Saturday, September 22, 2018

SATURDAY NIGHT NIRVANA, ELO.

Nirvana with Lithium. Third single from the iconic Nevermind album (1991).





THE quintessential grunge band.



ELO with Don't Bring Me Down. From the 1979 album Discovery.





Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) formed in Birmingham in 1970 around songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood, and drummer Bev Bevan.



Good night.



MFBB.

CERN'S PROTOTYPE NEUTRINO DETECTOR YIELDING PROMISING RESULTS.

Via Science News, September 18, 2018:





"An enormous future particle detector is now within closer reach. The first data from a prototype experiment hint that scientists may have what it takes to build the planned neutrino detector.

Known as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, the experiment will use 70,000 metric tons of liquefied argon to study the secrets of these neutrinos — bizarre, nearly massless particles that may help reveal why matter is common in the universe but antimatter is rare. DUNE will eventually detect the tracks of charged particles, including electrons and their heavier cousins, muons, that are produced when neutrinos interact.

A smaller prototype built at CERN in Geneva has spotted its first particles, researchers announced September 18. The scaled-down detector traced the paths of muons produced when protons traveling through space slam into Earth’s atmosphere. The prototype is one of two detectors known as ProtoDUNE, which were built to test DUNE’s technology.

Beginning in 2026, DUNE will detect neutrinos beamed from Fermilab in Batavia, Ill. to the detector’s location more than a kilometer underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota."




In the Standard Model of Particle Physics the most obvious categories are the by now quite well known quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom), and another still rather exotic sounding group, the six leptons (electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, and tau neutrino). Quarks and leptons are called fermions, and each one of them has a corresponding antiparticle.





Of the three generations of quarks, the first generation is the most stable, and contains also the lightest particles: the up and down quarks. Quarks are never on their own but 'operate' always in 'combinations' which are called hadrons. The best well known hadrons are household names: protons and neutrons. In a proton, two up quarks combine with one down quark. A neutron by contrast consists of one up quark and two down quarks.

Now, quarks have various intrinsic properties, namely electric charge, mass, "color" charge, and "spin". Quarks are the sole elementary particles susceptible to the four fundamental interactions: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak interactions.

Electromagnetism is the fundamental force best understood and describes the interactions between electrically charged particles like, say, protons and electrons in an atom. If they are equal in number in the atom, their positive and negative charges cancel each other out, thus making the atom electrically neutral. By contrast, if an atom misses one or more electrons, it becomes "positive" and is called an ion.

The strong interaction aka nuclear strong force aka color force is, on a much more fundamental level though, far stronger than the electromagnetic force - at a range of 10 to the minus 15 m (1 femtometer), a whopping 137 times. The strong interaction is observable on two levels or scales: on the "largest" scale, 1 to 3 femtometer, it keeps protons together in spite of their positive charges (no contest, really). On the smallest scale, below 0.8 femtometer, it keeps the up quarks, which are themselves electrically charged, together (in their hadrons, remember).

The weak interaction is the interaction between subatomic particles that causes radioactive decay. For instance, weak interaction causes a neutron to transform - decay - into a proton, an electron, and an electron antineutrino.

Then there is gravity, the most observable fundamental force since it keeps your feet on the ground and the Earth orbit around the sun, but in fact it is the weakest of the four fundamentals: approximately 10 to the 38 times weaker than the strong force, 10 to the 36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, and 10 to the 29 times weaker than the weak force. It plays therefore no role on the scale of subatomic particles except perhaps for quarks, but even there it's unimportant.

In the lepton group, the electron, the muon and the tau particle do not carry "color" charge hence are not influenced by the strong interaction aka "color force". But they do have an electric charge which means that they are susceptible to electromagnetic forces. And also to the weak interaction.

The three other neutrinos, the subject of this post, are not electrically charged. Since, as we have seen, gravity does not play a role on this level, the neutrinos are subject only to the weak interaction.

These elusive particles were first detected on 13 NOV 1970 at the University of Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory:





In a hydrogen bubble bath", it was observed how a neutrino hit a proton in a hydrogen atom. The collision took place at the point where the three tracks emanate.

That was almost fifty years ago. DUNE, for Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, is expected to become operational from 2026 on:





Fascinating!



MFBB.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

SCHILD EN VRIENDEN CHAIRMAN DRIES VAN LANGENHOVE DEBUNKS VRT DOCU ALLEGATIONS.

The Belgian DOJ has started an investigation into the allegedly 'racist' character of Schild en Vrienden, the Flemish rightwing youth organization (no formal links with Vlaams Belang) of which members would have posted 'racist', 'sexist', 'homophobic' messages on private and core group (Discord) FB pages.

It's all hyped up beyond belief, and it is also becoming increasingly clear that the Pano 'documentary' by the extreme leftwing state broadcaster VRT, was meant as an Operation Damage N-VA, since Schild en Vrienden members can be found on several N-VA lists for the upcoming municipal elections. For the record, N-VA profiles itself as some sort of Vlaams Belang Lite, but they never fooled me. They are no Conservatives (its Chairman is the kind of guy who is very hunky dory with attending Mister Gay Flanders contests e.g.), and they certainly aren't pro strong borders, be it EU or Belgian ones. But of course, even a party which from a distance of three miles looks somewhat to the right of Joseph Stalin is too much for VRT (Vlaamse Radio en Televisie) and its sponsors the socialists and greens.

Anyway, the VRT strategy is working since all across Flanders, N-VA candidates who were S & V members have stepped back and the party is in full damage control...

... for nothing.

As for Schild en Vrienden itself, its chairman, Dries Van Langenhove, has released a movie in which he debunks the allegations of the VRT docu maker, Tim Vanderheyden, whom he, alas, allowed to make the docu in the first place. That fact alone should be reason to treat the VRT allegations with the greatest care because indeed, S&V allowed Vanderheyden an inside look into the organization. If there really would have been a risk for disclosure of explicit material, Van Langenhove wouldn't have given Vanderheyden a free hand. To be sure, some questionable memes were found here and there, and there is no doubt that some of them emanate from S&V circles. But the origin of a great slew of other memes is certainly doubtful. Given the extreme leftwing character of the state broadcaster, which forever has had a deserved reputation as a blood red bastion, it would come as no surprise to me that memes like this one:





... were in fact planted by leftist operatives.


It is entirely possible. In the following video Schild en Vrienden Chairman Van Langenhove debunks the allegations and makes a strong case that the entire Pano docu was nothing more than a political maneuver meant to damage the right just prior to the elections:





If only I had some more time to provide a translation...


If you are still sceptical, know this, and I realize it sounds insane, but yet it is the truth. The Director Social Media of the State Broadcaster VRT, a public organization funded by taxpayers from all stripes and therefore supposed to be neutral... that Director of Social Media...

.... is a young woman with a muslim father and a history of radical leftist activism. Her name?

Jihad Van Puymbroeck.

No, I kid you not. Here's a photo from around the time, early this year, that VRT hired her:




"Yes, my name is Jihad, it's my honor and my pride."


VRT hired her despite a huge number of questionable tweets. The most innocent of which are perhaps the ones in the upper left corner: "BDW [Bart De Wever, N-VA mayor of Antwerp - MFBB] reminds me of Hitler. It's his way of talking". "And let us now make it clear that N-VA are assholes".





Apparently these opinions are no problem for a state broadcaster looking for an objective Director Social Media!

And what about this? One of the main points in the Pano docu Verheyden was huffing and puffing about was that Schild and Vrienden members were known to use weapons in shooting clubs. Ooooooh the horror! Look at that:




Van Langenhove on some shooting stand, toting what looks like a Heckler & Koch rifle.


However, some bloke sporting weapons was NEVER a problem for the VRT when the person in question hailed from a red, green or muslim corner. Case in point Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Palestinian firebrand who in a grey past unfortunately obtained Belgian nationality through a phoney marriage with a certain Peggy Paternoster. Mr Jahjah has a very long history of provoking unrest. In times past, when he weighed 30 pounds less and was Chairman of the AEL (Arab European League), he was 'famous' for organizing pro-Palestinian riots, harassing the Antwerp PD, and loudly claiming that arabic should become Belgium's fourth official language. Earlier this year he announced that he would participate in the elections with a new leftist party, Be.one. The glorious news of which was reason enough for VRT to roll out the red carpet for our (former?) Hizballah terrorist:




Dyab Abou Jahjah during an interview by Bart Schols of the VRT talkshow 'De afspraak', early in 2018.


And this is a photo Dyab posted a couple of years back on social media. Ooooh what a hero! Too bad that by all accounts, former (?) Hizballah member Dyab Abou Jahjah (by his own admission) seems to have rather belonged to the Coca Cola Commando branch, ooooooooops Mint Tea Platoon of the forces combating the Israeli occupiers.





This photo has been doing the rounds on internet for at least 5 or 6 years, and yet in February it was NO PROBLEM whatsoever for Bart Schols to invite radical A-hole Jahjah to his show. Mr Jahjah was lucky that his tweet with the heroic AK47-toting pose escaped the attention of the then brand new VRT Director Social Media, Jihad Van Puymbroeck, or else!

Anyway, it only proves that in Belgium you can get away with just about anything...

... if you hail from the red, green or muslim camp. It's an entirely different matter if you identify as a Flemish patriot.



MFBB.