En eller annen gang på midten av 90-tallet ble et vitenskaplig tidsskrift jeg hadde lest trofast i flere år totalt ødelagt. Fra en utgivelse til den neste ble bladet endret fra å ha innhold som jeg syntes var interessant, og dybde som var passe, til å bli en glossy overflatisk søtsuppe.

Ikke det at jeg har noe i mot store bilder og popularisert innhold generelt, men det må være plass til faktisk substans også. I dette tilfellet ble substansen i tidskriftet totalt fortrengt av små intetsigende artikler. I det jeg antar var et forsøk på å nå nye målgrupper mista de i alle fall en fast abonnement som hadde brukt dem som en av de viktigste kildene innenfor teknologi og vitenskap. Det tok meg rundt seks måneder, men i løpet av den tiden mista jeg totalt all respekt bladet og deres skribenter. Det er grenser for hvor lenge en leser som er interessert i fagområdet kan spise kake bare bestående av glasur.

 Foto: una cierta mirada - flickr.com

Hallusinasjon halve livet eller Alzheimers som gammel. Fritt valg. Er ikke forskning gøy?

I dag:

Drinking coffee reduces risk of Alzheimer's:
Middle-aged people who drink moderate amounts of coffee significantly reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a study by Finnish and Swedish researchers showed Thursday.

For to dager siden:

Three cups of brewed coffee a day 'triples risk of hallucinations
Drinking just three cups of brewed coffee a day can triple the chances of suffering from hallucinations, researchers at Durham University have found.

Bra det er noen år siden Deep Impact, Armageddon og lignende. :)

Meteorite: 10-ton Rock Responsible For Fireball In Western Canada

Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada

Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work.

The failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva. - BBC News

Hmmm... et tonn helium... Sabotasje? Eller bare en gjeng forskere som spiller live rollespill, "Donald Duck og protonstrålen"?

Månedens Scientific American ser ut til å være verdt å lese: "Special issue: Will technology kill privacy?"

• The Future of Privacy
• Internet-Age Wiretapping
• Cryptography for Keeping Secrets
• Are You Tagged: RFID Chips
• Beyond Fingerprints: Biometric I.D.
• Privacy in a Facebook Age
• Defending Genetic Confidentiality

Så var det bare å finne litt tid der en kan sette seg ned å lese da.

Large Hadron Collider to Get First Taste of Proton Beam:

Following a test this coming weekend, official start-up date is set for September 10.

After 14 years of construction and $8 billion, the world's mightiest particle accelerator is about to get a taste of what it was built for.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), nearing readiness outside Geneva, Switzerland, was designed to smash protons together at the highest energies ever achieved in hopes of unlocking new secrets of the universe. But to date, all that's traveled through its circular beam pipe are ping-pong balls to test for obstructions.

That's all about to change. This weekend, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, plans to test a key component of the accelerator by injecting a low-intensity beam of protons clockwise into the LHC and letting it travel three kilometers (two miles) through the machine. - SciAm

Hmmm... Hvor var den løse ledningen igjen...?

Og... ja... husk å låne Fords "Electronic Thumb" for dommedag er nå selvsagt satt til 10. september. :)

Will the Large Hadron Collider Doom Us All?

Pluto is finally getting its day in the sun, after being stripped of planetary status by astronomers two years ago.
From now on all similar distant bodies in the solar system will be called "plutoids." - Pluto Gets Respect: Dwarf Planets to Be Called 'Plutoids'

På et vis er hele greia ganske komisk, men viser jo litt hvor problematisk og kontroversielt det kan være å lage definisjoner. Spesielt kanskje når noe blir "demotert". Planet, dverg-planet, plutoid...

Og da kom det plutselig en ny klasse og en ny definisjon. Forenklet sier den sånn ca "dverg-planet utenfor Neptuns bane." For å være sikker på at Pluto fremdeles er en plutoid den tiden den er innenfor Neptuns bane brukes "semimajor axis" i definisjonen. For så vidt logisk.

Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the Sun at a semimajor axis greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighbourhood around their orbit. Satellites of plutoids are not plutoids themselves, even if they are massive enough that their shape is dictated by self-gravity. The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris. It is expected that more plutoids will be named as science progresses and new discoveries are made. - IAU0804: Plutoid chosen as name for Solar System objects like Pluto

Stakkar Ceres som står igjen mutters alene.