Well what do you know, the world's still here.

Despite various doom and gloomers, the Large Hadron Collider, also known as the LHC, at CERN was activated today, and did not destroy the Earth by creating a new big bang or creating a micro black hole that would suck in the whole of the Earth.

The LHC is a massive feat of engineering, and will certain let us explore new aspects of our universe which have not been seen before. I really don't get those who think that these things are unwise or dangerous, especially those who think suing over the matter is the best way to resolve the uncertainties.

Anyway, well done to all those at CERN for a job well done.

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And So It Spreads

It appears that the creationist dogma is spreading from its heartland of middle-America to the colder climes of the British Isles. Fortunately, a response is being made to this villainy.

The worst part though is a quote about religious students in subjects like medicine. According to Professor Steve Jones of University College London, "They want permission not to come to those lectures and sit those exam questions."

This is just ridiculous. I honestly expect better from those seeking to become doctors, or those studying any sort of anything, really. If I was their lecturer, I'd say "Sure, you don't have to attend those lectures or do those questions on the exam, but don't expect me to give you any credit for it." For anyone working in the biological fields, evolution is a fundamental concept and denying that is to ignore nearly all the knowledge gained in the field since the mid 1800s.

Dear oh dear oh dear.

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Someone is awesome

Following cuts in its budget Fermilab has had to make some drastic cuts to its staff numbers and pay. This is without a doubt a bad thing. Fortunately someone has stepped in to help. An anonymous person has donated 5 million dollars to Fermilab, no strings attached. And while it's not enough to keep everyone their job, it's a big help.

So to the anonymous donor, whoever you are: You are awesome.

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PETA does something not quite evil

Generally I think PETA are an example of the nuttier and extreme end of the hippy spectrum, what with throwing paint at people for wearing fur, protesting pounds putting down unwanted animals (if you don't want the animal to be killed, why don't you look after it yourself?), and being against the eating of meat, farming, circuses, fishing, the keeping of pets, the use of animals in medical testing, and aiding the legal defense of arsonists.

Today I heard something that while doesn't really change my opinion of the organization, I don't outright disagree with, and kind of support. PETA is offering a million dollar prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012."

I'm generally for pretty much anything that encourages research and development in pretty much any area, and so long as the sponsor is fair in how they administer it, I don't really mind who ponies up the cash (obviously if the prize is blatantly biased to a result that's no good, but that's not a problem for purely technological type prizes).

However, this is the start of a process that I think will split the hippy community (this is noted in the article). There are many different types of hippies. Some are all about loving the animals and not harming their fellow creatures. Others are all about the organic food and that anything purely natural is best (not considering that all of the plants grown as crops are the result of nearly 6000 years of selective breeding). These forces are going to come to a head over this. This is a great way of reducing the number of actual animals needed to feed the world. Thus the animal lovers should be all for this. However the purity squad are going to see this as an abomination that must be stopped. And thus the hippies will be divided.

As to whether or not I'd eat this stuff, I think I'd be willing to give it a go once it is sufficiently developed. Say to the point where it looks, feels and tastes like the real thing.

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A Not So Cool Superconductor

A group of researchers at Indiana University have made an interesting discovery. They have found what looks to be superconducting behaviour in small clusters of aluminum (45 and 47 atoms of aluminum) with a critical temperature of around 200K (-73 degrees Celsius). The observed behaviour is a peak in the heat capacity of the clusters which is indicative of superconductivity. Such indirect tests are required because ordinary ideas of what superconductivity means break down when you only have 45 atoms involved.

This is pretty cool, but don't expect any real world applications any time soon. This high temperature superconductivity only works because of the very small size of the clusters. Change the size of the cluster by one atom and it goes away. We might be able to make a series of these clusters and weakly link them, but that is beyond the capabilities at the present moment.

Finally, although it in no way contributed to this work, I'd like to link to my honours thesis which was entitled "Superconducting correlations in metallic nanoparticles". Unfortunately, I don't have a copy on my computer here or anywhere on the web so I can't.

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