Pharyngula

Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | August 22, 2008 1:35 PM

"Down with Strangelets" - I like that.

Posted by: kid bitzer | August 22, 2008 1:43 PM

nah, the pissed off part is a perfectly acceptable side-effect of following promising leads, but it is not a very good proxy for finding them.

people get pissed off for irrational reasons. it is not a good idea to do what irrational people say, or the opposite of what they say, either, and for the same reason.

so if you are not pissing people off, it may be because you are being too tame or conventional. but it may also be because you are doing exactly the right thing, following the right questions and projects, and their irrational piss-generators are just having a day off as part of their normal, irrational, non-truth-governed way.

the anger of the ignorant is no better of a green light than it is a red light.

ignoring it all together, however, is probably a good idea.

Posted by: Alex Besogonov | August 22, 2008 1:46 PM

Kobra:

Energies at the center of our Sun are about 1000 times _weaker_ than during proton-proton collisions at LHC.

However, there are much more energetic natural events, like Oh-my-God-particles: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/OhMyGodParticle/

Also, LHC now became a sort of in-joke between geeks (kinda like DHMO - http://www.dhmo.org/).

Posted by: Kobra | August 22, 2008 2:42 PM

#6: I didn't mean our sun specifically. I meant stars in general.

Posted by: Richard Hendricks | August 22, 2008 2:56 PM

Haha, I want that last panel on a T-shirt. It's more casual than "Science. It works, bitches".

Posted by: Chris Tucker | August 22, 2008 3:44 PM

"What We Need More Of Is SCIENCE!"

MC Hawking says it all!

MP3 link from songfight.org.

Posted by: Rey Fox | August 22, 2008 3:53 PM

Why is the religious fellow in the third panel talking to a giant corn nut?

And is it too much to ask that these cartoonists be able to draw? I mean, just a little?

Posted by: cthellis | August 22, 2008 3:56 PM

This seems very appropriate right about now:

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2008-04-28-its-like-the-dark-ages.html

Posted by: JoJo | August 22, 2008 4:22 PM

As it happens, the Astronomy Picture of the Day is apropos.

Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core.

Posted by: rob | August 22, 2008 5:11 PM

i like it.

for some reason it reminded me of Bill Murray (i think) in the Ghostbusters:

"Back off man, I'm a scientist!"

Posted by: flabbergasted | August 22, 2008 5:25 PM

sometimes i want to explain science to people in a friendly engaging manner. one that prods them into thinking and learning and relishing the natural wonder of the universe. you know, kinda like Carl Sagan.

then again, other times i want to explain it like Sam Kinnison. you know:

Ahhhhh!!! AAAAHHH! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! you f***ing moron!!! black holes aren't caused by dinosaurs and cro magnons interbreeding on the ark!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | August 22, 2008 5:46 PM

@cthellis -- Ah, drat. Sorry for that then, and thanks for the heads-up. I suppose I should have known.

Posted by: Physicalist | August 22, 2008 6:16 PM

@ Luna-the-cat & cthellis: Actually the poll was Pharyngulated for a while. However, it seems that other denizens of the internet, including lots of wingnuts started crashing too. Rather interesting current flurry on a poll that's three years old.

Given the total number of votes that's over six million, I'm pretty sure that some folks have voted more than once.

Posted by: James Mc | August 22, 2008 7:01 PM

Awesome!

Posted by: mayhempix | August 22, 2008 7:33 PM

But PZ... if you piss framers off by presenting the unvarnished facts, they won't be able to protect everyone from the horrible realities foisted upon them by the scientific process.

Posted by: Kel | August 22, 2008 8:03 PM

hehe, that was cute.

Posted by: Dianne | August 22, 2008 9:27 PM

Only peripherally related, but kind of fun.

Posted by: Azkyroth | August 22, 2008 10:30 PM

I suggest we build a Large Moron Collider. Fire stupid paranoid people like the ones protesting the LHC into each other at relativistic velocities and see if the impact generates a black hole of Teh St00pid as well as poetic justice.

Posted by: SC | August 22, 2008 11:49 PM

Yowza! I has a fan! Thanks for the plug, SC :)

My pleasure.

And semi-OT, I wasn't around because I've been the whole afternoon aghast at the stupidest religious pareidolia ever: People worshipping a Jesus-shaped dog piss stain.

Yes, I think we have a winner. So this

http://nynerd.com/can-you-see-jesus/

sends them into fits of pious pique, but they build a shrine around that. Kooks.

Posted by: tresmal | August 23, 2008 12:35 AM

Azkyroth at #36 said:
"I suggest we build a Large Moron Collider. Fire stupid paranoid people like the ones protesting the LHC into each other at relativistic velocities and see if the impact generates a black hole of Teh St00pid as well as poetic justice."
No! You fool! There are some kinds of knowledge Man was not meant to have!
Colliding a creationist and new-age antivaxxer at high velocities could produce an entity called a "strangenut". This could devastate the country, turning it into land of bloated, unreasoning, credulous, passive, ignorant...Ah shit.

Posted by: Wowbagger | August 23, 2008 3:02 AM

While it's possible to be atheist without the benefits of science - I was happily without a need for a god well before anyone explained evolution to me - it does help that it's making it harder and harder for the religulous to claim their antiquated ooga-booga has merit on any level.

Mind you, as long as there's a single gap in a body of knowledge they'll be fighting to cram their diminishing sky-daddy into it.

Posted by: H.C. | August 23, 2008 5:47 AM

Sorry guys, you are simply ignorant. I am sceptical about the LHC, mainly because of the fermi paradox. There is a reason why no intelligent life spread through the cosmos up to now, and a necessary experiment with unexpected results might be it. I have heard only two valid arguments : (1) the theory that predicts that something can happen also predicts nothing will happen. This can be countered with the remark that we know the theory is incomplete and (2) if venus where inhabitable, which in another setting somehow somewhere must be, we would be colonizing it, which invalidates the disaster-experiment explanation.
Call it being a sceptic : I can be convinced by arguments, but never by popular vote, even in a minority group.
I would gladly pay more taxes to have this LHC stuff running at L2 in outer space, with no gravitational bound to earth.

Posted by: JoJo | August 23, 2008 6:48 AM

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

While the quote from The Third Man is pithy, it doesn't actually reflect reality. In the 14th and 15th Centuries the Swiss spent a good bit of time gaining and keeping their independence from the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach 1386, Battle of Näfels 1388), Charles the Bold of Burgundy (Battle of Grandson 1476), and the Holy Roman Empire (Swabian War 1499). After the Burgundian War, the Swiss Reisläufer had the reputation of being the best infantry in Europe.

Swiss mercenaries were highly regarded and commonly employed for centuries. Until the French Revolution, Swiss mercenaries were an elite part of the French army. Napoleon's army also included Swiss troops, who fought well, and were allowed to keep their distinctive red uniforms (distinguishing them from French troops, who wore blue), although this caused some confusion on the battlefield -- it was the same color worn by Napoleon's enemies in the Spanish campaigns, the British infantry. Swiss mercenaries also fought for Spain and Austria. They were found on both sides of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The last remnant of the Swiss mercenary regiments are the Papal Swiss Guard.

Switzerland itself may have been peaceful. The Swiss were not.

Posted by: Wowbagger | August 23, 2008 8:16 AM

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The pedant in me has to point out that the cuckoo clock is actually German and not Swiss, as Orson Welles discovered after the film was released.

Posted by: JoJo | August 23, 2008 10:14 AM

if venus where inhabitable, which in another setting somehow somewhere must be, we would be colonizing it, which invalidates the disaster-experiment explanation.

As the old saying goes, if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle.

Venus' enormously CO₂-rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the solar system, creating surface temperatures of over 460°C. This makes Venus's surface much hotter than Mercury's with a maximum surface temperature of 420°C, even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. Just to put those temperatures in perspective, lead's melting point is 327 °C (621°F).

I doubt humans will be colonizing Venus any time soon.

Posted by: SC | August 23, 2008 10:51 AM

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.

The "but" in that sentence is key. I'm simplifying, but in "Italy" in this era there were many great artists primarily because those with money and power patronized art and used it in competition for status. There was an institutional infrastructure in place to recruit and train people with artistic talent, and artists were supported with public, private, and ecclesiastical funds. The argument that "warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed" promoted (what is the proposed mechanism?) rather than interfered with artistic production is unfounded. World Wars I and II offer some evidence of the effects of organized violence on the arts and on the preservation of the artistic heritage. Not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan,...

Posted by: Dahan | August 23, 2008 11:55 AM

SC @ 52,

Exactly. warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed have often been shown to undermine the arts and not to have a promoting effect. Think back on Germany circa 1920's and 30's. The Bauhaus, de Stihl, and other artistic movements that are some of the most important in the last 500 years were just hitting their stride. However, all of them were irreprably damaged by the Nazi's (do I fall to Godwin's law law here, or do I get a pass?) attack on entartete kunst "degenerate art".

Some of the artist were killed, others fled to different countries, but we'll never know just how far they could have gone if not disrupted. Reminds me of Hypatia and The Library at Alexandria.

Posted by: QrazyQat | August 23, 2008 12:00 PM

Nicely framed as always, PZ.

Posted by: MikeG | August 23, 2008 12:07 PM

Dahan's in the clear, JoJo. It's properly possessive. "Nazi's...attack."

Posted by: MikeG | August 23, 2008 12:21 PM

Only if there was only one Nazi involved (you could say Hitler, but it would be a stretch). :)

Damn!

More coffee. Must have more coffee.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | August 23, 2008 1:17 PM

Oh, and the solution to the Fermi Paradox? They are here - we just happen to call them Hungarians.

ROTFL!!!

Reminds me of a New Scientist headline: "Where do we come from? And why do some of us speak Basque?"

Posted by: Azkyroth | August 23, 2008 11:36 PM

Can you produce a plausible mechanism by which the LHC could destroy civilization, H.C.? (As in, one that reflects the proposer having learned physics in school rather than from Godzilla movies).

Posted by: Azkyroth | August 23, 2008 11:47 PM

There is a reason why no intelligent life spread through the cosmos up to now, and a necessary experiment with unexpected results might be it.

I consider it much more plausible that, every time another civilization attempted to perform an experiment that was necessary to develop the technology to make interstellar expansion practical, a horde of smarmy Chicken Littles descended upon it with squawking and flying feathers about the end of the world, ultimately managing to scare away funding for the project.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | August 24, 2008 1:36 PM

But the point could be that the situation described in the referred paper leads to stuff hat is not gravitaionally bound to earth. Suppose a black hole is created : it is small enough to zip through anything before being noticed and leave earth.

By definition, black holes have mass.

1) How do you propose a black hole created in the LHC could achieve escape velocity in one of the right directions?
2) You still act as if you hadn't followed the link in comment 6. Collisions much more energetic than anything the LHC will achieve happen all the time, and not one has yet created a black hole!

Posted by: Neil B | August 24, 2008 9:32 PM

OK, so that includes pissing off the current generation of scientists.