Monday morning geek-out

Star Wars and cockatiels (h/t io9):

Never get into life-threatening danger in front of a geek

Especially a Star Wars geek:

The end is nigh...???

Two new polls ask the internetting public to evaluate whether the soon-to-go-online Large Hadron Collider is worth the risk of global annihilation that it poses. Actually, as PZ Myers points out, the polls ask the following: "Is the gaint[sic] particle smasher worth the risk?" and "Which do you think is more likely to destroy the world? Human actions or natural disaster?"

I'm hardly any expert on the LHC, but I have watched a lot of SciFi Saturday movies, so I feel that I am more qualified to bloviate on this issue than your average tenured nuclear physicist. And this thing is BIG. Which means it must be powerful in ways we simply cannot understand.

The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

Damn Swiss. My biggest fear? Those pesky "particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump." They really do exist, even if Big Science won't admit the genius of my research. I call them torchyons in honor of the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four, who once rescued me from falling through broken ice.

But enough about that. What does it mean, really, to "destroy the world"? Does the whole not-quite-spherical thing have to blow up, as shown by the classic and infallible astrophysics documentary Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope? Is it enough for all sentient life to be eradicated? All life period? What about pikas? They're cute, so I'd rather keep them around. If the LHC has any chance of killing pikas, let's preemptively bomb Switzerland. Anyway, here's a handy guide to destroying the earth (h/t MrQhuest, whoever you are). I have my doubts that it can be accomplished solely through subatomic particles (unless they come from subspace and are enhanced with trilithium, of course.)

I recall a book by David Brin called Earth (it must have been nonfiction, of course) about a black hole being mistakenly unleashed from a lab in New Zealand (damn Kiwis), and there was also something about nuking Switzerland--gosh, it's like reading a newspaper. It was a pretty good book.

I think I've gotten it all out of my system. I shall now invoke a corollary of Poe's Law and reassure my reader(s) that I am generally being sarcastic. I think critics of the LHC are just jealous that they don't have one as big (damn Swiss).

Still, I'd look out for any rogue gaint particles after August.

And even if the earth is destroyed, it will always exist as long as we remember it.

Vintage Star Wars

I can't seem to let this Star Wars thing go today. This is kinda cute--I think most people could do something similar on Windows Movie Maker. What makes this cool is that most people wouldn't bother to do so.

Silent Star Wars

See more like this on kontraband.com

Vader the Playa

Well worth the nine minutes of your life that you probably weren't going to use anyway:

Vadersploitation

See more like this on kontraband.com

Up yours, George Lucas

Thanks to Atrios for reminding us that this exists: The Star Wars Holiday Special.

I was four years old when it aired for the first and only time ever, and for the longest time I couldn't quite remember if I imagined the whole thing after drinking some bad juice as a child.



Then I found it on ebay (VHS, of course). It took about six non-consecutive days to watch the whole thing, because I could only handle 20 minutes at a time. I urge you strongly to watch the five-minute clip linked above--it pretty much shows you everything you need to see, and you HAVE to stick it out to the end, when Carrie Fisher sings.

George Lucas supposedly hoped that this never see the light of day after its one airing. While it has its fans, I must say that is one decision by George Lucas I wholeheartedly support, at least in principle.

On the plus side, the special gave us Boba Fett for the first time.