Kate McAlpine's LHC Rap

Kate McAlpine is a 23-year old girl from Michigan who is carving out a life for herself as a science writer, a career I wish I had known existed when I was in school. (Not that I could have pulled off a double major of creative writing and physics, like she did.) Anyway, she's interning at CERN, and made this AWESOME video explaning what the LHC does. It's received over three million hits on YouTube, and I love it! It's hilarious and cute and actually really explains what the LHC is all about in a way that dry science articles can't. Kate, you are a genius! For real.

Crush Me! CERN'S Large Hadron Collider Down Until 2009!

Dangit. I know I'm a big geek, but I was really, really pumped about the LHC breaking down reality and getting to the bottom of things. I was following the initial tests via Twitter, and having updates sent to my phone, for goodness' sake - my excitement even had the New York Times emailing me for a layman's nerds-eye view of this whole thing. Then, the Twitter updates stopped.

And now? According to this press release:

...a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel have indicated that the most likely cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets...“Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar...The time necessary for the investigation and repairs precludes a restart before CERN’s obligatory winter maintenance period, bringing the date for restart of the accelerator complex to early spring 2009. LHC beams will then follow.

I haven't been this disappointed since Congress was debating yanking Voyager's funding and letting the little far-flung probe go totally silent.