Dr. Science Cat

A physics student aiming to be the first cat to get a PhD. In the mean time, blogging about science, animals, and things that make me laugh.

[drsciencecat]

[asapscience]

Large Hadron Collider ready to delve even deeper than ‘God particle’ as it switches back on at double power

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is set to be switched back on in March — hoping that a £97 million upgrade could push it to even greater discoveries, after it found the “God particle” in 2012.

The second three year run of the huge atom smasher will begin in March 2015. The Large Hadron Collider has been switched off since its last run finished in 2012.

The world’s largest particle collider has been undergoing a £97 million upgrade since then, as scientists comb through the data found during the last run.

It is being cooled back down ready for the switch on, and is almost at its operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero, or about minus 271.25 degrees Celsius. Scientists are also testing out the equipment and earlier in December activated one of the magnets required to fire atoms around the collider.

Scientists are now gearing up to turn both on at once, in 2015. That will produce collisions of a scale never achieved by any accelerator in the past, equivalent with 154 tons of TNT.

The extra power will allow the CERN’s numerous experiments to look into deep mysteries of the universe, such as dark matter.

The Large Hadron Collider was used in 2012 to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, known as the God particle, which explains the very beginning of the universe.

[momoeyamaguchi-deactivated20180]

[binghsien]

Fat raccoon.

[judgemental-cat]

ben

[kateoplis]

Everything You Know is Wrong | Information is Beautiful

[korilian]

…41% of American adults think we shared the planet with dinosaurs?

[scienceyoucanlove-deactivated20]

There is an infomercial that plays around 2:30-4:00am talking about restoring the state of man to the time when he roamed around ‘chasing dinosaurs’ and it makes me so mad every time. 

[tastefullyoffensive]

[tastefullyoffensive]

(photo by camperjohn64)

[weloveshortvideos]

[encoffin]

ohh my god

[drsciencecat]

What is wrong with this dog?? Or what is RIGHT with it? Amazing. 

[themedicalstate]

Dream On: Why Sleep is So Important 

This infographic showcases some studies on just how dangerous—and costly—sacrificing sleep can be, and it concludes with some facts on how you can try and improve your sleep quality if it’s something you struggle with. 

by  JASON (FRUGAL DAD)

[animals-riding-animals]

wombat riding turtle

[buttart]

the animal kingdom is a strange and beautiful place

[drsciencecat]

Wombat taxi. Wombaxi. 

[explore-blog]

Neil deGrasse Tyson selects the 8 books every intelligent person on the planet should read.

[drsciencecat]

[poyzn]

This is like installing Windows on a Mac.

[princem4rtian]

I am physically required to reblog this or my heart will stop beating.

[phiftycent]

oh my god

[smindersonfan]

TOO CUTE!

[sandygast]

this is the best dog in the entire world

[drsciencecat]

I wonder if this is the closest we'll ever get to "catdog." 

[tastefullyoffensive]

"Epic Quest" (comic by memecenter.com/nedesem)

[gifsboom]

Kitten Feeding Time

[tastefullyoffensive]

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Christmas

[startalkradio]

5 FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WOMEN WHO SHAPED MODERN PHYSICS

Featured image: Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, who first developed the theory explaining the process of nuclear fission.

Marie Curie is the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines.  First, Marie Curie won in 1903 for her studies of radioactivity. She shared the prize with her husband Pierre Curie and with the other discoverer of radioactivity, Henri Bequerel. Originally, the Nobel prize committee had only selected Pierre Curie — but he refused to accept it without proper acknowledgement of Marie’s contribution. Then in 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her discovery and studies of radium and polonium.

Only two women have ever won the Nobel Prize in physics. Maria Goeppert Mayer won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for her model of the structure of the atomic nucleus. Goeppert Mayer faced a great deal of gender bias in her career: she had to work in unpaid positions at Columbia University and University of Chicago, where her husband was employed.

Austrian physicist Lise Meitner first developed the theory explaining the process of nuclear fission. However, she was overlooked by the Nobel Committee, who instead awarded Meitner’s colleague Otto Hahn the prize in 1944. Meitner came to be known as the “mother of the atom bomb,” although she refused to work on the Manhattan Project after fleeing Nazi Germany. Element 109 is called meitnerium in her honor.

Albert Einstein called German mathematician Emmy Noether a creative mathematical genius. Noether’s Theorem is a fundamental idea on which much of modern physics is built. Published in 1918, her theorem states that if an object has symmetry — i.e., if it looks the same regardless of changing locations or times — then this leads to conservation laws in nature. Says Ghose: “A simple example is a movie of the motion of a ball when you throw it. The motion looks the same if you run the movie backwards in time (time symmetry). This means that the total energy of the ball remains the same (conservation of energy) — the energy just gets converted into different forms as the ball moves. This is a simplified example, but the theorem is widely applicable and is a real workhorse of modern physics.”

British astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin established that the sun and other stars are all composed mostly of hydrogen. Payne-Gaposchkin later became the first woman to chair a department (astronomy) at Harvard. (source)

[drsciencecat]

Here are 15 goats that do not respect the laws of physics

Wild mountain goats have developed a special talent that helps them survive – allegedly. Or maybe they're just doing it because they know it freaks us all out. 

[drsciencecat]

"What?? Santa isn't real??"