Robots also read in the restroom!!

Today, Maikel did an astonishing discovery, thorough his wide list of scientist spies/contacts that he has made during his eternal stay at CERN...
His friend Jose Tokio managed to get this picture from a hidden camera in the toilet of a super robotics secret research institution. One of the robots of the lab was found there!!! And he was even reading!!!
It is still to be investigated if the toilets shit anti-matter, like CERN scientists...
Also, it is worth to investigate which kind of toilet paper it is better for taking care of their delicate ass cutis.
In addition, in this photo it was made another unspeakable discovery: if you pay a lot of attention, you can see the foot of someone hiding behind the poor robot, who is unaware of the disgusting fact... So, there are also robot voyeurs who enjoy looking at them!!! Puajjj

The Legend showed up in official CMS meeting!!

It looked like a normal Tuesday at CERN. All online (i.e. responsible of daily data taking) representatives of the CMS detector of CERN were in the middle of a meeting. They were discussing the important problems they had that week which, due to unexpected hardware problems, made them to record much less data that their competitor, the ATLAS detector. There was people upset and everybody could feel the tension in the ambiance.

At some point, someone were commenting something about Maikel's stuff, so he felt obliged to also comment about that to clarify the situation. For some reason, he felt very tired that day. His brain worked slower than usual. But still he had lots of important things to say, to clarify the situation and fix the problems. He could not imagine the disaster that was about to happen.

He interrupted the whole conversation and stood up from his chair to speak, with a very serious face and voice, standing sure of himself and clear about his intentions. His eyes looked clear and confident of what he was talking about, as he was talking from the point of view of an expert of his sub-system, as well as the on-call person who was there when the problem happened and could clarify everything.

In that moment, one of the persons of the meeting showed a big smile on his face and started laughing like crazy. Most people was totally shocked by that fact. It looked like he really got mad about the different big problems that happened that week. But then he made a sign that made everybody understand. He pointed with his finger to Maikel and shouted:

- I LOVE YOUR T-SHIRT!!!!!!

Suddenly, all people in the meeting muted. The meeting was interrupted without any logical reason. Everybody turned slowly their faces to look towards the direction where such finger was pointing at. Then, everybody understood. And laughed!!! There are legends that still tell how such laughs were heard even by the Dr. Conan in the far Cimmeria...

Maikel did not understand at first. Then he looked to his T-Shirt. He was wearing the "The Man - The Legend" t-shirt!!! He was so sleepy that morning that he just took anything from the wardrobe without checking. The unfortunate t-shirt he got was the one that Maikel and Mikaela gifted him for his birthday, just as a joke, but hoping that he was not wearing it at work.

Of course, Maikel laughed as much as the rest, and the tension of the meeting disappeared, so finally everybody enjoyed :)

After the meeting, he wrote to Maikel in the chat the whole story and he is still laughing about it.

That was the second most fun story that t-shirt ever heard, being the first one of the annals Michalina's famous joke regarding that the t-shirt was probably right because "behind every legend, there is always a small little truth"...

The Mystery of the Lost Coin

The issue of the toilets in the building where Maikel works is still not over. The toilet in his floor is still not fixed... Not even after CERN recorded his second inverse femtobarn of data!! And Maikel is very disappointed because nobody did any party this time!!

Anyway, in spite of working in the World Cathedral of Science, the most advanced High Energy Physics laboratory of the world and the most technological place ever made by mankind, Maikel still needs to spend a dangerous journey everyday desperately looking for working toilets while running away from the radioactive shit that commented in other posts.

One day Maikel decided to go to a distant place where some Maikel told him he could find a clean toilet (just 2 floors below him). After the risky journey, he arrived to the peaceful resting place but, right before he could start to do his stuff, he noticed something highly unusual.

A coin inside the toilet!!!

He started thinking about how could the coin have arrived there. Maybe there was someone around checking if anyone tried to get it with his hands (puajjj!!!!). Maybe there was even a camera around! For sure the coin was there since some time ago, as it seemed old. Maikel didn't think about making a photo of it, but it looked very similar to this one that someone else did.

Anyway, of course Maikel was not going to get his hands dirty in the disgusting radioactive water for a coin, although it seemed like a 50 cts (almost enough for getting a coffee from the machine, mmm). He had a different plan. He decided to monitor the coin as well!

During some days, he was making a double research work: at the same time he continued improving the monitoring software of the CMS detector while dealing with unexpected power cuts, system problems and LHC configuration changes, he was also researching about who was getting the coin, monitoring the stuff from time to time. During more than a week the coin stayed there. Not even the cleaning staff dared to get the coin out of there. Probably because they know more than anyone else about the unspeakable horrors that may happen to someone touching such water. Most probably the have their cleaning legends about the Dark Ages of CERN and also about the Chosen One that one day could get the coin out, in the same way as Arthur was chosen to get Excalibur.

One day, the Chosen One came. And got the coin out. But it happened exactly during the days Maikel was on vacation in Spain so he could not get to know who was :( In the other hand, that gave an unexpected alibi to Maikel so he can prove that he was not the one who took it!!

Now we all know that here at CERN, among us, there is some hero, the Chosen One, who would be ready to risk his live for all of us. Or at least for the contents of the toilet...

Μιχαέλα is at cern

Tsk tsk tsk, journalism has fallen so low that I have to do the reporters' work now...

Femtobarn party at CERN!!! Toilets will get fixed!!

Official CERN news:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR06.11E.html

CERN's LHC accelerator has now delivered so much data that both CMS and Atlas detectors have already recorded over 1 inverse femtobarn of data!!! (equivalent to 70 millions of millions of collisions, for the people who likes millions). And yes, in case you didn't notice that is a lot. For comparison, in all the years that Fermilab's Tevatron was working (currently second most powerful accelerator after CERN's one, and for many years the first one) it recorded just 8 inverse femtobarns (running since 1983). Now in only few months of continuous running, LHC did already 1. And expectations are to get from now about another 1 per month till reaching 5.5 this year (and then they will start doing other things, like superfluid liquid drops of heavy ions matter).

Maikel discovered that while he was in one of his interesting meetings close to the CMS control room. Suddenly the meeting finished and bottles of champaign and boxes of snacks started appearing from nowhere. People were bringing stuff and more stuff and soon there was a small improvised speech followed by people eating and drinking like crazy. Party!!!!!

Maikel's friends soon discovered it and felt envy about how lucky Maikel was. It's strange the fact that they even knew about it, as everybody knows that Maikel is very silent and quiet and never says anything...

Anyway, in a strange cosmical coincidence that some would correlate with this femtobarn party, suddenly all CERN toilets are getting fixed. Maikel was complaining since months ago about the radioactive toilet full of antimatter in front of his office (see this post) but since few weeks ago the situation got worst. The water just didn't come out when you desperately pushed the buttons and the radioactive products from CERN physicists stayed there under your impotent face. Soon the smell overpassed the human resistance capability and even Maikel was forced to run away and try to use other facilities. Then he discovered that other ones around the same building and other buildings were in the same disastrous situation. Somehow it seemed that CERN was able to crush all world records in high technology and femtobarns but it was unable to repair toilets!!

But now the situation is changing. People repairing toilets have been spreading around CERN and fixing stuff here and there. Maikel even got told that in the toilet in front of him 5 people fixing the toilet were seen this morning, discussing about the theoretical problems and deploying an experimental fix, which didn't work. Somehow 5 people were not enough to fix a toilet but we expect tomorrow the sun will shine and the toilet will get finally repaired, being able to accept antimatter again.

PD: note, tomorrow is Saturday so no luck
PD2: actually the weather forecast is quite crappy... XD

Maikel was not dead!! He was in Mars!!!

And here you have the certificate proving it!!!
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/?action=getcert&hashid=8AA9B4832BF7299FF9640B10B8E97E70


Well, actually Maikel did not go in person, but his name will go!! What are you waiting for?? Send also your name there!! There is a deadline for it very soon!!!
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

This blog is dead

Unless somemaikel proves I am wrong

Internet troll spamming Spanish news sites about CERN's LHC

The Internet Troll has been found spamming internet news pages that were talking about CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Spanish. He was insulting the Spanish Prime Ministry rather than commenting about the news itself (typical Troll behavior...). Fortunately for us, the Internet Sheriff found him and banned his IP!!! XD

The complete article is in this link:
http://www.eljueves.es/2011/02/16/troll_internet%E2%80%A6_enfrenta_admin_mas_duro_del_lugar.html

Amazing how Spanish comic magazines and sites talk so much about our LHC, even for making fun of totally unrelated events :D

When everybody is Maikel, no one is...

Today we had an interesting and international discussion / debate about St.Valentine's day.

Maikel's got fed up of talking with some CERN-related couples and realizing that most don't like this day and say that it is better not celebrating St.Valentine's because "every day it's special", not just that specific day. When asked about what do they do any other day, he realized that most couples just celebrate their anniversary once a year (if anything).

Maikel's thoughts can be summarized in the following interesting sentence from the bad guy of The Incredibles : "when everyone's super, no one will be".

During the interesting discussion, there were different opinions: the general idea is that most people don't like all the merchandising and stuff that enterprises try to sell us this day, but apart from that, Maikel found:

• who just don't like St.Valentine's day at all
• who prefers to change it for some other day (May 1st, June 12nd...)
• who prefers to celebrate only the anniversary

And Maikel says... "celebrate as much as you can!!!"

PS: as someone pointed out, celebrate as much as you can, but not everyday!!! XD

PS2: and... vote in the poll!!!

CERN's LHC without competitor after 2011...

Not so funny as my usual news (and not invented, as usual). Actually I think they are sad news for science...

The second bigger and most powerful accelerator after CERN's LHC, the Tevatron of Fermilab, has officially declared that will close at the end of this year 2011:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/Special_Edition011011.html

Someone could imagine that they just close because we already discovered the Higgs and because they are not powerful enough as to make sheep-sheep collisions as us. Some other could argue that they close because they realize that CERN people is just more handsome. But the truth is most probably just other: money (we are in crisis, remember??)

Anyway, just the accelerator will close. They have many other experiments running that look promising. Let's hope for the best for our colleagues!!

Higgs boson finally discovered by CERN!!! And it is a sheep!!!!

Dr. Eleni (even before finishing her PhD) claimed the final discovery of Higgs boson at CERN, based in an impressive and innovative research work by Dr. Juan (see this reference, previously published in this same blog), which was motivated by the amazing and surprising discovery by Dr. Elena, with her photographic identification of the particle field.

As you can see in the figure 1 of the paper, in the middle of the phase space there is an object passing thorough (a car) inside the detector, specifically in the CERN roundabout close to entrance B. But that particle's movement is clearly slowed down by something. The so-called "sheep field", filling all the space in the picture, is getting attached to the particle, slowing down its movement in the same exact way as if the particle acquired mass. That is exactly the Higgs principle!!! Surprisingly, none of Dr. Juan and Dr. Elena noticed the effect.

We can also appreciate in figure 1 that the sheep field is composed of some kind of individual and indivisible quanta of so-called "sheep". In principle, CERN scientists could be able in a near future to separate bunches of such sheep and being able one day to isolate one of them, to study the properties of this sheep quanta, the Higgs boson.

The sheep, Higgs, were always there... just waiting for us to detect them... Finally we managed to do it. This is a great day... just a little step for a sheep, but a huge step for mankind!!

CERN finally hiring new scientists!!!

Maria Elena did an amazing discovery at the end of December, right before CERN's xmas shutdown break. She took the photo you can see in this post.

As people was starting going on vacation for xmas holidays, other 'scientists' were arriving CERN, meant to replace them... Unfortunately, many CERN workers will arrive back from vacation and will find the letter on their desk, telling them that they are fired, replaced by far more productive scientists, meant to discover Higgs, extra dimensions and the answer for life, universe and everything.

Someone pointed out that these new scientists look a bit weird. Like sheep. But it's ok, everybody here knows that CERN workers are typically a bit nerd / geek / weird anyway :D

What we don't know is the reason for this. Maybe the CERN member states think that CERN got a low research productivity and want to increase it with the talent of these sheep? Maybe it's a joke for all of us, telling us that even a sheep is more intelligent than us, with our PhDs and stuff? Maybe the reason is just that CERN ran out of budget and now is growing sheep, as they think that the future of CERN will not be in science but in farming??? The only thing we can do is to wait, outside our old offices, looking at the sheep... and thinking about our future, and the extra dimensions...

Soap Opera about CERN!!!

In this link you can find a chapter of a fictional latinoamerican soap opera based at CERN that Fidel sent us :)

Sorry for the non latinoamerican-Spanish speaking people!!! I'll just tell briefly the storyline for them:

An average physicist girl working at CERN, dressing very sexy, in high heels and alone at CERN control room, is just doing important calculations, as usual (by the way, she gets a 15% probability of generating a black hole, I wonder which model did she use for getting such a figure...). Then, a young grant holder enters the room and tries to seduce her (again). Finally, the husband of her catches them in the right moment and threaten them saying that he will switch the LHC to generate a black hole that will destroy the world and mankind (and he does).

It is so fun!! Just remember that this is all fiction (don't try to do it alone at home with your own accelerator!!). And of course, as we always remind, keep in mind that it is impossible that LHC generates black holes that will destroy the Earth!! The Sun and other cosmic things produce cosmic rays much better than our LHC does and their collisions with us did not create black holes yet!! :D