I confess to feeling a faint twinge of envy at all the news about the Large Hadron Collider. It's Big Science, it's got lots of shiny fancy gadgets, and it's like NASCAR for nerds — they get to spin things together at high speed and smash them together. We biologists lack anything quite so dramatic.
Scientists from the Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute (EARI) announced that the first test of the Giant Animal Smasher (GAS) will begin on December 19, 2008, the 41st anniversary of the premiere of Dr. Dolittle.
Dr. Thomas Malwin, head of the research project, said, "The first test runs will only accelerate microscopic life-forms like bacteria and viruses to high speeds, but theoretically the GAS can handle animals as large as squirrels, hence the squirrel smasher moniker."
Biologists from around the globe hope the GAS will unlock the secrets of the so-called "Darwin particle" that could unlock the secrets to life.
Ha! Physicists only smash together tiny invisible things that require detectors to be seen. Our stuff will be much more photogenic, require splash goggles to witness, and a firehose to clean out the chambers afterwards.
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You putting your hand up for the first human test PZ? :D
Amadan, one of the resident wits at After The Bar Closes, has an excellent post on the Discovery Institute's own LHC, the Logicless Harangue Collider. Read it here, and start your day off with a belly laugh!
Ah, look who's got Physics Envy!
Argh, sick! Luckily it's humor, otherwise you would have massive PETA demonstrations crowding around your faculty.
Can I put my request in for a possum smash?
I wonder how many flatulent jokes this post is going to inspire?
Oh, yes, I really am setting the wrong tone, aren't I... sorrrry :-)
The Human Genome Project cost a bit, too. http://www.genome.gov/11006943 has the HGP costing "about $2.7 billion in FY 1991 dollars" (I'm not a money type, so don't ask me what an 'FY dollar' is...)
http://www.lhc.ac.uk/about-the-lhc/faqs.html has this for costs for the LHC: "the collider (£2.1bn), the detectors (£575m)."
So its not that much more that the HGP, esp. once inflation is applied to 1991 dollars to bring them to current values. Hmmm...
Mind you, this seems to leave out running costs. (?) I wonder what the power bill for the thing is! :-)
Wait!!! You hold on just a minute.
Are you suggesting that PETA has a sense of humor?
No, you don't. You most emphatically don't want to know what the power bill for the thing is.
I'm not either, but I'd guess at "fiscal year" (i.e. adjusted for inflation so that they correspond to 1991 dollars in the same way that one adjusts the box-office takings of, say, Gone With the Wind in order to compare it meaningfully with the takings of The Phantom Menace).
Fiscal Year
They actually do have a machine that shoots chickens at airplanes at high speeds, but it's for engineering, not biology.
In biology labs, however, they often put mice in blenders. There's no reason you couldn't make a bigger splash with the public by smashing them together at high speed instead.
Giraffes?
Just sorta brainstorming here...
Let's smash monkeys starting with Bush and McCain, then move on to the rest of them...
Only an intermediate step to the Large Holy Roller Collider. With minor adjustments, many other obnoxious sects can be accommodated. And PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals?) will get off your back.
Ahh man, that was a good laugh right there.
I've got some critters in my yard that I'll package up and send them.
#9 & 10: Yes, of course: thanks. Couldn't think what it'd be at the time I wrote.
#11: - no use for a 1km radius high-speed centrifuge?
#8: The FAQ mentions 120MW... ouch.
As usual, Mother Nature Old Man Natural Selection is way ahead of us. There already is a high-speed small-animal smasher; it's called a peregrine falcon.
can it do anything with these bloody noisy cicadas that are keeping me awake?
The great thing about this is that it's a way to bring science to the people. All this talk of quarks and bosons just puts people off.
But smashing furry little critters together? That's something the whole family can enjoy.
@20: Someone needs to do a Simpsons' episode on it...
As for spinning high(er) energy beams into things that require detectors to see, synchrotrons are used by crystallogrphers. But, as you were. Not quite in the same league as GAS machines anyway.
Very funny.
Now, perhaps someone can design a creationist smasher in search of the idiot particle? Or a holy cracker smasher...
Clearly this machine will lead to the evolution of sqirrels with air bags.
Smashing squirrels? Hah! We've had monkey smashing technologies for years!
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30420
Hmm. I am reminded of a project I recently encountered for placing hedgehogs into orbit. A noble cause, that. You can even purchase little goggles for them.
However, the goggles? They do nothing.
They're gonna smash squirrels?!
SWEET.
Nothing quite like bloody mega fauna.
The funniest part of that page is all of the squirrel-related ads generated by the dumbest of internet computers.
@ #2
Amadan is a comic genius, as are many others at AtBC.
I proposed the development Large Hadrosaur Collider in May.
I picture Young God, on some sort of a dare,
'Cos all of the older, cool gods are all there,
Saying "what if I take all the stuff there was ever
And, hard as I can, smash it all up together?"
The other gods, laughingly, dare Him to try,
And because he's an insecure kind of a guy,
He does it--he wants to be one of The Gang:
And that is what happened "before the Big Bang."
I thought I had read about this somewhere before. I try to keep up on the latest scientific advancements and find the Onion is the place most billionaires (and Alakan govs) get their science news.
#19, my cat can only eat so many, have you thought about this solution? http://www.wlwt.com/news/2968023/detail.html
Methinks the envy cometh from the coolness of the ding... tis the fact that biology just ain't got de beat man.
check it out...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
Preliminary testing has already begun: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2fd_1220835852
Forget smashing squirrels, I want smashing pumpkins.
I used to work for an aircraft manufacturer and they had a test rig which fired dead chickens at engines to see what happened. Rumour has it that one day someone forgot to defrost the chicken first with predictable results.
I have two suggestions.
1) Cut down on costs by using large catapults
2) Use kittens
As a representative of PETA I find this experiment abhorrent. We have a responsibility as human beings to take care of the other animals on this planet and your belittling and irreverent mocking of this news story is shocking. I shall be on the phone to Alicia Silverstone this afternoon to report to her about your disgusting behaviour. You should all be ashamed of yourselves!
I'm pretty sure this is the technique used to create the animal in my blog header-- part seal, part squirrel-- with a nice big saddle.
Oh, the creationists found the idiot particle years ago and have mastered its use.
Speaking of which, what's the over-under on this story being mistaken for a real story in the creationist blogosphere?
nice
@ Cronan
Are you trying to generate Poptarts?
Why? Are we looking for a Ceiling Cat-Particle?
Hey, at least biologists know their objects of study exist and don't have to start papers with things like, "Assuming squids exist..."
http://www.lab-initio.com/screen_res/nz011.jpg
poke@45,
Oh yes? http://www.jstor.org/pss/2406062
That was great, made my evening.
Hmm-- I thought that the Interstate highway system was the Giant Animal Smasher. It even smashes humans.
Not only did The Onion report on the monkey collider, before that they had the story on the puppy crusher (sadly, this one appeared before The Onion went online, so only photos are readily available):
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40041
Oh my, that was hilarious! That picture of the flying squirrels is priceless.
Renier @ #22:
The idiot particle? I thought it was called the "moron".
I heard a story about somebody putting a mouse in the particle beam at Brookhaven years ago. It was fiction. I hope.
Finally, my theory of Very Reducible Complexity shall be vindicated!
-TTm
How long before someone totally doesn't realize you're joking and claims this is another "harm of science".
Ben?
Mark?
J_w23 @ #4:
It doesn't matter if it's a joke. What if some impressionable young children were to read this? They might build a squirrel-collider of their own!
I confess that I am not impressed by the prospect of eventually being able to smash squirrels together. Hasn't anyone else seen the Internet rumors about the likely existence of the Super Porcine Acceleration Machine at Hormel's top-secret research facility? There's evidence in your supermarket that they've been using it successfully for decades.
Can we see about firing two CREATIONIST at each other?
If anyone wants to look at a shameful self serving post on the LHC, just visit Mr. Banana's blog.
#56: Our school science fair's coming up in another month. That might give us enough time...
You're beaten again, PZ. The Intelligent Design (Europe) Organized Teleogy Society (IDEOTS) is starting work on the Large Hadrosaur Collider which will be able to smash organisms the size of moderately huge dinos together. Sorry.
They hoping to discover exotic animals in the experiments and thereby prove that we were magicked into existence.
#41: keep an eye on bbspot over the next couple of weeks. Brian regularly publishes email from individuals whom he describes as "BBelievers".
@ #52 (and by extension, #22)
The Idiot particle (pI) is made of Morons, Creatatons, and Nutterinos. Scientists are still searching for the missing mass and expect to see signs of Quacks after the new experiments are complete.
Thank you so much for the link, Albatrossity @ #2. I needed a laugh like that this morning.
So what is the last thing to pass through the squirrels mind as it hits the lead target at .99C?
Collider Cat sez "I Can Haz Skwerel Burger?"
Ya know, a coffee-keyboard warning would've been nice...
*grumbles*
*stalks off to find paper towels*
NO!
No no no, you 'biologists' cant go about messing with highly accelerated bacteria and mammals like this! Dont you know that it could open up a giant esophogas that could swallow the entire planet and kill us all! Or if two squirrels are combined it could form into a 'squirrelet' which will turn everything it touches into more squirrels, until everyone on the planet is a squirrel! I can't believe our taxpayer dollars are going to this!
I just emitted several lulz.
I keep thinking of a greyhound track with two greyhounds chasing hares going in opposite directions.
"Posted by: Epikt | September 11, 2008 9:45 AM
I heard a story about somebody putting a mouse in the particle beam at Brookhaven years ago. It was fiction. I hope."
In the 70s, we put mice in a Bevalac to see if they'd get cataracts.
They did.
Only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds!
And I thought the LHC was cool. I am just now compiling a list of candidate animals.....Will it cope with Homo sapiens too? If so this list could get SERIOUSLY long
:)
When will PETA deny the Theory of Evolution based on the idea that humans could not devolve from apes?
*65
"So what is the last thing to pass through the squirrels mind as it hits the lead target at .99C?"
err...his ass....?
@ Rick from SaG
Bah. The Bass-O-Matic company had comparable technology in the '70s. Don't try to pass off expired patents as innovation!
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
I don't know if you guys have seen the live LHC webcams; they're pretty cool.
If you want to make cheese you have to bang the cows together.
Why do I think "creation science" when I read the article?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Perhaps now we can finally shut Kirk "Crocoduck" Cameron up. Granted, the GAS can only handle animals as large as a squirrel, but I'm sure the boffins at EARI know what small animals to knock together.
Of course, this can also be a step toward more evidence for my "Cow/Anti-Cow" theory of matter, which contends that the basic particle of all matter is cow feces. I haven't worked on it much since 1993, but this opens up a ton of new experiemntal possibilities!
By using GAS, is this how we get road kill?
I vote for squirrels, purely for the revenge factor.
Allow me to explain.
I have easy access to the American River bike trail, which is quite beautiful.
However, it is riddled with squirrels that are very content to sit eating nuts... Until you get within 15 feet of them, then they start darting unpredictably. At one point, we saw one carrying a paper bag full of nuts across the trail, which was pretty funny.
But nearly every rider I know has hit one or more of them. They cause accidents. One even jumped up onto a friend's leg, held on, and wouldn't let go.
They're a dangerous nuisance.
Oh, and yellow-jackets. I've been stung repeatedly out there. Now, tell me, of what use are yellow-jackets, besides getting under your jersey and then getting mad, and stinging repeatedly as their response? That's THREE TIMES in the last week for me.
I still like the idea of the Large Hardon Collider, though. That was a pretty funny spelling error right there.
Amazing mental picture.
Stephen@80
I am not opposed to cutting Kirk up into squirrel-sized pieces and flinging him at himself. Or cut Ray Comfort up into squirrel-sized pieces and jettison his bits at Kirk's. I see it as a win-win situation.
So, you look at their Large Hadron and get all envious, but it's what you do with your pipette that counts!
Dustin #77
They don't work for me. All I see is blackness. OH SHIT!
Meh, blockquote messed up. :-(
(should have clicked the link before attempting humour)
:-D
On the serious side, it would be quite interesting to accelerate a squirrel up to light speed and leave it their for a few months. This would provide biological proof of Einstein's theory that time slows down near the speed of light. :)
Jason @68:
No no, a squirrel singularity thus formed would swiftly be eaten up by a hawk, and so pose no danger.
At last, a means to recreate the rare and fabled pushmi-pullyu. Dr. Dolittle would be very pleased at this development.
That's the first time I've seen a peta-POE. And like a common creotard POE, it's hard to tell the scorn/sarcasm from the real thing because when it comes to irrationality and ignorance, PetaTards are not much different from CreoTards.
I used to work for Rolls-Royce Aero and actually used one. I too heard claims of forgetting to defrost the chicken (actually the chickens were frozen in aspic - or a similar jelly - so that the composite lump was a reasonably close fit in the barrel) but never saw actual evidence. You should see the exciting events that whacking a chicken into a set of RB 211 fanblades spinning at full power engenders. And no, the chicken is not usable for chickenburgers afterwards.
"We biologists lack anything quite so dramatic."
Speak for yourself. Biology is far more challenging, interesting and exciting especially for us that have spend so much time doing field work. Most of my physicist friends have greater envy for my work and lifestyle, than I ever did for theirs.
doG damn it, I was eating sunflower seeds and now I have husks all over my monitor. I going to quit eating while reading your blog.
Best Physics vs Biology duel ever.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/lolscience_now.php
I love it!
For a second there, I thought it was gonna be a "Microcosmic God" sort of thing. Contained environment, artificial selection, accelerated evolution, all that jazz.
DREADCO-North is accepting architeuctural tenders for building a 1700 kilometer permafrost tunnel to connect our existing animal injection accelerator in Frostbite Falls with the new RRC at our auroraboreal research facility in Wasilla.
The Relativistic Rocky Collider will employ the BORIS ( Boson Oscillating Really Immense Squid) system, in which the undulating electromagnetic tentacles of giant superconducting SQUID devices snidely whiplash flying squirrel and moose to superluminal velocities, colliding them inside DREADCO's detector array in Elk's Knee Bend Saskatchewan.
In addition to copious Higgs boson production, it is hoped that relativistic contraction will convert at least one of the flying squirrels into a quantum black mole.
DREADCO-North is accepting architeuctural tenders for building a 1700 kilometer permafrost tunnel to connect our existing animal injection accelerator in Frostbite Falls with the new RRC at our auroraboreal research facility in Wasilla.
The Relativistic Rocky Collider will employ the BORIS ( Boson Oscillating Really Immense Squid) system, in which the undulating electromagnetic tentacles of giant superconducting SQUID devices snidely whiplash flying squirrel and moose to superluminal velocities, colliding them inside DREADCO's detector array in Elk's Knee Bend Saskatchewan.
In addition to copious Higgs boson production, it is hoped that relativistic contraction will convert at least one of the flying squirrels into a quantum black mole.
Best Physics vs Biology duel ever.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/lolscience_now.php
I am going to file an injunction against this machine being started up.
I don't believe the safety issues have been taken into account. With the LHC if something goes wrong if could create a black hole and condense everything into a singularity. With this squirrel smasher, if something goes wrong it could make us all nuts.
But what do we mathematicians do? What's our toy?
The Large Head-Desk Collider?
Double post caused by squirrels with too many post its in their paws.
If you haven't already seen it, this is priceless:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7598996.stm
It ends:
"I am in fact immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around and try to scare people. This non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes intelligent design amongst other things.
"The only serious issue is why so many people who don't have the time or inclination to discover for themselves why this stuff is total crap have to be exposed to the opinions of these half-wits."
Now THAT's a scientist framing an argument!
Thank You! I haven't had a good belly laugh for some time. This was just the break I needed from All Palin - All the Time ...
Before I retired from the Air Force I used to train people on the human centrifuge in San Antonio. One arm of the centrifuge had a gondola for human use and the other end had a shorter arm with a mechanism for securing cages for animal centrifuge studies. By the time I worked there animal studies were a thing of the past but one infamous story lived on: Because the animal arm was shorter the centrifuge had to be spun at a higher rate in order to get the same number of G forces. Pigs were often used as an animal model to study effects of G forces on the cardiovascular system since their circulatory systems are similar. As you can probably guess, on one such study the cage holding the pig broke off the centrifuge spreading piggy bits around the centrifuge room. Unfortunately, no Higgs boson was discovered, but they did verify the existance of the pig's boson as at the moment of impact the pig was both a wave and a particle.
Awesome, PZ posts a link to BBspot.
It's so beatifull when I see two of my favorite sites get close and be friends.
Bunny has his own collider:
http://www.bunny-comic.com/?id=1230
Incey-wincey, a spider,
Got trapped inside the collider.
His legs, eight, articulated,
Were instantly particulated.
While I enjoyed the parody, I was struck by the reference to 41st anniversary of Dr. Dolittle. I distinctly remember reading Dr. Dolittle stories more than 41 years ago. So I looked it up. The Rex Harrison movie of Dr. Dolittle came out in 1967 but Hugh Lofting's stories about Dr. Dolittle started back in 1920. So even when I read them in the early '50s they were already 30 years old. The movie was nowhere as good as the books.
Sadly, funding for the Super Animal Propeller and Smasher (SAPS) was cancelled by congress due to concerns over the cost and necessity of the research. Had it been completed, SAPS would have been capable of accelerating and smashing animals as large as a raccoon.
You know Hrab is going want to smash a puffin in that bad boy, not too much bigger than a squirrel, eh? Maybe a baby puffin. Oh, man the SPCBP is so gonna put me on their shit list.
Pfft.
Your puny squirrel smasher is nothing against a Tropical Cyclone Collider (TCC).
Puny squirrel smasher can only kill two squirrels at once. The last TCC run ,codenamed 'Gustav', killed thousands of nutria in one trial.
TCC also has the power of several nuclear bombs. Try to stop that PETA!
But there have been some failures. Previously in a trial known as 'Katrina', Longleaf pines were employed to smash squirrels into what is commonly referred to as a pancake. Unfortunately these squirrel flapjacks did not lead us any closer to the Darwin particle due to tree debris ruining the specimens.
But better luck has been with the species Homo sapiens. Currently a kite-surfing subject during the 'Fay' trial is undergoing medical tests to determine if he possesses the Darwin Award particle.
We await the results of the current trial 'Ike'.
Awesome,
Just expect calls from PETA on this.... not that they matter.
Think it will answer the great mystery of how Biomass is formed???
MIT was thinking of building an animal accelerator back in the early 70s to study the effect of turtle rays. It was based on animal magnetism.
the big bang THEORY.... the universe was formed by a big bang? what was here before then? in my simple way of thinking,you cannot create something out of nothing and if you look deeper,how can there be nothing? i cannot imagine nothing-there is always something-try proving with physics the idea of a nothing? there are atomic particles , sub atomic particles and thats what we no of- it is impossable to have a space with absolutely nothing in it-impossable period. there goes the big bang theory.
"Think it will answer the great mystery of how Biomass is formed???"
Never mind that, will it answer the burning mystery of how babby is formed??
Big science, yodelay hee hoo.
So Paul W...you might want to actually READ about physics and cosmology and the Big Bang theory before you cavalierly dismiss it. Otherwise you kinda look like an idiot. Remember, many of the commenters here are actual scientists.
From that BBC article -
What? plant RNA came from the big bang? Does anyone know the source of the drugs these people are on? I'm..... I'm....... oh never mind.
Nearing Zero cartoon:
Fairness Doctrine for all sciences to access laboratory resources is in play - more work for janitors!
http://www.lab-initio.com/screen_res/nz011.jpg
Nearing Zero cartoon:
Fairness Doctrine for all sciences to access laboratory resources is in play - more work for janitors!
Biologist Supercollider Cartoon
Here is a collection of some of the more asinine comments about the LHC made on the BBC Have your say website..
Read and weep....
"It is probable that the "Big Bang" theory is wrong. You actually need an atmosphere to hear a bang"
"Think Wisely and Dont think We can go Above God.. He is the King of the world"
"Being a student myself i found it rather distrating at school to focus nowing that an experiment was going on that could petentional destroy the human race and cause the earth to implode"
"Assuming the experiment confirms the existence of the universe (which i am 100% in doubt)"
"i just cant belive that the world could be over in a millionth of a second just because some scientists wanted to fire some beams"
"it wont prove any think becauses no matter what people r still going to belive that god created the universes and have there belives"
"I think that if we was surposed to know how the world came to be here we would already know"
"What a wates of money to find out something which didn't happen, when you can buy a Bible for under a fiver and read the truth of how the world was created"
"I think that god will be displeased with this and we should not enrage the beast"
"Why are we bothering to conduct experiments to find out how the universe was created when we already know God did it?"
"scientists are wasting time and putting people lifes at risk just to experiment its disgusting"
"Who created the particles they are trying to crash?
Apparently the big bang was the start of all things, so nothing exploded! how does crashing something equate to it?"
"No one knows what electricity really is. They can just try and clutch at loose theories. Atoms cannot be seen - so how can they exist?"
"not that such failures will stop the atheists believing we're all here by random chance, all from nothing for no reason or purpose with ape ancestry..."
I think the first step is doing more professional research into squirrel accelerators:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/oh,-food!-i.ll-just-_-wahhhhhh!!/squirrel-ca…
http://gizmodo.com/5048294/vertical-squirrel-launcher-takes-furry-terro…
Another Primate, #58:
"Can we see about firing two CREATIONIST at each other?"
Now THERE is an immediately useful and practical application: That would produce God and Anti-God, which would promptly annihilate each other.
Let's start funding it now.
Some of those comments on the BBC have got to be poes. Otherwise it's freaking scary.
You might be interested (ick...) in an event during the construction of Plant Vogtle, on the Savannah River.
A long run of piping in a raw water system was to be flushed to remove construction debris before installing the last spool piece. Sometime during the previous week, an opossum had decided to investigate the run of 12" pipe. Unfortunately for the opossum, said piping teed, and necked down to 4 inches some distance before the outlet.
The piping volume was large enough for the admitting 12" motorized gate valve to get mostly open before anything was flushed out of the pipes. When the 'possum hit the neck, several hundred feet of pipe jumped due to the effect of "possum hammer". The system then shot the poor mammal's remains, still in one piece but definitely suboptimal, some 100 feet before it struck the ground.
Lesson: mammal acceleration must not be disruptive of the projectile.
All of you are missing the point--what biology lacks is a clever viral video/rap. *That's* why people care about what the hell cern is.
In case you're that far behind, here it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
So that's what the roadrunner was doing to Wile E Coyote.
Actually, come to think of it, there were also some physic experiments. "How long can a Coyote float in mid-air before gravity notices and the Coyote Impact Experiment is initiated?"
Why is it never Rats or Pigeons that get the smashup treatment.
Or maybe the Mosquito-Teva-tron? Accelerates mosquitoes to the energy of a locomotive engine at 100 MPH.
It could happen.