I promised myself no more blogging today, but I couldn't resist posting this link to a feature from Live Science providing what seems to be tongue-in-cheek advice about the ten best ways for mankind to destroy the planet. Kind of like a REALLY perverse "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (Paul Simon). I thought we were already doing a pretty good job of it, but this feature has a few ideas that I hadn't thought of yet ....
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp-1.html
For example, No. 9 is to be gobbled up by "strangelets." For this ...
"You will need: a stable strangelet [whatever that is]. Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible."
Gobbling strange quarks, indeed. Sounds like what I had for lunch. I knew I should have checked the expiration date. Anyway, the rest of the feature is equally delicious, and almost equally -- and delightfully -- preposterous.
Bon appetit.
Bon appetit.
I feel a fit of giggles coming on--What on earth could a strangelet possibly be? A made-up scientific concept?
ReplyDeleteDon't know ... I gave up trying to understand it after they discovered quarks. I think a quark is larger than a pint, but I'm not even sure about that. As for strangelet, I'm surprised you didn't recognize it -- it's right out of an old song ... "Some enchanted evening, you will see a strangelet, you will see a strangelet, across a crowded atom ...."
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