Headline: "Weasel Apparently Shuts Down World's Most Powerful Particle Collider"

Here's a headline you don't see every day.

Choice quote: "There have been previous incidents, including one in 2009, when a bird is believed to have dropped a baguette onto critical electrical systems."

(Tip of the cap to Graeme Smith.)

Möbius Strips: Now Apparently Three-Dimensional

Today I found out about a new paper that reports the generation of Möbius strips of optical polarization, which is very exciting. Unfortunately, the paper's abstract starts out in a very depressing manner that makes me cringe: "Möbius strips are three-dimensional geometrical structures, fascinating for their peculiar property..." Nooooooo!

Although does need three dimensions embed a Möbius strip in an ambient (extrinsic) space, a Möbius strip is a two-dimensional manifold.

(Tip of the cap to Physics Today for their Facebook post of a popular article about the new discovery. Notice the comment about the number of dimensions in the correction. In this case, the popular piece has done better than the paper's abstract.)

Human, Meet Nonlinear Oscillator. Nonlinear Oscillator, Meet Human.

Yes, really. The title of the paper was a bit odd (because of the stress on "social" interactions via the 'human dynamic clamp'), but this idea looks very cool!

Density Tower

This home-brew experiment looks awesome! And I mean that literally: click on the link and take a look at what it looks like.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science.)

Oh, Rats!

I find this SMBC much funnier now than I would have in the past now that I have been reading neuroscience papers with rats.

The Neuroscience of Speed Dating

Caltech researchers have used speed-dating experiments to identify which parts of the brain are involved in making snap judgements.

This is really cool, but if the test subjects were Caltech undergrads, then I'm afraid that the whole experiment might have to be thrown out. :)

(Tip of the cap to whoever does Facebook posts for California Institute of Technology.)

Insane in the Squid Membrane

In case you were wondering, this is what happens when you blast early-90s hip-hop music through the nerves of a squid.

I can think of a few variants of this experiment that I would like to try...

(Tip of the cap to Adam Villani.)

Home Experiments with Granular Materials

I wouldn't even dream of playing with my food in order to look at the packing properties of the grains in my chicken soup.

"Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass"

Here is an extremely funny fake research report called Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass. I approve!

(Tip of the hat to Jing Xu.)