Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Science Geek

I miss being a science geek that I gravitated towards during my mid-teens. I'd go to the Community Library, and get this, borrow books on Physics, Astronomy, early inventions, the brain blah blah blah. Through those books I picked up that calculus was simultaneously evolved by Newton and this other guy called Leibniz. But most people give credit to the famous guy, although both wouldn't have really been able to do this if not for a few more elusive scientists back in the earlier days who died before they could finish their calculations. Ok besides that geeky fact some books actually told the sappy side of Newton's life and you empathise with these 2 guys who were fighting to publish their findings first, because at that time, it's no use if you publish it later than another dude even if he had completely plagerised your work because publishing was the final say. Newton was pretty upset when he found out that Leibniz has used some of his findings to actually conclude calculus. Aiya, you people go read it up yourself.

Anyways, for the Dan Brown readers or the other people who are just in tune with the current news, th Large Hadron Collider in France just went through 'firing' yesterday. Basically, it's a particle accelerator which spams 27km. Get that right. that's across the border of Switzerland and France. Basically it's used to accelerate particles (in the nano sense) such that when they collide, they just fall to pieces and scientists are able to study these fragments. The original construction in 1988 was used as a electron-positron collider. Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons explained this fantastically and (it's still my favourite book out of all of them)
Anyways, the reason why I'm talking about this obiang sciency thing in the first place is because firstly, I really think it's amazing, and secondly, there's a funny side to it. (as usual) I bet a lot of you guys would know the game half life, I myself am quite clueless of what the game is about save that it's probably about killing and annihilating creatures/people/mushrooms. But Jon showed me this picture which really made me laugh, on how all the gamers were silently hoping that something would go wrong as the Accelerator was 'fired' yesterday.

He told me that they had even sent him a crowbar and a manual of the game just for kicks. HAHA

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