Particular Physics

MINI LEGO ATLAS MODEL - Help Outreach - Vote to make this...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:36:29 +0100

MINI LEGO ATLAS MODEL - Help Outreach - Vote to make this available worldwide!

http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/21619

The LEGO ATLAS detector is a super way of describing and showing the inside of the ATLAS detector to those who may never get a chance to see the real thing, and will certainly never get an opportunity to poke around the inside.

Recently, interactive java applets which let you see the sheer scale of objects (whether they be astronomical in size or nanoscopic) have been immensely popular in teaching people about size and scale. Indeed, being told about the relative proportions of the Earth in the Solar System and the Universe is a great way of explaining the sheer emptiness of space.

This model is a miniaturised equivalent of the ATLAS detector that can show the constituent components of the detector.

This original model of ATLAS, entirely built from LEGO, was designed by Sascha Mehlhase, and is a 1:50 scale model of the detector, as seen below.

Using the provided link above (and here), you can vote to get the mini-model (as shown at the very top of the posts) to enter into worldwide production! Only 10,000 votes are required and LEGO will put the design into production, such that anyone can buy and construct it.

With a reduced size, cost and build time, this smaller model can be made by any child (or adult!) with an active scientific mind. This model is perfect for small outreach projects and schools which do not have the time or assets to acquire the large version.

It shouldn’t take much time to register a vote, and would be amazing if this would be something this could be made available easily to anyone!

More information about the LEGO models is available here.
More information about the mini-model is available here!

22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:05:42 +0100

22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other: An interesting...

This short video, detailing some advances in computer graphics...

Mon, 27 May 2013 22:36:05 +0100

This short video, detailing some advances in computer graphics and simulations, is extremely impressive!

For a bit more information, check out SIGGRAPH 2013.

Source: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/24/siggraph-2013-computer-graphic.html

Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) Explorer

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:12:00 +0100

Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) Explorer: astronomnomy: Click on this, play with the checkboxes and...

Worldwide Hacking to Visualise the Internet This beautiful...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:56:00 +0100

Worldwide Hacking to Visualise the Internet

This beautiful animation (seriously give it a few seconds to load!), effectively showing the world at work, actually comes from some 420,000 computers which were hacked by an anonymous researcher. The hacking was low-level and relatively friendly - the computer was pinged from time to time to check its connectivity and it did not interfere with the main programs being run (and even a message was left when it was done explaining what had happened and a contact email).

There is further information available on this post on Motherboard, and whilst no-one will condone hacking activities, one can still marvel at the data flow which can be visualised.

stellar-indulgence: 3,000 Years of Abusing Earth on a Global...

Sun, 12 May 2013 22:15:38 +0100

stellar-indulgence:

3,000 Years of Abusing Earth on a Global Scale

A new perspective emanating from archaeology and ecology suggests that humanity has spent thousands of years making widespread and profound changes to the “natural” world

By David Biello

Wherever you go on this blue, green and white globe of ours, odds are some person has been there before you—and left a mark. That’s because the hunting, farming or burning practices of our most distant ancestors have shaped most land areas on the planet, argues an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and ecologists in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If we are indeed living in the Anthropocene—a new geologic epoch brought on by the outsized environmental effects of the human species—then this new interval isn’t just a few hundred years old, it is older than the industrial revolution.

The researchers set out to investigate just how long human being have been profoundly changing the environment on land. “This is a super important question for the identity of humanity,” argues ecologist Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a co-author. “Are we the people who transformed the planet for hundreds of generations, or the people who just recently started destroying things?”

To answer that outstanding question the researchers started with a vast spread of archaeological and ecological data from around the world, particularly micro charcoal records from sediment cores. The charcoal delivers a long-term record of human burning, whether intentional or accidental, that coincides with the arrival of modern humans in a particular area. That arrival also often coincides with the extinction of large predators and large animals, generally.

But how exactly do humans impact a new environment? Scientists have used computer models that aim to estimate how quickly and how profoundly Homo sapiens change the landscape. One option estimates land use simply based on the number of humans around, assuming a minimum acreage required to support a person. The other model has humans relatively quickly sprawl through an entire area, but then contract to intensify land use in support of a larger but denser population. This might be dubbed the laziness principle—humans invest the least amount of work, technology or any other resource as possible to survive and even thrive, these researchers argue. “People are doing the easiest thing, knocking out top predators early on,” Ellis explains. “There’s a pretty big impact per person to make a living, [because people are] burning big swathes of forest just to make it easier to get some game.”

According to this model, and the charcoal record where it is available, a relatively small number of humans began to transform most of the planet’s land surface at least 3,000 years ago. “If people can get away with less work, they’re going to do less work,” says archaeologist Dorian Fuller of University College London, who also contributed to the research.

Take for example rice cultivation in Asia, developed some 6,000 years ago in the Yangtze River Valley but not adopted for another thousand years or so in areas of southern China and Southeast Asia. “You have relatively happy hunter-gatherer-fishers who don’t want to put in the effort” to farm rice until population density requires it, Fuller explains.

As the human population swells—as seen in the record of fertilizer use in Europe and Asia—the resources then become more intensively used. This is not confined to agriculture; archaeologists find a similar intensification in the hunting patterns of Paleolithic Europeans after the decline of big game. These proto-Europeans began to hunt a wider range of smaller animals more intensively as well as developing the food preparation technology to extract more food from a larger array of sources. This idea further suggests that humanity has escaped time and time again from the Malthusian trap of population colliding with limited resources by transforming the relationship between human population and the environment through technology, whether through the invention of cooking or modern mechanized agriculture. Humanity simply applies technology to derive more from a given resource, whether it be copper or farmland.

That trend continues into the present day, the researchers argue. The most modern industrial agriculture focuses primarily on the best land it can get. The human population has shifted away from subsistence and low productivity agriculture, collecting in cities as fossil-fueled machines help fewer farmers work the land. “The next revolution is when the majority of people get into cities and are fed by a minority,” Fuller explains. This process is already complete in industrialized countries where less than 1 percent of the population feeds the rest, but “we’re not finished with that yet,” in developing countries such as China and India, Fuller says. Peak farmland may be imminent.

If the human impact is longstanding and widespread, then the landscape is as much in recovery from past impacts as it is enduring new changes. Think of the cutting back of the Amazon rainforest—itself potentially a recovery from earlier, more intensive human use before the arrival of Europeans—versus the regrowth of the forests of the eastern U.S. In fact, the woodland ecosystems of Europe and South America commonly thought of as natural may be the legacy of prior human use. “Most of the forest have had people in them, interacting with them and transplanting species around for thousands of years,” Fuller notes. “We have very little in the way of natural forests, which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be trying to reforest environments and have forests.” After all, the modern phase of the Anthropocene may be the first time humans can choose intentionally what an appropriate level of impact might be.

Fully answering this question of how long the human impact on land has been widespread requires a broader global synthesis of the archaeological and paleoecological data on human population and land use. Most of that data is available—and has been examined—in a local rather than global context, such as the impacts of humans on the Yucatan Peninsula or Australia. Nevertheless, what data exists suggests that this is a “used planet,” in the words of the authors. “We’ve been husbanding these biomes and creating our own types of ecologies—the cultivated lands, the rangelands—we’ve been doing this for a very long time,” Ellis argues. “We’ve been living in that Anthropocene biosphere since prehistory.”

More about this on the official Anthropocene site

Article Source: scientificamerican.com

HERE IS TODAY - An interactive look at time

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:23:36 +0100

HERE IS TODAY - An interactive look at time: Another nice interactive website, but instead of...

TEDxCERN Tomorrow (or even today as I write this) will see the...

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:26:00 +0100

TEDxCERN

Tomorrow (or even today as I write this) will see the first TEDx event organised and hosted at CERN. From the CERN press release:

The speakers for TEDxCERN range from pioneers to young scientists: George Church, on recent breakthroughs with DNA; Londa Schiebinger, historian, on gendered innovation; Chris Lintott, on how to discover a planet from your sofa; Hiranya Peiris, winner of the 2012 RAS Fowler Prize, on the early universe; John Searle, philosopher, on consciousness as a biological phenomenon; Maya Tolstoy on seafloor earthquakes; Ian Foster on Big Data; Marc Abrahams, MC of the Ig Nobel Awards and editor of theAnnals of Improbable Research, on why all good — and some bad — research is improbable; Eliezer Rabinovici and Zehra Sayers on SESAME, a ground breaking research project in the Middle East that is bringing together Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian, Palestinian, Turkish, Pakistani, and Iranian scientists; Brittany Wenger, 18-year-old scientist and Grand Prize Winner 2012 Google Science Fair, on Research and Inspiration; Lee Cronin on how chemistry can revolutionize modern technology; Becky Parker, winner of the first RAS Patrick Moore Medal, on why you are never too young to be a research scientist; and Gian Giudice, theoretical physicist, on what the current Higgs measurement could mean for the future of the Universe.

I’ve been fortunate enough to get a ticket to watch the webcast, hosted by George Smoot (I believe…) in the Main Auditorium and it should prove to be an interesting afternoon!

As per all TEDx event, there will be live streaming from the Globe at CERN. You can pick up more information here!

The event kicks off at 1.30pm CET.

Press release: http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2013/04/cern-host-its-first-tedx

How Many People Are In Space Right Now?

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:39:23 +0100

How Many People Are In Space Right Now?: This is pretty neat :)

An Afternoon of Physics - Mouse Tracking … well as much...

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:35:26 +0100

An Afternoon of Physics - Mouse Tracking

… well as much physics as I do in an afternoon, which is to say, lots when it is classified as coding, making plots, looking at plots, understanding plots, correcting plots, improving more code in order to repeat the whole process. Sometimes I get to read some papers and actually do some thinking too. Those are nice days …

So this image is made using iographica, a piece of software designed to just sit in the background and track mouse usage. Movements are lines, pauses are circles, and the longer the rest, the larger the circle! You can see I use a Mac too by the number of movements to the top left to close windows xD

Twenty years of a free, open web! Twenty years today, the code...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:38:49 +0100

Twenty years of a free, open web!

Twenty years today, the code required to run a web server was made freely available without any royalties. This marked the start of the World Wide Web, which was named by Tim Berners-Lee back in 1989, as a method of sharing and disseminating information between physicists around the world!

You can find out more about the creation of the World Wide Web here.
If you’re feeling particularly nostalgic, you can also visit the first website ever, with a snapshot restored from 1992 (earlier ones have not been found!): http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Science Museum (London) Unveils Plans for LHC Exhibit Coming November 2013

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:35:23 +0100

Science Museum (London) Unveils Plans for LHC Exhibit Coming November 2013: The Science Museum will...

travisleroy: Unfolding Space #3, 2013collage, 43 x 23 inches

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:01:02 +0100

Travis LeRoy Southworth Unfolding Space #3 collage, 43 x 23 inches

Unfolding Space #3 - detail

Unfolding Space #3 - detail

travisleroy:

Unfolding Space #3, 2013
collage, 43 x 23 inches

WolframAlpha - Analysis of Facebook WolframAlpha have been...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:33:50 +0100

WolframAlpha - Analysis of Facebook

WolframAlpha have been running an app where users can generate a report on their Facebook account and also anonymously provide data to some central servers. This data has recently been analysed and some interesting results have been produced. I’ve only just come across this, but I will be signing up asap as this kind of social science/ data analysis can be very interesting and enlightening.

The first graph above shows (quite stereotypical) comparisons between males and females and the frequency with which they post about certain topics. However, there are a number of other interesting plots which have been produced. For instance, people with lots of friends tend to be friends with people who also have lots of friends. It might sound trivial, but its an interesting result.

Its interesting to see that that within different ages, there are clear peaks around your own age to show you have a lot of friends your age. Even more interesting is the width of these peak though for people between the age of 20 and 30. People in this age bracket (myself included) came through an age of slow dialup internet during our childhood, using many social networking sites and were maturing when Facebook was becoming THE social network. I think because of this, the peak around their own age is in stark contrast to much younger people (who have had Facebook since learning how to use a computer) and to older people, who have acquired more friends and family over time.

I would reccommend checking out the article, linked at the bottom, as well as signing up for some anonomous data collection, because after all, there are so many apps now on Facebook which try to get your information such as to profile you (in some cases trying to do so without your permission) that its interesting to see where you might fit within the boundaries of social typing.

Sources

- http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/24/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/
- http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook/

A double lunar rainbow, or moonbow, arcs over the Pacific Ocean...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:31:00 +0100

A double lunar rainbow, or moonbow, arcs over the Pacific Ocean in this photograph taken February 26 from Kaanapali, Maui (map).

Rainbows form when water droplets refract sunlight into its component colors. The same principle applies to lunar rainbows, but instead of using direct sunlight, moonbows form when reflected sunlight from the moon is refracted by atmospheric moisture. (Watch a video of moonbows in Yosemite National Park.)

Since the reflected light from the moon is fainter than direct sunlight, colors are harder to see with the naked eye in moonbows. Long exposure photographs, such as the 20-second exposure pictured, enable us to see the colors of the rainbow. (See related photos of a quadruple rainbow.)

projectq27: Did you guess it? The image shows the logos for the...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:26:50 +0100

projectq27:

Did you guess it? The image shows the logos for the CERN Opendays, CERN will be opening its doors to the public on Sunday 29 September 2013 for more details see http://www.facebook.com/events/244732148999521/ and http://cern.ch/opendays

Currently members of the public can only go underground to the experiments if they know someone within a collaboration who can take them down internally.

I had therefore wondered how people without an inside link could get in.

Not to fear though, if you do not know anyone (and I might be able to do tours of ATLAS soon ;-) ) because CERN is having an open day for members of the public to visit and look around underground!

CMS Art Installation This is one of five 5m long banners...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:10:10 +0100

CMS Art Installation

This is one of five 5m long banners designed by artist Xavier Cortada to celebrate the work and accomplishments of all the CMS scientists who worked to help discover the Higgs particle. This particular piece is meant to illustrate the decay of a Higgs particle to two Z bosons, each of which decays into two leptons, symbolised by the four red lines which act as a clean signature of the decay. The artwork has been made by manipulating images and logos and in the background shows fragments of every article published by the CMS Collaboration.

Further Information and Images: www.xaviercortada.com/event/2013cern

How cats and the internet have the scientific potential to...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:20:00 +0100

How cats and the internet have the scientific potential to destroy us all!

Credits: SMBC

First trip to see the ATLAS detector tomorrow!

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:39:00 +0100

Just a quick post to say, tomorrow afternoon I will be getting my first trip down to see the ATLAS...

The Beginning of the Universe, for Beginners! This TEDed video...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:01:00 +0100

The Beginning of the Universe, for Beginners!

This TEDed video was made with a TEDxCERN collaboration to provide an easy to understand introduction to Cosmology and Particle Physics. It has come about because CERN will be hosting a TEDx event in May. (I managed to get a ticket to the transmission of it in the main auditorium at CERN but I think you had to be extra special to see the even in person!).

Additional animations will be made available in May after they have been premiered at the TEDx event