The God Particle

This is a quick post to to commemorate the switching on the the Large Hydron Collider in Cern, Switzerland. What a cool piece of kit they've built. All to try and find the elusive Higgs Boson particle, also known as the God Particle.

I can't wait to see what they find!

"Nestling in the foothills of the Alps is Europe's largest laboratory, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or Cern.

With its vast labyrinth of tunnels and equipment stretching for miles, the complex has the feel of a cathedral to science.

And now the scientists here have embarked on their biggest experiment ever, the hunt for a particle which gave the universe its form.

Its scientific name is the Higgs Boson, but because it is so fundamental in shaping the universe, others have called it the God particle.

It is a particle that is supposed to endow other fundamental particles with mass. Without it there would be no gravity, no universe as we know it - no "let there be light" moment.

No-one has seen it, but physicists have invoked it because it is the simplest explanation for how the universe evolved.

Most physicists are instinctively drawn towards theories with a simple elegance.

Reverend Sir John Polkinghorne used to be a theoretical physicist and worked with Professor Peter Higgs, after whom the God particle was named.

Professor Polkinghorne went on to become an Anglican priest. He believes the equations which describe the way sub-atomic particles interact contain a natural beauty in which some find a spark of divinity.

He said: "Physicists are deeply impressed with the order of the world. It is rationally beautiful and structured, and the feeling that there is a mind behind it is a very natural feeling to have."

It is not the first time that a scientific study of the universe has inspired awe and wonder.

The crew of Apollo 8 were so moved by their experience, they felt moved to read passages from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968.

US physicists Richard Feynman and George Smoot both described their Nobel Prize-winning insights into the behaviour of subatomic particles and the detection of the Cosmic Background Radiation as looking "unto the face of God".

Professor Polkinghorne understands why such glimpses into the underlying reality of the universe can provoke such reactions.

He said: "I think the feeling of wonder, which is very fundamental to the experience of physicists - the way they see structure in the world - is fundamentally a religious experience, whether people recognise it as such or not.

"And I think it is actually a tacit, sometimes explicit, worship of the creator."

Many of the physicists here are not religious and would disagree with Professor Polkinghorne's view.

For them their buzz is an intellectual rather than religious one. "

The Noon Project

What will you be up to?

www.thenoonproject.co.uk

Earth from 31 Million miles

This cracking photo is of our Home.

Taken from the Deep Impact probe, whose cameras were trained back on Earth at a distance of 31,000,000 Miles.

Cool as!

Ice Ice Baby

Thanks to Barry for this set of beauties!

"Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by
layers of snow that react to different conditions.

Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet
fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.

When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can
freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up
when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea."




"The water froze the instant the wave broke through the ice. That's what it is like in Antarctica where it is the
coldest weather in decades. Water freezes the instant
it comes in contact with the air. The temperature of the
water is already some degrees below freezing.
Just look at how the wave froze in mid-air!!! "

Amnesty International short film - 42 Days

I was on set yesterday as a Production Runner on a short film being made for Amnesty International by a TV production company in London called Stink TV (lol!). It was an AMAZING day. The directors, who call themselves Dark Fibre, have made 2 other short virals (as they call them) for Amnesty on subjects such as the US use of waterboarding as an acceptable interrogation method for prisoners. Please visit Stinks (lol) website and click on the link marked "Dark Fibre/Amnesty" to see an example of their work. http://www.stink.tv/stink.php It was great to be working for such a worthy organisation as Amnesty.


As you can see it is pretty powerful stuff. This particular short is about the 42 days detention without charge rule that we now have in this country. The theme of the film was people sleepwalking, and ending up sleepwalking into prison. It was pretty evocative stuff, as they had 4 principle actors and a load of other extras sleepwalking in the nightclothes or underwear, and ending up in prison cells!


We filmed for half the day at the old Jail in Scarborough, which is now part of the council depot, but still has the classic 3 floors prison look about it. An amazing place to see. The second part at night was in a residential cul-de-sac, where the people would slowly sleepwalk out of their beds and into the street.


The directors obviously have a very visual style, so for every take they had the actors slowly walk forward in a daze, then halfway through they would all start walking backwards. This is apparently because if you shoot people walking backwards and then play the film backwards itself, it has them walking forwards in a very unusual style! LOL.


It sure looked amazing and evocative though! All these people in their underclothes, walking backwards and forwards around a jail, and down a deserted street at 1am. Amazing stuff. I cant wait to see it when its finished.


All in all, a great days work! I got back to my hotel at 3.30am (after the requisite couple of beers. Would have been rude not to!) And yes, it was BLOODY FREEZING for the actor lol. We had blankets and hotwater bottles on standby for them. They were suffering for their art on this one!

PS. The food was amazing lol. High-class cakes and chocolates all day followed by 2 huge meals with puddings :) I could eat like this all the time lol.

September LOLCATS

We haven't had any LOLCATS for a while.

:)

Mementos

I came across another bag of old photos, postcards, flyers, and ticket stubs from years ago today. Its amazing what you keep to remind you of things. I remember that these used to adorn my walls and mirror when I lived at home. Each one a memory from that distant country called the Past. Each one irreplaceable and invaluable.

Good times, good times!


1. My ticket from the legendary Oasis concert in Knebworth Park. For those who don't know, Knebworth is probably the pinicle of Stately Home concerts as the venue is the largest in the country (I think). 125,000 people in one single arena/field. Although not the worlds biggest Oasis fan (the ticket was bought as someone owed me money, actually being in a mass of 125,000 people at once is a mind blowing experience. Seeing how that many people react, and watching waves ripple out over them, especially when the leftside and rightside of the field started joke booing each other. Absolutely amazing to watch and be in the middle of. For the record Oasis were pretty crap and unprofessional! lol


2. My flyer from the Love To Be night held at the superclub Es Parasis in Ibiza. Es Paradis is a glass pyramid, with ceing-high walkways intercrossing the club, with plam trees and fountains all round. The centre of the club is a sunken fountain that at 6am fills with water or foam as people are dancing in it and the suns coming up through the glass roof. One of the best places I ever went clubbing!

3. My ticket for the V98 festival in Leeds. Also the first festival where Robbie Williams tried his hand as a solo act, and did a bloody good job too! Also saw The Verve. A fun and messy weekend! :)


4. A Postcard from the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem. An amazing hostel made from a converted Hareem. The first place I ever stayed when I went backpacking for the first time. Totally Bohemian, unique, and super friendly. I probably fell in love with backpacking in this place.

Forty Thousand Reasons why you should watch this film

Forth Thousand Reasons, the short film I was 1st Assistant Director has finally been finished and released to the world. And you know what? Its bloody good!

I cant post it on here as the producer Conor Ibrahiem doesn't want it online yet. It's going to have a festival life, and has already been entered and accepted in the regional Bite The Mango short film festival. He hopes to enter it into many others next year as well. So good luck to us all that it gets some good exposure. And who knows, maybe catapults us all to greatness and glory! (A boy can dream, lol)

But it is good! Good music, great pace, and genuine atmosphere in it as well. The director Imy has done an excellent job, as did the cameraman Chen. The acting is uniformly excellent, especially my friend Pepper. And the extra playing "Tourist with backpack and camera", was frankly outstanding! ;)

I hope to be able to show it you at some point. Until then, here is the DVD cover, a few snaps from when we filmed it back in May, and a couple of important screen shots from the film! lol

Its a Bollywood Thriller

This needs to be shared. That is all.

Celebrity Morph

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Pedigree charts - Free family tree

I might not have posted this if it hadn't of said that I look 73% like George Clooney! lol. As George is a good person to be compared to ;) I have let my vanity get the better of me lol

And we shall just not mention that I came up as 79% Mariah Carey!

Eclipse season

This August was eclipse season. The month's first New Moon and Full Moon were both seen in darkened skies during a solar and lunar eclipse. Blocking the Sun, the left panel's New Moon was captured during the total solar eclipse of August 1 from the path of totality overlooking Novosibirsk (Siberia) Reservoir, locally known as the Ob Sea. A lovely solar corona and bright inner planets Mercury and Venus emerged during the total eclipse phase, while the flickering view screens of eclipse watchers' digital cameras dotted the landscape. On the right, the Full Moon grazed Earth's shadow nearly 15 days later in a partial lunar eclipse. That serene view was recorded during an early evening stroll along the shores of the Odet River near the city of Quimper in western France. For planet Earth there are about two seasons each year during which the orientation of the Moon's orbit is favorable for solar and lunar eclipses. The next eclipse season begins in January 2009 with an annular solar eclipse.

The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra. Shaped like a cone extending into space, the umbra has a circular cross section that can be most easily seen during a lunar eclipse. For example, last Saturday the Full Moon slid across the northern edge of the umbra. Entertaining moon watchers throughout Earth's eastern hemisphere, the lunar passage created a deep but partial lunar eclipse. This composite image uses successive pictures recorded during the eclipse from Athens, Greece to trace out a large part of the umbra's curved edge. The result nicely illustrates the relative size of the umbra's cross section at the distance of the Moon, as well as the Moon's path through the Earth's shadow.