Noooooooooo! (Awesomeness Delayed for CERN)

Via Scientific American, it seems the opening of the Large Hadron Collider (the next particle accelerator to end all particle accelerators) has been officially delayed until May 2008. The breakdown of a superconducting magnet under a high-pressure test last March and a number of other minor delays have ruled out the test run planned for this December.

On the bright side, this gives all us would-be basement particle physicists a chance to catch up, right? I don't know about you, but I'm this close to finding the Higgs boson using a washing machine and an old TV set.

Mr. Wizard (1917-2007)

The one and only Mr. Wizard, Don Herbert, passed away yesterday at the age of 89 and my geeky heart mourns. I watched "Mr. Wizard’s World" on Nickelodeon in the 80’s almost every morning before I went to school (yes, even in high school). My father was a big fan of the original show back in the 50’s. I wanted to BE Mr. Wizard. He’s a big reason I was involved in the Outreach program in graduate school and now do the annual Imagination Day event at a local school.
Visit Mr. Wizard Studios.

I think he deserves a posthumous SPIAS* designation.

*Someone Personally Implementing Awesome Science

Where are the bees going?

Apparently a quarter of the United States honeybee colonies have collapsed! For whatever reason, adult honeybees are not returning to their hives. Read about it at the NY Times.

Is it just me, or does this sound like the plot of a science fiction movie?

Scientists Break Speed of Light

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.

It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it.

The experiment is the first-ever evidence of faster-than-light motion.

[LINK to CBC Story]

Spear-wielding chimps - New Scientist

This story from New Scientist blows my mind. It seems that a group of chimps in Senegal has been repeatedly observed sharpening 2-foot long sticks with their teeth, and then using the sticks to stab bush babies in their dens . The bush babies are then eaten. According to the article, it's the first human-observed instance of a non-human animal using a tool to kill a vertebrate. The article attributes this unusual behavior to the absence of a monkey species used by chimps as a meat source in most chimp-inhabited areas. They've used tools to adapt themselves to an environment outside that where they'd normally live. Sound familiar. Seems like the only thing that humans do, but other animals don't is... blog.

PS: The link contains links to a page with links to three videos. Unfortunately, I can't make out much more than a chimp jumping around a tree, and eating some sort of critter. I find it unpleasant and uninformative. YMMV.