This is La Muffy she is a Diva , and totally Gorgeous, We follow her Tweets:)
11/23/2009
11/21/2009
Quick restart of Big Bang machine stuns scientists
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins,
GENEVA – Scientists moved Saturday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.
The nuclear physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider were surprised that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the speed of light during the restart late Friday, said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The machine was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault in September last year.
Some scientists had gone home early Friday and had to be called back as the project jumped ahead, Gillies said.
At a meeting early Saturday 'they basically had to tear up the first few pages of their PowerPoint presentation which had outlined the procedures that they were planning to follow,' he said. 'That was all wrapped up by midnight. They are going through the paces really very fast.'
The European Organization for Nuclear Research has taken the restart of the collider step by step to avoid further setbacks as it moves toward new scientific experiments — probably starting in January — regarding the makeup of matter and the universe.
CERN, as it is known, had hoped by 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) Saturday to get the beams to travel the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border, but things went so well Friday evening that they had achieved the operation seven hours earlier.
Praise from scientists around the world was quick. 'First beam through the Atlas!' whooped an Internet message from Adam Yurkewicz, an American scientist working on the massive Atlas detector on the machine.
'I congratulate the scientists and engineers that have worked to get the LHC back up and running,' said Dennis Kovar of the U.S. Department of Energy, which participates in the project.
He called the machine 'unprecedented in size, in complexity, and in the scope of the international collaboration that has built it over the last 15 years.'
Later Saturday the organizers decided to test all the protection equipment while there still is a very low intensity proton beam circulating in the collider at 11,000 times a second. The tests will take 10 days, Gillies said.
The current beam has relatively few protons to avoid damage to the LHC should control of them be lost.
Gillies said CERN decided against immediately testing the LHC's ability to speed up the beams to higher energy or to start with low-energy collisions that would help scientist calibrate their detection equipment.
In the meantime CERN is using about 2,000 superconducting magnets — some of them 15 meters (50 feet) long — to improve control of the beams of billions of protons so they will remain tightly bunched and stay clear of sensitive equipment.
Gillies said the scientists are being very conservative.
'They're leaving a lot of time so that the guys who are operating the machine are under no pressure whatsoever to tick off the boxes and move forward,' he said.
Officials said Friday evening's progress was an important step on the road toward scientific discoveries at the LHC, which are expected in 2010.
'We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way,' CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said.
With great fanfare, CERN circulated its first beams Sept. 10, 2008. But the machine was sidetracked nine days later when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated and set off a chain of damage to the magnets and other parts of the collider.
Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators, said the improvements since then have made the LHC a far better understood machine than it was a year ago.
The LHC is expected soon to be running with more energy the world's current most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago. It is supposed to keep ramping up to seven times the energy of Fermilab in coming years.
This will allow the collisions between protons to give insights into dark matter and what gives mass to other particles, and to show what matter was in the microseconds of rapid cooling after the Big Bang that many scientists theorize marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago.
When the machine is fully operational, the magnets will control the beams of protons and send them in opposite directions through two parallel tubes the size of fire hoses. In rooms as large as cathedrals 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground the magnets will force them into huge detectors to record what happens.
The LHC operates at nearly absolute zero temperature, colder than outer space, which allows the superconducting magnets to guide the protons most efficiently.
Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And scientists still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and supersymmetry they want to answer with CERN's new collider.
The Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas would have been bigger than the LHC, but in 1993 the U.S. Congress canceled it after costs soared and questions were raised about its scientific value
Gillies said the LHC should be ramped up to 3.5 trillion electron volts some time next year, which will be 3 1/2 times as powerful as Fermilab. The two laboratories are friendly rivals, working on equipment and sharing scientists.
But each would be delighted to make the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, the particle or field that theoretically gives mass to other particles. That is widely expected to deserve the Nobel Prize for physics.
More than 8,000 physicists from other labs around the world also have work planned for the LHC. The organization is run by its 20 European member nations, with support from other countries, including observers Japan, India, Russia and the U.S. that have made big contributions."
11/20/2009
11/16/2009
Remember
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
US Military Tribute - Far Away - Nickleback
I Love them all, and Thank them from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you , for everything .
11/10/2009
His last appeal denied, Beltway sniper to be executed tonight
I will not put his picture up, I saw his face and the blank evil eyes and could not look at it again...
My thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, and for this monsters Mother, poor woman to have borne such a thing.
My thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, and for this monsters Mother, poor woman to have borne such a thing.
With his final appeal denied Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Beltway sniper is almost out of time.
Barring a last-minute reprieve by the governor, John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection at 9 tonight in Jarratt. A small town north of Emporia, Jarratt is home to Greensville Correctional Center, where the state carries out all of its death sentences.
Up until the 1950s, the condemned were usually executed within two months of sentencing. These days, seven years is more typical. Muhammad's case took six.
He was convicted in November 2003 by a Virginia Beach jury for his part in a shooting spree that picked off victims in the Beltway area and beyond in 2002.
Since then, Muhammad, 48, has spent most of his days in a one-man cell on Virginia's Death Row, located at Sussex 1 State Prison, about 30 miles west of Smithfield.
Death Row cells measure 73 square feet, have one narrow window, a bed, desk, sink and toilet. Prisoners live in isolation, allowed outside their cells for a total of seven hours per week for exercise and showers. They have no contact with one another or other inmates, but are allowed to have books, a radio and a small TV.
Prior to execution, prisoners are moved to Greensville. Muhammad, inmate No. 331009, has been there since early October, locked in one of three cells built right next to the death chamber.
Today, he'll be permitted visits from immediate family, attorneys and spiritual advisers. He'll select his last meal from the regular prison menu, and must have it four hours before his execution. If he wants to, he'll be allowed to shower two hours before he dies.
Greensville houses both the electric chair and the medical equipment necessary for lethal injection. Prisoners can pick their method.
The chair, handmade from oak and outfitted with leather straps, is the same one used since 1908, when the state conducted its first electrocution. The chair's electrical mechanism was updated in 1991.
Only four prisoners have chosen the chair since lethal injection became an option in 1995. Those who don't make a choice - like Muhammad - automatically get injection.
At the appointed hour, Muhammad will be strapped to a gurney. By then, as with every Virginia execution, protesters will have gathered in a field outside the prison - people opposed to the death penalty no matter how terrible the crime.
Armed with signs, they'll read the names of Muhammad's victims, pray and stand silently as the sentence of the jury is carried out.
An IV line will be inserted into each of Muhammad's arms.
The first of three chemicals will render him unconscious.
The second will stop his breathing.
The third will stop his heart.
11/07/2009
George W. Bush Secretly Visits Fort Hood Victims - FOXNews.com
Bless them Both, What a class act!
This shows the real concern and caring they have for the American people, real compassion.
They have nothing to prove ,just commitment and duty to your fellow American in times of Trouble...
....I miss them.
Can't say I'm fond of the current White House residents. bleh.
11/03/2009
11/01/2009
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
interesting the things that just pop in to my mind....
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