Cool Science

It's a little old, but I've been wanting to comment on the Large Hadron Collider, which is down for repairs for a long time after a very nasty event when one of its superconducting magnets turned resistive and melted a lot of the stuff around it. This leaked a lot of helium in the process. Now helium is a *^&%$ precious resource and it's disappointing to see such a loss of it as all of us in science depend on it. I heard anecdotes that the total helium use of the LHC consumed half of the world's production capacity, which is insane. I'd be curious to get my hands on the real numbers. The LHC is an extraordinary, unprecedented use of resources on a speculative experiment - it's one of the most audacious experiments in humankind for that reason. For the vast monetary cost and vast use of helium, this experiment needs to produce incredible results.

Want to know a little more about helium and the LHC? Well if you have not already found the guilty pleasure of the youtube periodic table videos posted by a British group, then try out this one on the LHC if for nothing else than the Prof's hair. I aspire to have science hair like that.

I stumbled onto a strange thread of blogs which were fussing that scientists are hotly arguing and debating what defines a theory. No, they're not. Every scientist knows what a theory is (or should know!), how it differs from fact even when it gives exact results, etc. Not sure where that silliness came from. Evolution is a theory and a *&^# good one at that. Quantum mechanics is a theory and is also *&^# good. So is thermodynamics. Bad theories die and good theories live. It's not really a big deal, so here's MY theory: the economy is down, bloggers need to sell ads, and so they need to find something 'controversial' to argue about to try to attract internet gawkers, so it might as well be that.