What’s The Matter?
Posted on | September 23, 2008 at 6:08 am | 5 Comments
The Large Hadron Collider experienced problems this past weekend and had to be taken offline. I don’t believe the reason given for the downtime. Instead, I’ve come up with a list of my own possible explanations:
- Tunnel clogged with protons; scientists trying to locate largest bottle of Drano ever produced.
- Day after the LHC went online, several CERN scientists woke up with goatees and evil thoughts. Collider shutdown while they figure out how to get back to their home universe.
- God said to shut it off – it’s keeping him awake.
- Ray Palmer went missing inside while searching for subatomic civilizations.
- Higgs boson particle found on first day; turned out to be “not that exciting”.
- Have to recover the frozen bodies of two scientists who were trying to have sex in tunnel.
- Dr Strange cast a spell to stop the release of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
- Not big enough; Scientists mistakenly thought they had ordered an Extra Large Hadron Collider.
- 1960s-style British Police Box inexplicably stuck in Collider tunnel.
- Tiny black holes consuming sandwiches in CERN kitchen.
- SciFi Channel movie of the week Accelerated Disaster filming on location at Collider Site.
- Necessary retrofitting of Collider due to Tom Cruise donating $1.2 billion to project in order to “secure seat on the tunnel ride”.
- US Republicans demanded that the Collider be shutdown until after the election so they can then claim “See, it’s the end of the world!”
- Scientists found that the Collider only existed when they observed it.
- The band Hawkwind unavailable for dedication ceremony until late November.
- Protons from the Swiss side of the Collider refusing to collide, wishing to remain neutral.
- Off-by-one error in the Fortran code controlling the Collider caused a wormhole to open to the past, through which Amelia Earhart and her plane were transported to the 21st Century, damaging vital equipment.
- Fifth dimension opened up by initial Collider experiments; found to be made of “Procastination Particles”.
- Activation of Collider caused an instance of a “time loop”, where a period of time was repeated over and over again.
- Activation of Collider caused an instance of a “time loop”, where a period of time was repeated over and over again.
- Activation of Collider caused an instance of a “time loop”, where a period of time was repeated over and over again.
- Activation of Collider caused an instance of a “time loop”, where a period of time was repeated over and over again until someone inside the loop remembered the past iterations and was able to enact actions to end it.
Latre.
Please note: The main intent of this post was to annoy frequent commenter InfK, who 1) loves physics, and 2) hates “list humor”.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 50°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Elbow Blues” (The 88)
- “Thanksgiving” (Poi Dog Pondering)
- “Scalpel City” (Trotsky Icepick)
- “Words To Sing” (Papas Fritas)
- “Baby Body” (Youth Group)
- “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures” (Outrageous Cherry)
- “The Real Adventure” (Bill Nelson)
Pet Peeve of the Day:Encountering the enduring legacy of a skunk on my morning run. Bonus peeve: Being passed by a jogger going much faster than I. Bonus bonus peeve: Not bringing my gloves with me on a morning that’s cold enough for them. I can barely type!
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “despite my clocking out for lunch, forgot to clock in”.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Heavenly Sword (PS3)
Comments
5 Responses to “What’s The Matter?”
September 23rd, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
Au contraire! In fact I like list humor so much that I’m one of the winners of the Letterman show website “Top 10″ contest this week! It’s the wife (former standup comic) who doesn’t like it – I merely agree that it’s “easy comedy”, but don’t count that as a negative…
That said, I sometimes have a sore spot for people making unfair fun of big science projects, but most of that gets triggered by ignorant jokes against NASA – the LHC leak, while understandable for a project this ambitious, is still liable for a jab or two.
September 23rd, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
Excellent list!
However: Please stop oversharing – I really don’t want to know what you did with your heavenly sword.
September 23rd, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
Update: They’re now saying the LHC won’t go back online until “early spring 2009″. Plenty of time to get your affairs in order with the Big Man upstairs!
September 23rd, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
The leak itself probably takes a couple days to fix. Warming and then re-chilling the section involved takes weeks, though, and the system was already going to be shut down in November anyway (because Geneva needs the electricity to, y’know, heat homes in the winter…) – hence, the long delay.
September 24th, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
That’s some funny s**t! When I grow up, I want to be able to blog about nothing as humorously as you! Seriously, though, I’m jealous!!!!