Catalyst particles
You take a group of humans and make them do the most mind-bending, intellectual work you can… you push them hard, keeping them going late into the night, drip feeding them coffee until they’ve understood the universe.
Then something happens, just as daylight breaks… they need to stop but they can’t sleep until the coffee wears off. What better way to unwind than to do something really daft, often with the expensive equipment that’s hanging around.
You just know that when the first microwave oven was invented that the third object to be tested was either a light-bulb or a grape.
You know that when they made LSD, the third animal that they tested it on was probably something entirely inappropriate, like an elephant.
That’s probably how one Drosophila gene got called cockeyed and another, Sonic Hedgehog.
Similarly, I bet it was a theoretical physicist that discovered what happens when you mix cola and mentos.
The scary thing is that they then have to return to work and do things such as create controlled black holes and super-powerful mice.
And that’s science, in a nutshell.
Philip J Schadenfreude on 
CRAP! If television (Lexx) is right (I’m sure it is), we need to get off the planet before they find the Higgs boson particle! Otherwise we’ll all be crushed into a piece of superdense matter the size of a pea!
I could already describe a few people as ‘Superdense’
“Where’s the cat?”
“Oh, he got into the antimatter.”
“Swell. Now we’ve got more gamma ray bursts AND we need a new cat.”
Schroeder put him in a box….
choking on my own tongue. seriously, my sense of humor accelerated way past the actual funny level of that joke and dropped my giggling arse on the floor.
Not being very good at science I still don’t understand why my atoms continue to be my atoms without deciding to randomly become atoms on my chair instead….all of a sudden.
i think it’s the same reason ice in the freezer remains. if you get hot enough they’ll wander off, but now they don’t have enough energy to escape you .
Schrodingers Cat in a particle accelator?
What happens then?
In the scientific tradition, I say, ‘let’s find out’
You steal the cat, I’ll bring the PA.
Now I know how curiosity killed the cat.
I always assumed it was the cat’s fault.
Silly me.
That cat has creepy eyes.
Also, scientists wouldn’t be scientists if they didn’t piss around, now would they?
That’s true enough… history will eventually conclude that 90% of human advances are diredtly due to scientists pissing around.
Only 90% ??
Kitties are always funny. Wouldn’t be the same if that was an apple floating around instead.
Is a partical accelerator
like a wet fart?
I think it uses magnets
that’s an interesting simile tho’
Must be a good week for accelerator jokes:
http://xkcd.com/401/
Can the cats chase the pigeons, while avoiding the proton streams?
I expect so…
Do you know when he put that strip up… I mean before or after I put this one up?
I’m not accusing anyone of anything, just seems like an odd co-incidence.
I think it was actually up the day before yours went up…
But as I said, it’s just a good week for particle accelerated humour.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Mmm, it does leave me with a problem though, if that is the case that it went up there first, I’m tempted to remove this one.
I mean, I don’t want anyone thinking that I’m ripping it off as it is essentially the same comic, and since that comic is far more popular than this one (it’s true) people will naturally assume that I’m a bit short of ideas, so to speak.
What do you, (and that’s a collective ‘you’) think?
both comics are intellectual, and neither are very colorful, but beyond that i fail so see similarity
i think youre doing fine with this one. you and randall have completely different styles so even when you cover similar subject matter it turns out something else entirely. given that we know youre a pretty clever guy, i doubt anyones going to think you copied.
reassured enough? i thought i did a pretty thorough job there.
this comic sounds like something i would do just so i could tell someone what the binding energy of a cat is.
Cool, I’ve checked and it seems to be the case that both were put on on the 26th… I uploaded mine to my server on the 24th and I don’t imagine that Randall is in the business of stealing ideas, so I’m going to let it stand.
From now on, the 26th of March will be known as ‘accelerator day’.
you have just reminded me that its monday, an xkcd day, which makes me excited to an unhealthy degree
It is?
I’m kinda the same about it.
Tho I tend to be non-chalant about, so ppl think that I am cool, that I don’t need my fix.
Let’s see a screenshot of the image’s timestamp in your FTP program… c’mon now… full disclosure.
It would be cataclysmic
**dies of shame**
oh dear! oh dear.
shame indeed
There’s no shame in puns here… ‘though that’s a pretty special one.
am i the only person amazed by the fact that even though we live in different timezones there is (are? please help me with that one) generally more than one of us online at any time? i mean really, out of about 20 people. really. i am amazed.
I know, it happens quite a lot to be honest… i think some of you must be very much night owls or early birds… get some sleep.
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEEK!
Good pun Roland, by the way.
haha why thankyou sir
yeah sleep = fail
a whole week?
I am both a night owl and an early bird…in that I often stay up so late that I’m up early. Plus I check my e-mail like 800 times a day.
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/050408/large-hadron-collider-debat.gif
This makes me giggle.