Day 1, waste waste waste!

…figuring out this new technology. hmmm. ok, hyperlinks, check.

So they turned on the LHC yesterday: Hailed as the world’s biggest experiment, scientists hope to look in to how the universe was created and why matter has mass. Both very important things, but one has to wonder if building a 27km concrete tube 100m beneath the surface and filling it with 1,600 superconducting magnets (magnets which need 96 tonnes of liquid helium to keep them at their operating temp) justifies these break throughs in science. Besides these environmental issues, some scientists fear that the LHC might create small black holes that will eventually grow so big that they engulf the earth. We’re still here, so no black holes yet, but the LHC has officialy claimed its first victim, a 16 year old girl from India. While the LHC might provide huge discoveries in physics, it’s still hard to justify an experiment of this scale.

sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24328351-401,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

Waste, in the literal sense, is the word in San Antonio, where the city has signed a deal to sell captured methane gas from its sewage system to an energy service company. Don’t mess with Texas. Taking waste and turning it into renewable energy, who knew our neighbors in the deep south were so green?

sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/11/sewage.energy.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech

….tony