I propose a toast
Offline *Taps his glass*
The fact that fringe science propagates at all in the 21st century is embarrassing. The fact that it is so widespread is shameful. It is important to clarify what precisely this means. It does not refer to issues of contention where a position is held by a "scientific minority". Genuine scientific controversies sort themselves out over time. Fringe science persists like weeds. It refers to those things which have no support in the disciplines under which they would be studied or tested, but which find public support and masquerade as science. The fact that in some cases fringe science can even enjoy more popularity in this sphere than mainstream scientific views is problematic. But here is one opportunity to deal a crushing blow. In one day hence, at the time of writing, the Large Hadron Collider will be operational for the first time (notice that I have avoided the word "switched on". Particle accelerators are not "switched on" ), dealing a humiliating blow to one particular form of fringe science nonsense (LHC doomsday scenarios).
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Matt,
Y'know. That shit was funny to laugh at for a while, but it is really starting to grate on my nerves.
When I first posted about the stupid fucking Hawaii lawsuit crap, I laughed at how asinine the idea was (especially the strangelet portion). However, after the first couple of days I started to feel sad for the poor dumbfucks that actually thought it was serious.
Please see Poe's Law.
Part of our 'charge' is to take care of the willfully ignorant here. We can't do that if we keep pointing out recent misconceptions without directly correlating them in a pattern-type format. It becomes one more piece of the irrational behavior exhibited by doom-thinkers such as the religious.
We're going to go back to trying to initially be nice to new theists and 'others' here. I was scratching my head trying to figure out why my amount of theist e-mail as a result of the site was tapering off. After catching up on reading missed during the late summer hiatus I took, I'm pretty close to a valid reason for it.
{edited}
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I heard it was postponed.
It was originally scheduled to be done last year with the beam alignment and a low energy start. 10 months is a long enough tease. lol.
But it went off great except for some problems with the 'cryos' that supercool the magnets. I watched the last half of the first beam lineup and then all of the second and the speeches afterwards.
According to the newsletter, Fermilab had a 'pajama party' to watch the progress. How very american, no? *cough*LAME*cough*
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists.
It's now Sunday and the world didn't end. Thank God we can talk about Hitler again.
That Hitler guy was a real meany.
Rick
Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?
Khan!? Khaaaaaaan!?
Scheiße
You, Me, God, ONE .... simple .... ATHEIST !
..... the christ in me, you .... Da , so silly religion is , all of that docrtine theology of sepratism ..... religion is bunk ....
Atheism Books.
100% Scientific Proof that the LHC is part of the Big Science plot to take-over the world!
WHAT ARE STRANGELORS?
This is an important question.
To explore it, we must first examine in detail what the Large Hadron Collider (or 'LHC') will be doing, and why it is evil. At it's most basic level, the LHC is simply a big, expensive way for scientists to get particles (small bits of matter) to bump into each other.
See, normally particles are known as 'elementary' and 'benign'. In nature, by design, they just pass right on by each other without ever colliding.
When scientists at the LHC intervene, however, the particles will smack together. This will create what is secretly known as particular agitation, although physicists don't want you to know it, and turn the blissful elementary particles into something far more sinister.
These now-agitated, 'theoretical' particles are called Strangelets, which most leading experts agree are what dark matter is actually made of. Scary stuff.
What's scarier, however, is that Strangelets actually stick together sometimes when they get created, making even bigger particles through another scientific secret called hetero-particular attraction bondage.
Strangelors are extremely bad matter. They intentionally collide with other particles, even when scientists aren't trying to make them do it anymore, and - of course - this causes even more agitated particles. Some particles stick to the Strangelor mass that hit them, causing it to grow (and create more collisions) and evilly evolve as different kinds of particles are agitated and added to it. This process has been described by some scientists as Strangelor accretion.
The accretion will continue making the Strangelor more evolved and mutated until it comes across an electron.
Electrons are negatively charged already, which is another way of saying that they are 'somewhat agitated' even when scientists don't interfere (this is why electricity can hurt you). Because of it's negative state, when that electron hits the Strangelor, something even more terrible happens...
(I'll keep you posted with more of this suppressed, highly technical information later. I've got to get to sleep for class tomorrow. Keep an ey on this thread; I hope to GNKANOP I can inform the public before it's too late!!!)
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
you know, all this talk reminds me of a story i wrote a couple years ago, right after finishing hawking's brief history (every now and then i get the urge to write really bad short stories, usually postapocalytic, that are almost never finished). in it, a black hole is hovering over the earth like an inverted sun and everybody is just waiting to get sucked in. no, it's not hard science, i know, but the black hole wasn't the main point of the story anyway. i actually had a couple good points in this story, i thought, about human perception of time. first, in my story CNN had become nothing more than a constant live feed from a greek monk's cell where he preached about how the black hole would level all time and transform the world into a sort of christian pure land where jesus roved up and down the countryside, bearing gifts and healing people left and right. second, the bulk of the story revolves around the protagonist and his friend lothario sitting on a deserted street, listening to old recordings of louis armstrong and his hot five and talking about what the fuck is going to happen. lothario makes a comment that if the singularity at the heart of the black hole is supposed to fuck up time, how do they know they haven't already been sucked in? just remember that about mr. particle collider...
btw, i think i recall hawking dismissing the idea that black holes contain singularities, but that was hardly convenient for my story that no one will ever read.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson