Sunday, November 22, 2009

whatcha mcchicken go boom

there was a collective, slightly french, nerdy sigh of relief last week when the Large Hadron Collider when back online after 14 months of repairs. the LHC is the largest and most expensive machine ever built, 27 km around, and is poised to make some of the greatest discoveries of our time. if it works. it will shoot packets of atoms at each other at (close to) the speed of light and then watch the atoms go boom. measuring and analyzing this boom millions of times may reveal the Higgs boson particle, which is believed to (yawn) explain the presence of mass in atoms. i get that most people probably don't wonder about the fact that scientists don't understand why some particles have mass (like your ass) and some don't (like a photon of light), but i do.
in some far more real news, my routine of sunday laundry was lightened by the fact that i was doing laundry for my trip to california! going to sandy eggo to share thanksgiving with my sweeties.

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