Blue Moon

There are many different interpretations of the the term "blue moon". The common use of it is when we refer to events that do not often occur.

Other interpretations are:

- the extra full moon in a season. Regions that have four seasons(winter, spring, summer, autum) normally have 3 full moons. one for each of the three months in every season. But in occasions an extra full moon will occur. In the summer, the first is called the early summer moon, then a midsummer moon and then the late summer moon, an extra full moon between the midsummer and late summer moon is called a blue moon.

- another interpretation is blue moon is the extra full moon in a calendar year. Commonly there are only 12 full moons in one year. One for each of the 12 months. When an extra full moon occurs, it is called a blue moon. The last one was  December 31 2009.

But the most common interpretation of a blue moon is the extra full moon in a month. like ealier mentioned, mostly each month of a calendar year has one full moon but in occasions there will be two.

This next month will have its first full moon in August 2nd and other one which we will call "blue moon" on the 31st.

In any of these cases, an extra full moon is caused due to the difference in earth's rotation and revolution around the sun versus the revolution of the moon around earth. The moon revolves around the earth in approximately 29.5 day. Since our average calender month has 30 days the out of sync time will accumalate the moon time to give us another full moon which can happen in about every 2 to 3 years. So it is not that rare of an event really.

Aside from these disambiguation there are also rare events in the past when the moon was reported to acctually appear blue in color. (BTW this was actually my understanding of the term was I was young). This is possible when there is enough smoke or dust particles in the atmosphere to filter the light seen by an earth observer. There were reports that the moons appears bluish short after the eruption on Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.

You Only Love Your Collider

I was curious enough today to click a youtube clip that appeared to have a contrasting picture from the title. And surely enough I was surprised with  mixed emotions I think I never had before.

What made me even more curious is that they are singing inside the CERN showing the LHC.  I mean who would allow shooting a comedy MTV inside a 9 billion dollar facility.

Here is the vid:




As it turns out, they are real employees of CERN. The title of the video,, also makes more sense since the LHC here  does not stand not for Large Hadron Collider but for the name of the group, Les Horribles Cernettes. And Collider is the title of the song.

Talk about "High Energy" Girl Band in the literal sense. Literal because they are actually working in a high energy lab.

Side trivia: One picture of this group is the first ever picture to be published on the world wide web in 1992.

Oddly enough, they do sound nice to my ear. That is if you don't expect much considering they are not actual singers and are real life CERN scientists.

Now you know how geeks have fun at work.

The God Particle Has Been Found?

When I was in my elementary school, I was taught that the atom is the smallest particle and is indivisible. But even during at that time that my teacher was uttering it, it was well established that there are more smaller particles inside the atom. One fundamental question relating to these smaller particles was - Why do they have different masses?

Anyone who has interest in physics at all at one point or another have encountered the idea of the Higgs boson aka the 'God Particle'.

In 1964, Peter Higgs, theorized a solution on the problem on why particles have mass. He proposed that  particles move through a field (the Higgs field very much like the idea of ether), and as they move through it they interact with Higgs Boson which is the smallest bit of the Higgs field. This interaction depending how smooth it moves though the field would give a particle its mass. But since then  its been very difficult to find it evidence of it and its discovery has been one of the most awaited in the history of physics.

Well today is historic as scientists at CERN announced that they are 99.999% sure  that 'God Particle' has been found.

So why should we care about its discovery?

Not really. To us (non geeks) we don't necessarily need to care. Its just good to know that current Standard Model of physics we have  is on the right track. Its means that  our geeks are correct so far on how we should perceive the physical world.  And most of all,  it's discovery is important because it means that our geeks need not to revise the whole physics as we(or they) know it. That our world  is now more simplier than it was without it. Some people might even say that we are now one step closer to knowing how God created the universe.