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back to article LHC boffins turn lead into quarko-gluotic Big Bang incrediblo-stuff

International boffins are vying with one another in a race to topsy-turvinate the world of physics this week, with a flurry of results due in imminently from radical fabric-of-time-and-space-rending experiments at the Large Hadron Collider - most brutally powerful particle-pummeller ever assembled by the human race. “It …

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  1. DI_Wyman
    Joke

    Very good, but..

    ....will it shorten the time period between Monday morning to Friday pubtime?

    8 0
  2. bradders

    Loonies!

    They're crossing the streams! Have they never seen Ghostbusters?

    5 1
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Will no one think of the universes?

    Just think of all those proto-universes generated by these random acts of particle crunching and then discarded callously by the unfeeling monsters of CERN!

    Will no-one think of the child universes?

    7 0
    1. Captain Save-a-ho
      Reply Icon
      Alien

      Actually...

      I'm sure the bastards that were running their own LHC-type atom smasher in another universe were thinking that very thing when they created our universe. And don't they all regret it now, as of of course the creation of the universe has been generally regarded as a very bad idea.

      Now, stick out your thumb and let's get off this planet already!

      3 1
  4. Mr Young
    Welcome

    Ye man!

    All this mashup and no custardification yet - we looking ok now?! pheewww....

    0 0
  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    "Radical fabric-of-time-and-space-rending experiments"

    Extraordinary rendition then?

    Spacetime waterboarding?

    1 1
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Don't Panick!!

    It will lengthen the universal value of 'pubtime' ensuring that plenty of quenching can occur

    Explanation: (Non-science types might want to look away...) The more ions in the fire, the more quenching will occur - As spacetime is an instrinsically bound volume, more ions in the limited spatial confines of the LHC means that the temporal dimention must increase to accommodate the growing demand for quenching.

    Simples!

    2 0
  7. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Indeed, but

    will it turn lead into Glod?

    Can we have a Discworld icon please?

    4 2
  8. Aaron Em

    Of course they do

    I've always known the world would end on a Monday; why not this one?

    0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    catastrophic electro-blast-triggered helium superfluid explosion mishap

    surely you could have got a little more scaremongery on that one.. the words Meltdown, Cryogenic, Contamination and Gasification all sound good too..

    catastrophic electro-meltdown-initiated-cryogenic-helium-superfluid-boiloff-contamination-and-gasification-explosion mishap

    1 0
    1. Fluffykins Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Title; letters, digits. OK?

      I had a curry like that, once.

      5 0
  10. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Shutdown?

    "Meanwhile the Collider will continue to smash heavy ions until 6 December, when it will shut down for the Christmas break."

    I do hope they are leaving some guards on-site while everyone is at home enjoying Christmas. Who knows what otherworldly/otherdimensional creatures could crawl out of the collision caverns when no one is looking...

    4 0
    1. Graham Marsden
      Reply Icon
      Alien

      Cthulhu...

      ... ftagn!

      2 1
    2. Annihilator
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Don't worry

      A guy named Dr Gordon Freeman is covering for the folks that are on holiday. Apparently he's trained in this sort of thing.

      4 0
  11. Lottie
    Thumb Up

    topsy-turvinate

    Superb phrase.

    It worrys me that we are close to creating invisible lead soup.

    0 0
    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      @Lottie

      "creating invisible lead soup"

      I though the Chinese already managed that, otherwise what is one-ton soup made of?

      4 0
    2. Parax
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      invisible lead soup

      nah, its the invisible custardification you have to worry about.

      0 0
  12. Roger Greenwood
    Pint

    "..until 6 December.."

    Thats some non-denominational winter holiday (Winterval). The rest of us have another 3 weeks to work after that. Maybe they do the cleaning etc., and a lick of paint while the beam is down.

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      6th Dec

      It's not a 'non-denominational winterval' - It's St Nicholas Day, which is when many people on the continent celebrate the 'commercial' side of Christmas as opposed to the 'religious' bit... continental kids have their visit from Santa then.

      They're closing it down because nobody will be sober enough to operate it. ;-)

      And who are we to spoil their party?

      2 0
    2. The First Dave
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Holimadays

      Boffins == Universities === Very long sabbaticals

      0 0
    3. MrCheese
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Enough hyberbole

      Now go get that scrubbing brush and make you you get all the gluon-plasma soup out of the inlets before it custardifies

      0 0
  13. Bassey

    Christmas

    Do you reckon atom-smashing physicists decorate their labs/offices for Christmas? I hope so but I just can't see them running tinsel around the 27km of the LHC.

    0 0
    1. Stoneshop
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Oh yes they do, kindof. The scientifically advanced way

      They simply feed the tinsel into the particle source whatsits,crank up the accelerator thingamajigs a bit, then continuously adjust the collision aim doodad so that the point of collision gradually moves along the entire length of the tunnel. You can see the result of those collisions in the pic in the article; if that's not festive I don't know what is.

      1 0
    2. Ian Moffatt 1
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      It'll have a heart of gold

      The ones that don't get invited to the party could always try and invent the Improbable Infinity Drive. As long as someone leaves them some rubber bands ;-)

      1 0
  14. peyton?
    Happy

    My god....

    It's full of screensavers!

    4 0
  15. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Pirate

    C.E.R.N.

    Where they are putting the very fabric of space-time through the wringer.... whether it wants to be or not

    Quote inspired by a phrase in a discworld book b4 I get stamped on

    0 1
    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Diskworld quote

      I like the one about the Unseen University's research pushing back the boundaries of ignorance...

      0 0
  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    The CERN view

    Yes, offices certainly are decorated. We are all people too, really! The Ion results are really, really nice - it's quite a privilege to be peering back in time.

    This article, too, reminds my why I enjoy reading El Reg. You'll be pleased to know that links to these articles are usually doing the rounds at CERN.

    1 0
  17. Ugotta B. Kiddingme
    Thumb Up

    turn of phrase

    "jets of quarko-gluotic unfeasiblo-plasma"

    Most excellent.

    0 0
  18. Greg J Preece

    As a child of ReBoot and Tron...

    ...that animation was the coolest thing I've seen in weeks.

    That is all.

    0 0
  19. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Imminent alien invasion?

    Hmm.. sounds like a few corners could be cut trying to get those last few TB of data before they shut down for the winter break.

    Needless to say any aliens visiting our solar system are going to be picking up some very strange readings very shortly and might show up to have a look.

    If there is a massive unexplained "seismic event" and mass UFO sighting near Geneva on that date don't say I didn't warn you.

    Methinks the recent UN "Alien Ambassador" appointment is no coincidence.

    AC, because he can't find his crowbar OR hazmat suit... but does have a substantial collection of strange and exotic metal fragments which seem to levitate a magnet when cooled to 5.2 deg C...

    1 0
  20. Mark Graybill
    Flame

    until December 6th...

    They're going to be home and ready the moment that Cataclysm is released, of course. Unless they manage to release a Deathwing of their own. Then CERN looks like Auberdine...

    1 0
  21. frank ly

    Glossary/Dictionary Please

    "..quarko-gluotic.."

    I understannd 'quarko', but what is 'gluotic', exactly. Derived from 'gluon', yes..... but why not 'gluonic'?

    Is this difference related to the difference between 'biotic' and 'bionic'?

    P.S. If Z bosons are 100 times mire massive that protons; where do they come from and where do they go to? (Since I assume they don't hang around for long; otherwise we'd keep bumping into them, in a manner of speaking.)

    0 0
    1. Bleepme
      Reply Icon

      Where do they go to?

      Ask Peter Sarstedt - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE89OeM5nmU he can help you...

      0 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      E=MC^2

      They can come and go... if they change state.

      0 0
  22. Lghost

    where do they come from and where do they go to?

    Magical woodland pools..

    Narnia

    Mr Tumnus and Prince Caspian will explain further ..

    They are both here ..I saw them post ..last week

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      haha

      lol that was Caspian Prince.. I aint seen no Aslan round these parts either, though I have heard there is a sturn white moderatwitch ruling over these parts...

      oops now I'm banned.

      0 0
  23. Bleepme
    Boffin

    strong? weak?

    Surely you mean "strong nuclear" and "weak nuclear" forces, not just "strong and weak forces".

    Of course, if you do just mean "strong and weak forces" you can study them in the scrum at any rugby match, you don't need a LHC.

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Big Brother

      Bloody contortionists

      It's always the same with Agile people. You start talking particle physics, they haul in a User Story about a Scrum Master.

      SCROB or bust!

      0 0
  24. Mystic Megabyte
    Linux

    Get up to date!

    Big Bang? WTF That is sooo 90's!

    Dontcha know that we exist in a sorta oscillating matrix type-a-thingy...

    0 0
  25. ShaggyDoggy

    Narnia

    You mean we spent 8 billion thingies building a circular whatsit in Switzerplace thingy and all we needed really was a wardrobe. It figures.

    1 0
  26. El Richard Thomas

    Higgs

    No mention of the search for the Higg's Boson in this article, nor any explanation for the change in focus.

    I reckon an HB turned up the first day they switched on the LHC and said in a bad brummie accent "You aint seen me, roit?"

    Where's the Fast Show icon?

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