The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Now for some smashing news. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will be firing up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It will happen at 1 PM (IST) on Wednesday.

The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). This historical event will be webcast through http://webcast.cern.ch, and distributed through the Eurovision network. See http://www.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam for further details.

[Via Cosmic Variance.]

Watch a documentary on the LHC on the History Channel.

After 40 years of planning and construction, the biggest science experiment in history is ready to be tested. The “Large Hadron Collider” is an experiment created by the greatest minds in physics. It cost $10 billion and its resulting data has the potential to explain why we and the Universe exist. Their idea is to smash protons towards one another at the speed of light, trying to mimic what happened in the milliseconds after The Big Bang. Viewers will go on an amazing journey involving the struggles to plan and build the LHC, how it was constructed and what are its mechanics. Explore the future of what’s possible through the geniuses of today. [The History Channel]

For some absolutely stunning pictures (27 of them), go to boston.com’s The Big Picture.

To get a quick tutorial on how a particle accelerator works, play the LHC game. (Click on English, then click on the green arrow, the click on 1, 2, 3, etc.)

Chrome — The Google Browser

Download it.

Pragati — Kashmir Concerns Us

The September issue of Pragati is ready for the taking. Download (pdf).

Pragati Aug 2008: Should India Send Troops to Afghanistan

Data on Criminals in the Indian Parliament

Anyone familiar with the disastrous state of India should not be overly surprised to learn that the Indian parliament has an overwhelmingly greater percentage of criminals than the general population. How effectively a nation functions and how successful it is depends on its leaders who make public policy and thus critically determine the outcome. India’s failure to develop and achieve its potential is proof positive that its leadership is lacking.

Underdevelopment, poverty, and all other ills that plague India are an unavoidable consequence of poor public policies and choices.

Pragati July 2008: A Better Connection with Israel

Pragati July issue is available.

Godwin’s Law: An example

Having grown up in the age of the USENET, I am intimately familiar with Godwin’s Law. “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” The corollary to which has always been that whoever equates his opponent in a debate to Hitler or the Nazi, he has admitted that he has lost the argument. The thread or discussion has to be considered closed.

Hindi Version of this Blog

Who woulda thunk that! This blog is now being mirrored in Hindi. It’s author is Alok Kumar and is called “Bharat ka Vikas — Atanu Dey“.

My Hindi is nothing to write home about. But even I can tell that Alok’s translations of the posts are excellent. I realize that my writing style is not the simplest as I favor the convoluted sentence too frequently. Yet Alok gets the ideas across. Thank you very much, Alok Kumar. Your work is much appreciated.

I asked him why he is taking the trouble. He said that he was doing his bit to add to the Hindi content on the web. The more Hindi content on the web –> more Hindi readers on the web –> more Hindi content on the web –> . . . and so on.

So dear readers, please spread the word about Alok’s translation of this blog.

Tata Indicom Sucks

It’s about half past midnight and I am writing this offline. I just got off the phone with Tata Indicom customer service. I was on the phone for half an hour. At midnight, Tata Indicom terminated my internet connection. I had renewed my subscription three days ago and yet the connection was terminated at midnight. I spent the last half hour on the phone arguing with their customer service people. The facts are clear and agreed to by Tata Indicom. They did receive payment for the renewal of the service three days ago. Yet they terminated my connection.

Warning: Don’t install Firefox 3

I downloaded and installed Firefox 3 and instantly regretted it. I have been struggling for the last couple of hours to access my Google toolbar bookmarks and it is not working. I even attempted to roll back to Firefox 2 but now even FF 2 does not work.

Consider yourself warned. FF 3 sucks.