Maternal Instincts
Mar. 19th, 2005 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistSo today I came thisclose to falling into Lake Titicaca. Trying to do an interview on a moving boat with a shitty tripod is...interesting. Anyway, when at one moment it seemed inevitable that either I or my camera were about to end up overboard, my body's instinctual first reaction, without any cognitive assessment of the situation or decision-making process was to protect the camera. Fortunately I was pulled back into the boat by my subjects, who thought it was hilarious, and it's a good thing too, because I nearly got hypothermia as it was. On the boatride back to Puno I was shivering uncontrollably. Camera viewfinder used as impromptu mirror indicated that my lips turned blue (and I assure you I white balanced properly) and I psychosomatized that my teeth were made of ice, which was a weird sensation and also made me think of a book from my childhood, "Old Man Hottabych", where a young pioneer lets an ancient Arabian genie out of a bottle and wackiness ensues. Anyway, at some point the goodnatured genie of the title, whose ideas of bling-bling are still more Arabian Nights than Victory of Communism, makes all of his teeth gold. Later in the book, while on a tour of the Arctic, the protagonists discover another bottle, this one housing the genie's much less benevolently inclined brother. More wackiness ensues, but the first thing that the newly liberated and very envious brother does is turn all of his teeth into diamonds. This, of course, turns out to be a terrible idea, because he looks toothless unless sunlight hits his teeth at just the right angle, and also they keep cutting his mouth, but he does not want to admit his fuckup, so he suffers with his diamond teeth.
Anyway, excuse me, I am a bit tipsy becuase upon return to town I had to self-administer a number of hot (or not!) alcoholic drinks (coffee with Bailey's, coffee with Amaretto, wine, you get the idea) on account of being chilled to the bone. Despite all the drinking and the scalding hot soup I am still cold, which might indicate hypothermia now that I think about it, but, fortunately, I am drunk, so I don't care.
Despite being drunk I DO care about "lab fireball may be black hole":
A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.
These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole...
This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.
Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.
The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation.
However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole.
Somehow the first thing that comes to mind is the (kinda offensive) Buffy Thanksgiving episode in season 4, where the wounded Chumash Indian turns into a bear and charges Spike, who yells at Buffy: "A bear! You made a bear!" and after she squeals "I didn't mean to!" he screams "Undo it! Undo it!"
PS: Do we like my new icon?
Anyway, excuse me, I am a bit tipsy becuase upon return to town I had to self-administer a number of hot (or not!) alcoholic drinks (coffee with Bailey's, coffee with Amaretto, wine, you get the idea) on account of being chilled to the bone. Despite all the drinking and the scalding hot soup I am still cold, which might indicate hypothermia now that I think about it, but, fortunately, I am drunk, so I don't care.
Despite being drunk I DO care about "lab fireball may be black hole":
A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.
These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole...
This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.
Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.
The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation.
However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole.
Somehow the first thing that comes to mind is the (kinda offensive) Buffy Thanksgiving episode in season 4, where the wounded Chumash Indian turns into a bear and charges Spike, who yells at Buffy: "A bear! You made a bear!" and after she squeals "I didn't mean to!" he screams "Undo it! Undo it!"
PS: Do we like my new icon?
