Wednesday, October 31, 2012

CERN Project: Blowjob

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Discovery of the Maikel boson!!!

Oops, I just noticed that I never published this post, I'm very sorry!!!

There was so much excitation during these days of the Maikel boson discovery that I could not cope with that :D

I don't remember what I was meant to say but I put here some representative slides of the event. First one is one of the typical ATLAS slides, with very professional nice contrasting colors (sorry if watching them just made your eyes to bleed of pain) and their typical clear and professional Comic Sans font, that makes you feel like if you were reading a fun magazine rather than one of the most important science achievements of all time. Well, I will dedicate a main article only to comic sans so I will just comment about their nice result of 5.0 sigma significance!!

The second slide is a typical slide from the competing experiment, CMS, with nothing major to mock about and getting a similar result, taking into account that used totally different detector, software and people, so it is a good cross check. Worth to notice that the CMS result shown is a combination of all possible Higgs decay channels while the ATLAS one was just combining their best ones, so you cannot really compare both results.

 Finally I will just show a picture of how did probably Higgs feel during the presentation :) Actually, he was crying of emotion several times...

Exciting times at CERN!!! But, as CERN Director General said, we are not yet sure that this is the Higgs Boson predicted by our quantum physics theory (called Standard Model) but if it is not, it should be its twin brother, because it looks pretty much the same :)

Also, I want to make clear what does that 5.0 significance number means. I will show it with this nice picture that someone sent around :)

The way this works is: we find lots of particles decaying in different ways, and we expect a lot of noise coming from similar particles decaying in similar ways. Then we make simulation models to predict how many particles we would see in case we really had Higgs boson and in case we did not, and then we compare with what we detected. 5.0 significance just means that we found many more decay result particles than in case that Higgs boson did not existed, in the way that we are mathematically 99.999% sure that such extra particles are not just a lucky coincidence (called technically: 'statistical fluctuation').

And now many people would say "yeah, but I don't give a shit; that seems totally useless and a waste of money", similar to what many people said regarding electricity, lasers, microwaves, nuclear energy and so on (when the theories related to these were discovered). Imagine!! Scientists are just starting now to imagine new inventions that will come soon from knowing the correct equations of the quantum mechanics!!! I am not an expert on that topic but if the Higgs boson is the responsible of giving mass, will be able in the future to remove or add mass to stuff?? Space travel? Waste reduction? Loosing weight so getting slimmer and sexy in no time? Well, I guess not anytime soon, but surely we will find lots of indirect uses!! Also, when Einstein proved the photoelectric effect, he probably could not imagine that it would be used in the future for solar panels, opening the door of the elevator or flush the men's toilet in public bathrooms...

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Higgs (or similar) discovery inminent!!!


Nobody can stop the gossip. It's one of the strongest forces of the universe (even stronger than gravity, electroweak and nuclear strong forces...). By now, most people has already known by any possible non official source that CERN will make a big announcment tomorrow.

CERN created a facebook event page where they announced the special meeting they will have tomorrow morning at 9am about an "update on the search of the Higgs bosson".

Many blogs, as explained in my previous post, leaked (or invented!!) a lot of details of what CERN will show. Lots of international newspapers, including the New York Times, also spread the news, even citing these unofficial blogs as the main source of information, at the same time as CERN official word is to not to believe anything they say.

Also, Fermilab already warmed up making an emergency press conference to show their results first!!!

And the Director General of the most important R&D public agency in Spain sent this announcement claiming that CERN already found Higgs!!!

Anyway most of us know the real truth. They will just say the typical technical details of  "we have found an excess of data over noise of so many blah blah standard deviations that could be compatible with the existence of the Higgs boson with a confidence level of blah blah but could also be this or could also be that other particle and we need more data to understand exactly such excess."

In any case, as you can imagine, there are tons of people gathering at CERN already, like moths going to a lamp at night.

You can see in this post the photo of the first person already sleeping there in front of the door of the auditorium where the conference will start tomorrow at 9am :D You can even see still sunlight outside so this person started picking up a place long time ago!! Actually the CERN DG already said by email to all employees here that they will open the doors of the auditorium only at 7h30, not before, so they prevent people for starting going tonight to sleep inside :D

We expect lots and lots of people going tomorrow there. The opening of the doors of the auditorium probably will be much worst that the opening of a shopping center the first day of sales. Prepare for the worst!!!

And of course, I also expect to be there!!! But  I doubt I will get a place!!! :P

As someone said in the official CERN event... OH MY GOD PARTICLE!!!

Friday, June 22, 2012

The BIG gossip


The gossip is all around us. You can smell it in the air, feel it in your skin, see it on the faces of the people around...

By today, everybody knows that a team of physicists gathered in a room on Friday to "open the Pandora box" and begin crunching the new data from this year. Newspapers from all the world are spreading these news, some of them with funny headlines like  "New Data on Elusive Particle Shrouded in Secrecy", "Europe Overtakes U.S. in Physics Pursuing God Particle" or "Excitement builds over Higgs data".

Some blogs they even give lots of details! This one claims, with lots of details, that both Atlas and CMS have already observed the Higgs boson for sure with sigma of around 4 in at least one of the decay modes (more than 3 implies 'observation', more than 5 is called 'discovery'). It's funny that some VIPs, like the Atlas spokesperson, have already alerted about that and pleaded “Please do not believe the blogs” :D

The rumor of the discovery is even a trending topic in Twitter!! (#HiggsRumors).

Of course, the official version (and probably the only reliable one :D) is that nothing happened yet, they are still analyzing the results and you have to wait to the avant-premiere of the show where the final results (double-checked lots of times) will be presented. Basically in a couple of weeks in an important physicists conference.

And, once again, it could be that this is just a rumor :) Don't forget that Higgs has already been "discovered" 2 or 3 times here if you believed all the previous rumors!!!! :D

Monday, May 14, 2012

E.T. reading its PhD!!

 It is now confirmed: E.T.'s zombie (see this post) stayed so long time inside Esther's skull eating her brain that eventually became intelligent and now is even going to get a PhD!!

Still, E.T. could not open it's way out of that hair prison so everybody is convinced about Esther being alive and going to present the PhD by herself :D

The official event is here. Esther fans (and E.T.'s) are trying to make a videoconference possible so nobody will miss it!

Good luck, Dr. Esther!! Oops, sorry, I meant good luck, Dr. zombie E.T.!!

CULO!!!

I know, it has been long since nobody really wrote here in this blog, so I had only that thing to say :D

CULO!!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Area 300

What's with this building?


"This building" is bien sur the "Alice building", no. 300-301-160-161.

Legend has it that an old experiment was there, for ever cemented away from existence many centuries ago, and since this cube of cement was lying too close to the main gate to make sense the only solution was to surround it by three extensions. And make them into offices and labs to surround the ancient spirit by alive human action, adding oblivion to eternal isolation.

Everyone working there seems to have heard about this legend but nobody knows for sure. And here is a hint for you by an informer of this blog: Next time you find yourself turning around the (too many) cute corners of the Alice building as you try to reach R1 on feet on a rainy day, attempt to go to its central part.
And I didn't even tell you to raise your gaze to its rooftop.