It started with some ideas for a few hands-on exhibits, grew to a small Foucault pendulum and then the Chair of the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Enology at Occidental Université (formally the Easterly University of Northerly Ontario), Prof. S. Basu said enough is enough. “If we keep thinking small we will stay small” he told a group of reporters anxious for the 411 on this latest coup for Occidental.

Prof. Basu called CERN director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer and laid it on the line: give us the Large Hadron Collider. “I told him we have a world-class building with the latest renovations and due to the topology of the landscape we are built on neutrinos should be moving at least at 2c as they whiz through our building. He said deal and we’re in the process of making a few tweaks in the atrium design to accommodate the main storage ring.”

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) currently sits in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m underground and straddles the border between Switzerland and France. How will the atrium accommodate it, Basu was asked. “The Euros goofed when they designed LHC and they knew it. Special relativity tells that though we see the ring having a circumference of 27 km the particles in the ring, moving near the speed of light, see the tunnel as having a circumference about the diameter of our atrium. So there is no need for such a huge tunnel, it was a political move so the French would pony up big bucks.”

Basu went on to discuss how the Department would produce twin particles, of which one particle would stay in the centre of the ring and the other could be accelerated by a student around the ring a few times and come back 100 years older than its twin and with a long grey beard. The installation is expected to come online when the building renovations are finished in 2525 (“if Man is still alive”).

Below: Director General of Cern Rolf-Dieter Heuer with Prof. Basu at the announcement.

Easterly University of Northerly Ontario (formally Westward University of Southward Ontario) Professor of Lidarology R. J. Sica was called in by the Provost who had a most unusual problem. “We don’t understand it, but this winter students have been dropping like flies on campus during the day, particularly during the 10 min periods between class changes. Since your Department has all the brains in this place we thought you could solve the mystery.”

Prof. Sica replied he would get to the bottom of it, because frankly he really had nothing else to do in his cushy position except for occasionally diving out of the wall of falling valances. Here is part of the Executive Summary of his final report, which you can view in its entirety here.

Students were observed moving between classes. I notice a large fraction of one of the genders had Canada Goose South Pole Expedition parkas on. Having lived in interior Alaska for several long, cold, dark winters, I knew that these coats were typically uncomfortably warm in Fairbanks during January, when the average temperature was –25C. This winter the temperature seldom got down to +5C. However, as I watched the weak collapse in the herd of students leaving Nat Sci 145 I observed that not all the students in the parkas dropped. I had to be missing something. Then it came to me. The parkas were generating an additional 1000 W of body heat, but when worn with heels the excess heat could dump to the ground through the feet. The students who dropped were all wearing Uggs with the coats. The combination of the Canada Goose Expedition Parkas, Uggs and balmy temperatures were the perfect negative storm, producing temperatures equivalent to solar chromosphere near the body of the wearer.

These results were verified by Crow Emily, shown here standing barefoot in the Eureka, NWT as part of a 30 min experiment to determine if she would get cold or not. Funny, I haven’t heard anything back from her yet?

You've heard of radial velocity techniques and the transit method, but here is an article about an exoplanet detection method of the future. Those wanting to ride the cusp of the next wave, or the just curious, should read this article and the previous one that is linked in the first line.

http://www.astroengine.com/2011/04/screaming-exoplanets-detecting-alien-magne...

Please participate in this forum and vote for ideas to make Western a more sustainable environment. Currently most popular: a bike-friendly campus (see below), but there are plenty of other ones, have a look!