Hello!
well, it took me a while to get started – I timed my first post to coincide with the Tevatron restarting of course…
Really, I’ve been trying to organise everything here for my move to CERN – exactly two weeks today. High energy physics is so international that people are coming and going all the time, and I’ve grown used to saying goodbye over the last few years. And because it is a fairly small community you always meet people again, which makes it easier. But it’s different when you are the one moving! I’ve lived in the same Chicago apartment for the last 4 years, which means a lot of memories and a lot of junk to sort through.
So, I got thinking about ways to summarise all that time. And this got me thinking about some of of those facts/stats that come up every now and then in physics to try to summarise a concept, or relate it to real life, like: write a year’s worth of LHC data on dvd’s you’d make a pile higher than the Eiffel Tower; or: the energy in a Tevatron collision is equivalent to two mosquitoes in a head on collision. I especially like ones where the analogy is stranger than the physics (I mean, we all know what a head-on mosquito collision is like, right?) and I’d kind of like to start a collection of these, so if you know a good one, I’d love to hear it – physics related is preferred, but not essential!
