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  • Rare Isotope Rap
  • Large Hadron Rap
  • Leon Lederman
  • Nano Song
  • Cyclotron Kids
The Rare Isoptope Rap
Kate McAlpine (aka alpinekat)

Rare isotopes rock. Here's a return to the scene of author and rapper Kate McAlpine's first encounter with accelerator physics--the NSCL (National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory). The facility has won a bid to upgrade their nucleus-accelerator to the FRIB (Facility for Rare Isotope Beams). McAlpine, aka alpinekat, is a science writer who has worked at CERN and who also produced The Large Hadron Rap and a rap about neurons.
The Large Hadron Rap
Kate McAlpine (aka alpinekat)
For those who like their physics in rhyme, there is now a rap video about the Large Hadron Collider . The author and rapper is Kate McAlpine, aka alpinekat, a science writer who works at CERN and who also has a rap about neurons on YouTube.
Street Corner Science with Leon Lederman
ScienceCentral
In "Street Corner Science," mall shoppers are given the chance to sit down with a world-class scientist and ask him or her any question they like about science, or anything else on their minds.This video is the first of two segments featuring Nobel Prize winning physicist Dr. Leon Lederman; be sure to check out Part 2 here!
Musical video, 'The Nano Song,' a megahit on YouTube
UC Berkeley
How would you explain "nanotechnology" to a science novice? A group of UC Berkeley students and alums answered this call with a pint-sized video — part "Sound of Music," part Muppets, part Dan the Science Man. The group submitted it to an American Chemical Society (ACS) contest, for Nano 101 videos. More...
The Cyclotron Kids
www.thecyclotronkids.org
The Cyclotron Kids (Heidi Baumgartner, Peter Heuer, and German Diagama) are high school students who are building a cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator that they will use to pair-produce positrons and electrons from proton collisions. They met in 2006 at astronomy camp at Kopernik Observatory near Binghamton, NY. It was there that the idea of building a cyclotron spawned. More...
• Long distance space travel might leave you short, fat and ugly -Telegraph.co.uk
• The real science hidden in fairy tales -AIP Inside Science
• Breaking it down like a NASA astronaut -New Scientist
• Why ET will phone using neutrinos not photons -the physics arXiv blog
Featured Stories:

  • Zero Gravity Wedding
  • Mars Hoax
  • NASCAR Science
  • Angry Cars
  • Google Earth
Erin Finnegan and Noah Fulmor in first zero gravity wedding
Daily Telegraph
New York City couple Erin Finnegan and Noah Fulmor floated into matrimony yesterday thousands of metres above the Gulf of Mexico in what organisers said was the world's first zero gravity wedding. The couple exchanged wedding vows and rings – with some difficulty – and fumbled their kiss flying weightless inside the padded fuselage of a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences. "I've been to a lot of boring weddings, so I wanted to do something different," said Ms Finnegan, who wore a "space fashion" white pantsuit whose trouser bottoms fluffed out during the weightless moments.

Full Story | Photo Gallery
Return of the Great Mars Hoax
NASA.gov
Image credit: NASAFor the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is popping up in email boxes around the world. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. "Mars will look as large as the full moon," it says. "No one alive today will ever see this again." Don't believe it. Here's what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th: nothing. Mars won't be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky. Origins of the hoax...
NSF teams with NASCAR for "The Science of Speed"
Science360.gov
The Science of SpeedA new online series of videos called The Science of Speed reveals the sophisticated science and engineering behind NASCAR racing to teach science. The series can be found on a new website created by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Science360.gov. “NASCAR is built largely on principles of science that produce speed and safety, which is why this marriage makes so much sense. We’re trying to tap into the demographics and enthusiasm of those who follow it and inspire them to learn about science,” says NSF's Jeff Nesbit. To bring the 12-module science video series to computer screens, NSF teamed with NASCAR, the largest sanctioning body of motorsports in the United States, University of Texas at Dallas physics professor Diandra Leslie-Pelecky—author of the book The Physics of NASCAR and Santa Fe Productions, Albuquerque, N.M.
People Love Angry-Faced Cars
LiveScience.com
If a Toyota Prius just looks too friendly for your tastes, you’re not alone. People readily see faces and traits in cars, and a new study suggests that they prefer cars to appear dominant, masculine and angry. The finding rests on the propensity we have to actually see faces or human characteristics in everything from cars to clouds, a phenomenon called pareidolia. But now researchers hope to better understand what goes on in the brain when people see faces in objects versus humans faces, as well as help automakers design more appealing cars. More...
Google Earth allows exploration of oceans, Mars
Yahoo! Tech News
Image Credit: Google Earth Google Inc. has launched a new version of Google Earth that allows users to explore the oceans, view images of Mars and watch regions of the Earth change over time. The new features mark a significant upgrade to Google Earth, a popular software program that provides access to the world's geographical information through digital maps, satellite imagery and the company's search tools. More...
• The Secret Behind the Visual Effects Oscar -AIP Inside Science
• Hubble Kaleidoscope Finds Evidence Of Space Looking All Crazy -The Onion
• Moonwalker Reopens UFO Files -Cosmic Log
• SETI@Home Adds New Search Method -Slashdot
• The Top Ten Mad Scientists -LiveScience.com

Image Credit: LiveScience.comKey to All Optical Illusions Discovered
LiveScience.com
Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions. More...
• Spaceship Could Fly Faster Than Light -LiveScience.com
• Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations -The Onion
• How UFOs and Bigfoot Could Save Earth -LiveScience.com
• Debunking Lost's science: Sci-Fi behind the scenes -PopularMechanics.com
• Teleportation Milestone Achieved -LiveScience.com

Image Credit: © Copyright 2009, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.Scientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth
The Onion
BATAVIA, IL—Fermilab scientists joined a growing number of physicists around the world in warning that the Very Large Earth Collider—a $117 billion electromagnetic particle accelerator built to study astronomical phenomena by colliding Earth into various heavenly bodies—could potentially destroy Earth when it sends the planet careening headlong into Mars, Jupiter, or even the sun. More...

• Space Station simulator given emotions -the physics arXiv blog
• Space Travel: The Next 50 Years -PopularMechanics.com
• How to tell if you are addicted to technology -LiveScience.com
• The benefits of black holes -Cosmic Log
• This International Space Station is a pig sty -The Onion
Hot Link of the Month

The Darwin Awards

A chronicle of enterprising demises
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Darwin Awards and Honorable Mentions are known or suspected to be true. Look for the word "Confirmed" under the title. Media references are always cited below the story. Some are suspected to be true because they sound plausible but the source is unverified.

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In addition, the site contains some juicy reader-contributed Excruciatingly Bad Date stories.



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