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The LHC on track for summer launch

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Part of the huge LHC colliderAs a Physics student doing a masters project on a computer simulation of CERN’s new particle supercollider, I’ve got a vested interest in the progress of the real thing. CERN is reporting good progress on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and thinks it is on track to start producing results this summer.

The LHC accelerates two beams of protons in opposite directions around its 27-kilometre diameter ring, until the two beams meet and collide with huge amounts of energy. From this energy, particle physicists hope new particles will form that we haven’t seen before. Chief among those prospective discoveries is the Higgs Boson, which would explain why the other particles have mass.

The Guardian’s weekly science podcast talks about the prospects of finding new science at the LHC, whilst Fermilab has a good summary of the other potential new things the LHC might find when it begins colliding later this year.

[via Science Daily, image by poluz]

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Scaled Composites to show the world SpaceShip Two this month

I can’t wait to see what the new Scaled Composites rocketplane will look like. On the 23rd they will uncover it to the world, and tests will start in the middle of this year.

Even more interesting, one of the flight paths for Virgin Galactic is not just to fly people up to the edge of space and back, but to take them up over by the poles to let passengers experience the northern lights by flying right through them.

Also of note at SpaceFlight Info, that the system is planned to put small satellites into orbit, making Scaled Composites a bit more than just a sub-orbital company…

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Other uses for sperm …

Sperm-and-egg … besides the one obvious use that has been known about for some time, of course. [Image from Wikipedia]

First off, it appears that certain proteins in the semen of fruit flies have the power to do more than just fertilize eggs: they affect the physiological behaviour of the female, making her produce more eggs and become less interested in sex with other males. Possessive husbands the world over can probably see a commercial application for that bit of research.

But here’s another: human sperm can move at a rate of seven inches per hour, which doesn’t sound too fast until you consider how tiny they are. The “flagellum” tail of a sperm is an incredibly efficient biological propulsion system at the microscopic scale, which is one of the reasons researchers are looking to recreate the same systems as powerplants for medical nanobots. [Via SlashDot]

[tags]sperm, molecular, biology, nanotech[/tags]
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Oil hits $100

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Crude oil prices have rocketed up since 1999Today oil prices touched $100 a barrel for the first time in history, marking a growing important trend for the near future. Even when historic prices are adjusted for inflation the price has been very slightly higher (at $104.70 during the Iran revolution in 1980). Crude prices reached a high of $97 in November and then fell, only to rise again after the new year.

Peak oil, and the other associated peaks (peak food production, peak metals and peak coal, among others) are a real concern over the next fifty years. When I participated in the collaborative fiction project World Without Oil in May, I thought peak oil was an interesting problem for the future but I wasn’t expecting prices to jump from $50 in January to $100 today. Although oil is always a volitile market, it looks like we may be hitting the point where supply can’t keep up with the increased demand. In the end $100 is just a number but the trend of oil, gold and other commodities mean many of the conservations needed to combat climate change may be forced on us by price alone.

[via the oil drum, where two people had a $1000 bet on whether oil would hit $100 a barrel in 2007. It didn’t, by one trading day, graph by futures.tradingcharts]

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Regenerating Nerves

Via Technology Review:

In the latest issue of Advanced Materials, researchers Christiane Gumera and Yadong Wang from the Georgia Institute of Technology announced that they have triggered the regrowth of nerve cells using a polymer coated with chemical structures that resemble acetylcholine, a common neurotransmitter. The research, which is the first to combine a neurotransmitter and a polymer, could one day lead to treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and spinal-cord injuries.

“Lots of people have done biopolymer work,” says Christine Schmidt, a biomedical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. “But this demonstrates that a polymer with a neurotransmitter can be used to guide growth in the nervous system.”

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