Friday, June 08, 2012

Quarky Fudge Factors

I got a kick out of the story that the Large Hadron Collider (you know, that device that was going to suck us all into a man-made black hole and collapse the universe) is getting knocked askew by the moon.

The LHC is so sensitive lunar gravity deforms the tunnel enough to disrupt the experiments, meaning that technicians have to keep adjusting the proton beams. Which also mean, although scientists won't admit it, that the results depend more on the skill of the technicians than on the physics they are testing. 

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