fellow.html Why supersymmetry should be seen at the Large Hadron Collider- September 10, 2008 The observation of superpartners at the LHC would become the most spectacular discovery in experimental fundamental physics in the last 35 years, to say the least. Expected breaking news: the LHC first beam day is celebrated by the world, including the Google main page.Embedded Sky News Live TV was here and removed when the main events ended.The "First LHC beam" webcast began at 9:00 am, Prague=CERN Summer Time (midnight Californian daylight saving time). At webcast.cern.ch, there were only...http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-supersymmetry-should-be-seen-at-lhc.html Brent crude oil price back below USD 100- September 9, 2008 Brent at USD 99.56The U.S. benchmark is currently above USD 102. The previous article about a similar topic - and peak oil - was written when the Brent price was near the record USD 147.25 per barrel, almost 50% above the current price. Is it fair to call it a bursting bubblehttp://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/brent-crude-oil-price-back-below-usd.html Kasatochi eruption makes sunsets nice- September 9, 2008 Kasatochi Island is one of the Aleutian islands arranged in a strip located Southwest of Alaska.Just when the Olympic games were getting started and Georgia attacked South Ossetia - between August 7th and 8th - Kasatochi volcano erupted. The picture above is from Kansas and was taken from a FoxNews story.Recall that these nice colors have the same reason as the fact that the sky is blue, namely Rayleigh scattering.This eruption is also likely to cool the climate just a little bit. A much bigger.http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/kasatochi-eruption-makes-sunsets-nice.html RSS MSU: 0.001 deg C cooling last month- September 9, 2008 UpdateUAH MSU reported a 0.07 C cooling between July and August 2008. The August anomaly was negative: -0.01 C. It means that the last month was cooler than the average August since 1979. Also, GISS & sea surface data imply a 0.11 C cooling between July and August. In August 2008, their anomaly was 0.39 C, coolest August in this century so far. According to HadCRUT3, the month-on-month cooling was 0.025 C.Originally posted on September 4thRSS MSU shows that the temperature anomaly in August...http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/rss-msu-0001-deg-c-cooling-last-month.html Three years of prison for a few longhorn beetles- September 8, 2008 Update, September 10th: vcha, the more famous scientist, was released while Kuera, his assistant, was given 3 years of prison. The asymmetry wasn't quite explained.Today, a court in Delhi, India decided that a Czech entomologist, Mr Petr vcha, and his assistant, Mr Emil Kuera, will be imprisoned for at least 3 years (at most 7 years: to be decided on Wednesday; plus, much less importantly, a USD 200 fine) for collecting about 200 beetles and their larvae in India, despite calls from 800...http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/seven-years-of-prison-for-few-longhorn.html David Shukman & BBC on the LHC- September 8, 2008 The BBC has created a pretty nice introduction to the Large Hadron Collider, the marvelous experiment where the protons should begin their revolutions (but not yet collisions) on Wednesday.I chose these comments about the Grid (computing). But he also talks about CMS, Atlas, Alice, LHCb, Tunnel, Grid, and others. Videos, pictures, and words are included.On Wednesday, at 9:00 a.m. Prague Summer Time, you should watch CERN Webcast with the first beam. The TV program (that you know from Strings...http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/david-shukman-bbc-on-lhc.html Obama: my Muslim faith- September 8, 2008 Around 1:20, Obama says that "McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith". Now, because this is not a cheap blog abusing three words for political reasons, let us analyze the slip a bit more closely.At the very beginning of the video, the host (George Stephanopoulos) talks about Obama's Christian faith. The discussion becomes a bit contrived and Obama suddenly mentions "my Muslim faith".So what did he mean in that sentence I see three basic answers:he meant "my Christian faith", as the host...http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/09/obama-my-muslim-faith.html |