Science
Its LHC Day!
Well today is the big day, many years in waiting. Today CERN will turn on the LHC and the earth will be swallowed up by a strangelet. No, just kidding. The LHC should go operational today with 450 GeV test beams for the first time, on its way to 5 Tev beams later this year and ultimately 14 TeV CMS. But rather than recount a list of stats, we refer you to the very accessible CERN LHC faq. It is a pretty amazing device and the four principal detectors Alice, Atlas, CMS and LHCb) are as well. LHCb is said to have the early track at seeing the Higgs boson (mission #1 for the LHC) if it decays in certain unusual ways, such as by neutralinos (also hypothetical). Of course, that would presuppose that Fermilab's Tevatron doesn't see it first. Man that would really, really piss of the EU. Hope they haven't counted our boys out!Some people will object to the very large price tag (over $6 billion) spent on getting the LHC to this point and we don't disagree that a large amount of coin was spent. However, beyond the scientific merits of the project, LHC and the Tevatron before it bring many tangible benefits to the rest of world. Perhaps most famous is the hypertext transmission protocol (the http of web pages) which was developed at CERN and became what the rest of us call 'the web'. Fermilab pioneered the use of superconducting magnet technology - even after CERN researchers laughed at the idea - and besides use in particle accelerators, the technology is now used in MRI devices. According to the DOE, Robert Marsh, the head of a major alloy supplier, once said that "every program in superconductivity that there is today owes itself in some measure to the fact that Fermilab built the Tevatron and it worked." Other advances have come in the areas of networking, network computing and data processing. The 'Grid' is a widely distributed processing network to analyze the 15 Petabytes of data the LHC will take each year (a CD-ROM every second). Grid computing is now being used for many other research projects.
But this should also be a fun day so we leave you with these videos by some CERN natives called Les Horribles Cernettes (they're good, really!):
If hip-hop is more your thing, check out the Large Hadron Rap:
Gustav From The Buoys
Mother Nature provides us with another encore opportunity to look at the progression of a hurricane from the weather buoys in the National Data Buoy Center system. These buoys vary considerably in ownership and observational mission. While many are owned by NOAA, others are the property of and/or maintained by regional universities while still others operate off oil and gas drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Most record air pressure, wind speeds, gusts, directions and water temperature. Some only record wind speeds and water currents and directions. Still others are tsunami warning buoys which measure wave heights.We begin with Buoy 42040, east of the southern tip of LA and about 65 miles south of Dauphin Isle, AL:
Buoy 42040 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Next, right on that southern tip of LA is Pilots Station East at SW Pass, LA. This buoy recorded the highest wind gusts, just over 100 knots or nearly 120 mph:
Buoy PSTL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Slightly further inland and west of Pilots Station East is the NOAA station at Grand Isle, LA:
Buoy GISL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Moving inland, we first come to the Shell Beach, LA station:
Buoy SHBL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
and west of that, the Bayou Gauche, LA station which is also run by NOAA:
Buoy BYGL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
Interestingly, a bit further west, the lowest pressure of 28.50 in Hg was recorded at Amerada Pass, LA:
Buoy AMRL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
And just to show that a buoy and weather station's job is not an easy one, the buoy station at South Timbalier Block 52 off the south west coast of LA seems to have taken the second half of the day off:
Buoy SPLL1 Click for full size
Source: National Data Buoy Center
