stolen from bifemmefatale

meme: take the first letter of the name of the person from whom you got this meme, and list all of your lj interests that begin with that letter.

bdsm, beck, being on my knees, bhagavad gita, biblical exegesis, bisexual, bisexuality, bisexuals, blue oyster cult, bondage, buckminster fuller, bucky fuller, buddhism

Hmm. It's a very telling list, isn't it?

(no subject)

via novapsyche: 'God particle' may have been seen

A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak. Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland.

The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter. ... Physicists have observed 16 particles that make up all matter under the Standard Model of fundamental particles and interactions. But the sums do not quite add up for the Standard Model to be true if these particles are considered alone. If only 16 particles existed, they would have no mass - contradicting what we know to be true in nature.

Another particle has to give them this mass. Enter the Higgs boson, first proposed by University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs and colleagues in the late 1960s. Their theory was that all particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson. The Higgs' importance to the Standard Model has led some to dub it the "God particle".

If the Superconducting Supercollider hadn't been killed in 1994, it would be American scientists doing this stuff.

When I heard of the project's cancellation, I made a prediction then that the United States had consigned itself to scientific obscurity within 50 years.

Forty years and counting. We'll see if I'm right...