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Lyn Evans (Project leader for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider): ‘We all feel as if we are ending a marathon with a sprint. Let’s now bring this machine alive.’

The Large Hadron Collider, LHC, a gigantic scientific instrument built underground near Geneva, basically a circular tunnel with a length of 27km (!), is the world’s largest particle accelerator. This device is built to accelerate the smallest known particles, hadrons, and recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang by a head-to-head collision of two beams of these FAST moving particles traveling in opposite direction.

Some (semi-?)scientist musicians created the following clip explaining the LHC a bit more:

Today the LHC will be switched on for a first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC, the first high-energy collisions are planned from October 21 2008.

Some say that this project is risky and could lead to the doomsday scenario of the possible destruction of the planet. Most scientists however agree that there is no basis for any imaginable threat from the LHC particle collisions…well, I guess we’ll see that today, eh? (and when we see, it directly means we survived! 😉 )

The LHC will be used by researchers to understand and possibly answer questions like (and please focus on the last one, wow!):

– Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?
– Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?
– Do particles have supersymmetric (“SUSY”) partners?
– Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?^[1] See also CP-violation.
– Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we “see” them?
– What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
– Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?
– Is time travel (utilising either General theory of relativity or wormholes or black holes) possible?

Uhhh, ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Beam me up Scotty’ for real?? 😉

Apple organized an event today titled ‘Let’s Rock’, that meant ‘Steve-time’…Steve Jobs, a presentation-master in action! I haven’t seen the video yet, I guess it will be released later tonight, but Engadget (among others) was live-blogging the event, bringing you as close as can be (well, almost…I *did* miss Robert Scoble, aka the Scobleizer, who was audio streaming a similar event last year 😉 )

The main announcements from Apple in this event:

• iTunes8

This version comes with ‘Genius’, a new way to browse through content and make playlists

• iPod

– a new version iPod Classic 120Gb replacing the 80Gb and 160Gb models

– a new iPod nano with a new, curved, aluminum design, available in 9 different colors, and it now includes a motionsensor enabling rotation of the display for album Cover Flow and a ‘shake to shuffle songs’ mechanism, nice. The newly introduced Genius function can also be used

– Ipod Touch v2 with a slightly modified design (stainless steel casing and even thinner), a built-in speaker, updated UI, and Genius functionality to create playlists

• Appstore

In the relative short 60 day period that the App Store is open, already 100 milion apps were downloaded! New games were announced, including Need For Speed and Real Soccer 2009…cool! The iPhone/iPod Touch is turning into the best portable device for playing games, eh?

• iPhone 2.1 software update

This is a big update, and should fix lots of bugs. It should also decrease the number of dropped calls, improve the battery life, avoid crashes with Apps and have a faster backup process while syncing with iTunes. Furthermore the software includes some great new performance enhancements…a free update, available from this Friday. (well, uhh…I guess I have to wait until my iPhone Dev Team friends release a new version of the Pwnage tool 😉 )

All in all Apple had some great announcements today, then again…the BIG one I was hoping for, a new line of MacBooks, did not come through, yet…guess I have to wait a little bit longer.

Google celebrated its ten year anniversary yesterday, at least, September 7 is the day that Sergey Brin en Larry Page from Stanford university turned their research project ‘BackRub’ into a company with the name ‘Google‘.

Now, ten years later, see where they are; coming close to a world domination of the world of information, or as their mission statement: ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. It comes close to having control over the universe, eh? 😉

Om Malik wrote an interesting post to mark Google’s 10th.

Also, some years back Robin Sloan made EPIC 2014, an online movie. It’s a peek into the Google future, interesting stuff! Check it out, and when you’re done proceed with the updated version, EPIC 2015.

I noticed that for some reason September 7 has been a typical ‘Quote’ day for me over the last years…I started this blog in 2005 and have posted a QOTD every year on this specific date. Today is a day to break with traditions! 😉

Looking back it’s a nice collection though:

In 2005: Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

In 2006: Audrey Giorgi: “Once in a while you have to take a break and visit yourself.”

In 2007: Charles F. Kettering: “Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.”

I got the message I hoped for yesterday late afternoon; ‘Mr. Poort, your car is ready’, no more ‘Ray’s running for the bus’ and the most annoying of all; ‘Ray’s waiting for the bus’! 😉

Have to admit that ‘Ray’s sitting in the bus’, ain’t all that bad.

I’m still happy to be able to drive the car again; I need the flexibility and love to have the control over my commute times back! (why is it that buses are late when one is a bit early, and they are right on time, causing you to miss it, when one is just half a minute late?)

Jimi Hendrix: “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun they say….well, I can confirm that it’s true!

September 4th last year we moved out of NL and arrived in Norway…it feels like yesterday, one big adventure so far that ain’t at its end, oh no!

A crazy, yet very satisfying year when I think back; we’ve done so much, have had a shitload of people coming over to visit us (always great!), found a bunch of new friends, have seen so many amazing new things, learned so much…always ready to experience new things, and lovin’ it!

Google yesterday released its own browser called ‘Chrome‘ (give it a try, I’m actually liking it so far), more information on the browser can be found in this comic book…funny. 😉

They claim that they don’t intend to run into a browser-war with IE, Firefox or Safari (plus Opera to a certain extend)…it could very well be the truth, who knows, really?

My take?

It’s just a spin-off from the actual product, soon to be released; a browser for the mobile platform…Apple has great success with MobileSafari for iPhone, Google is soon to release Android, its mobile OS, and certainly wants (/needs?) to run its own browser on it.

I brought the family-car to the garage today to have the power steering pump repaired…expected time to repair, well, uhh, just a couple of hours, they said…hmm…well, uhh, NOT! 🙁

It turns out that some other things related to the power steering pump were running bad, and since that could potentially damage the engine, driving is a no-no until it’s fixed…and…they can fix it only after they receive the required car part from France!! Aaahhh, come on people, it’s just a friggin’ basic Renault Mégane Scenic, not some special, one of a kind old-timer orso!! (or is it…? ;))

Anyway, they ‘hope’ to have it fixed on Friday…that means that Ray’s in the bus the coming days, nicely increasing my commute time from roughly 45 mins to over 1.5h…one way! Damn!

Well, at least that’ll give me more than enough time to catch up on some podcasts! (I am a bit behind on No Agenda and The MacCast)

Hmm, it’s not the best start for yesterdays rabbit, rabbit…still 28 days to go though…

Hey, by starting this first day of a new month saying: ‘rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit‘, I’m gonna receive good luck for the rest of this month, groovy! 😉