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

CERN people comes out of the closet!!!

Something unexpected happened at CERN. Something that could have been a total revolution 20 years ago. And it is not the discovery of Higgs boson, super-symmetry or extra-dimensions!!!

The LGBT CERN social group has sent facebook messages, emails and even flyers and posters with publicity about their community at CERN. They even announced a public meeting at R1 where they will see each other's faces and will chat. And yes, for the ones who doesn't know the acronym, like Maikel, and who didn't get any tip from the group's logo colors, like Maikel, it does not stand for some strange and nerd physicists / mathematicians words that you'll need years of study to understand (or maybe not). It stands simply for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.

And, for the ones who didn't know, this courageous fact of not being ashamed of oneself and declare the orientation to everyone is called in French and Spanish: "to come out of the closet" :) Till today, everyone suspected that the closets at CERN were quite full, but nobody dared to say anything about that. Finally it seems that the time has come! We are not anymore in the Middle Age, you know. And, apart from working at CERN, we are not so stupid either. Well, actually everyone sees these announcements so normal that nobody gives much importance to this meeting (and you know you should apply a correction factor of at least 1/10 to everything Maikel says).

The Duck Conspiracy...

Today at the CMS control room, Maikel did a funny discovery: they have one little cute rubber duck in the DAQ (Data Acquisition system) shifter desktop console. After some very hard thinking and the heavy use of his only neuron, he realized that it is some kind of words joke with DAQ and 'duck' :)

When he asked about the history of that duck, someone told him that they have it there "just because ATLAS also has ducks in their DAQ shifter console". Actually, Maikel found out that in ATLAS they have not one little duck but a whole big family of them, with different kinds and sizes!! I guess someone got jealous and, as he/she could not steal one of ATLAS because he could not get permission to enter into the control room, he/she just bought a little one for CMS.

When talking about that, Maikel heard horrible rumors about The Duck Conspiracy. People in CMS is planning a secret sneak intrusion in the ATLAS control room. The target would be to kidnap one of their little ducks. Then, they would bring it to CMS control room and would chain it somewhere where the webcams can see it. Finally, they will try to blackmail ATLAS showing them the little prisoner duck from the cams, asking to stop recording luminosity or other horrible things like that. ATLAS people!! Be aware of that!! I'm telling this information risking my life!!!

Apart from that, I heard that this fact of having ducks in the DAQ consoles is actually a long standing tradition. They also have them at Fermilab DØ experiment control room since many years before ATLAS existed. I would have to make a deepest research to find out the origins of this yellow rubber tradition. Maybe the ancient Greeks also had rubber ducks in their accelerator control rooms??? Only a expensive research with a worldwide collaboration will be able to discover that...