Somehow I missed a week of the CoS, so I’ll have to track down where Week 70 went… but first, here’s Week 71, hosted over at .Astronomy (dot-astronomy) by Rob at the University of Cardiff, Wales. Once more, there is a great selection of space news from the blogosphere, I’m looking forward to reading through all of them.
In keeping with my LHC addiction, I posted a story on the Greek hacker attempt on the facility at CERN…
This is a captivating mystery. In 1990 and 1992 when the Jupiter probe Galileo used the Earth for gravitational assists (or “slingshots”), ground-based observers noticed a small (unexpected) boost in velocity as the spacecraft approached Earth. A boost in a few millimetres per second had also been observed in the slingshot of NASA’s NEAR probe two years previously. The same was seen in the flybys of Cassini (in 1999), MESSENGER and Rosetta (in 2005). Many explanations have been put forward – including my favourite that it could be dark matter in Earth orbit kicking our robotic explorers around – but flyby anomalies may have a more mundane explanation.
In keeping with Occam’s Razor (i.e. the simplest explanation is usually the right one), a short paper has been published suggesting that flyby anomalies can be accounted for by using conventional physics…
Continue reading “Flyby Anomalies Solved?”
It’s days like this that I worry for the future of science in the UK…
Sure, Sir David King is the former Chief Scientific Advisor for the UK government, but the opinions he voiced on last week’s BBC Newsnight airing caught my breath. If his short-sighted and ill informed ideas are indicative of the UK government’s science funding strategy, I’d suggest all UK-funded particle physicists pack up and move to Europe or the US.
In the aftermath of the LHC grand event on Wednesday, outspoken Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman was joined by King and the ever impressive Professor Brian Cox. The topic focused on how the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will benefit mankind. As the media had been buzzing about the event for weeks, it was great to see a leading news opinion program set aside six minutes for a particle physics debate.
And what a debate it was! Let’s put it this way, Brian Cox got pretty irritated by King’s point that “brilliant people” should be attracted into other challenges to mankind, rather than focusing their attention on “navel searching” projects like the LHC. Brian’s response was awesome…
Continue reading ““Apologies for calling it the Hay-dron Collider the other night, pure ignorance.””
As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) circulated its first beam of particles last Wednesday, there was an electronic battle being waged inside the computer systems of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS), one of the four LHC detectors. The detector’s monitoring systems (CMSMON) were compromised and Greek hackers were able to upload half a dozen files during September 9th and 10th forcing CMS software engineers to scour all the systems for any more hidden files as the historic LHC “switch on” happened around them. The detector’s website displayed the Greek Security Team‘s (GST) replacement, mocking the poor security of the international particle accelerator facility, CERN.
This chain of events will of course raise a few eyebrows as to how this could possibly have happened at the multi-billion pound experiment (after all, CERN was the birthplace of the World Wide Web back in 1991), but the LHC is a huge target for hackers, if there’s a flaw, someone will eventually exploit it. CERN officials have pointed out that the security breach did not affect any experiment-critical systems, but there was bound to be some worried faces at CMS last week…
Continue reading “Greek Hackers Invade LHC… Nothing Much Happens”
In case you were wondering why I was being a little quiet on Astroengine and the Universe Today recently, it’s because I got married on the weekend! Those of you who know me personally, you’ll know Deb, but if you don’t, I wanted to introduce her. So this is Debra O’Neill, my soul mate and love of my life.
We had a rather spontaneous wedding, but fortunately most of the family was able to make it, including my own from the UK. Friends as far afield as New York were able to change their plans and make it to Vegas. Thank you to everyone who made the event so special; it was a fun, entertaining and an emotional roller-coaster. Also a big thanks goes to my best man and fellow physicist, Mario, who made sure everything went smoothly (if you ever need anything organized, Mario is your man!).
So, I’m off to enjoy married life, but I’ll be sure to post more pictures of the weekend once I sort through the thousands that were taken!
Viva Las Vegas!
The biggest experiment ever conceived by mankind was powered up today (Wednesday morning, GMT) and successfully circulated the first beam of protons. This is the first step toward LHC particles attaining relativistic velocities, completing 11,000 laps of the 27 km (17 mile) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) per second. This incredible feat of accelerator engineering is unparalleled, eventually allowing two counter-rotating beams of particles to be focused and collided within scales previously unimaginable. It is hoped the LHC will accelerate particles to such high energies that 14 TeV collisions will be possible by 2010, possibly revealing undiscovered particles, including the much sought-after Higgs Boson.
Although today is a hugely significant time for science (and a historic one for mankind), the first collisions will take place in October; today is a “dry run,” allowing the protons to circulate one-way. According to sources, today’s protons were accelerated around the instrument without issue, prompting LHC engineers to cheer when it was confirmed everything was on track…
Continue reading “Success! Engineers Cheer as Particles Blast Around LHC”
WordPress released a minor upgrade today for any blog running version 2.6. Although it’s not a huge deal, it is worth doing if your WordPress installation allows open registration. Although this isn’t necessarily a security risk, there is the possibility that a hacker could exploit a WordPress function to reset admin passwords to a randomly generated one, therefore freezing the administrator out of their website. The hacker doesn’t know the new password either, so this loophole is more of a frustration than anything else. Still, it would be a bugger if that happened, so Astroengine is now bulletproof with v2.6.2…
Once again, I used the automatic upgrade plugin created by Keith Dsouza and it performed flawlessly, backing everything up and then installing the whole lot over the top. Superb.
This week’s Carnival of Space is being hosted by Irene Klotz over at the Discovery blog Free Space. There’s a great format this time, going from A-Z of all the submitted stories from across the space blogosphere, so be sure to check it out!
I was really slack this time and neglected to enter any of my Astroengine.com articles (*slaps wrist*), but I’ll be sure to get back on task in time for Week 70!
The recording of the September 1st Paranormal Radio show featuring Captain Jack and myself is now available for your listening pleasure. The show was entitled “Ten Mysteries of the Solar System” and it related to an article of the same name I wrote for the Universe Today on August 18th. It was great to be asked back to the show for the fourth time, and it looks like I might have a regular slot! As Jack said toward the end of the show, I am rapidly becoming PR’s resident “myth buster” – I am very honoured to have been given this task! Hopefully I’ll be appearing monthly to discuss the weird and wonderful goings on in our Universe, and Jack is a fantastic host, so we often go off on a tangent (as can be witnessed in this 3-hour show, I think it took me an hour just to talk about the first two mysteries of the ten!).
Continue reading “Listen to “10 Mysteries of the Solar System” With Captain Jack on Paranormal Radio”
On writing the article “Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a Tw*t.” on Astroengine.com, I had no idea it would hit the front page of Digg.com and generate thousands of hits (booting Astroengine offline for 20 minutes). I wrote the supportive post as I believe Brian’s quote (from the Telegraph website), summed up the strain particle physicists are beginning to feel.
The original quote could be misconstrued as being offensive, but I believe the vast majority understood what he was saying. Brian was responding to reports that LHC scientists had received death threats in the run-up to the September 10th start date of the particle accelerator. With a combination of disinformation being spread by certain ill-informed individuals, media hype and mass hysteria, a solid statement was needed by a leading physicist to tame the unnecessary fear being whipped up.
I’ve been banging on about how safe the LHC is for some time, and I even vowed not to post another LHC doomsday debunking article as, quite frankly, I’m sick to death with the idiotic claims that micro-black holes, stranglets or gremlins could be produced by the LHC. The fact is that there is no danger and Brian explains why…
Continue reading “A Statement By Professor Brian Cox”
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