Yesterday, planetary scientists announced that they have discovered the first planet in a solar system's habitable zone. It is 600 light years from home.

It would be so cool if we could, sometime very soon, overcome the time/space issues and get there in the same number of months it took early 16thC explorers to arrive at the previous "new world."

It would also be cool if there were to be a "commutable" planet in the same system, one with advanced civilizations on it.

Imagine the looks on their triple-tiered faces when they realize their solar system is going Levittown! We'll send Michael Moore and Ken Burns to document just how long it will take our current technology to f'up a whole, shiny, new planet.

It will be named Tyvekia, as a distant memory of those bold, but fading graphics on the sides of houses in northern New England and Canada (and Washington state). Our neighbors on Heliostomy 5
will call our new home Pennsyltucky, since we introduced "dew mouth" to an entire to planetary system. With 3 sets of teeth, fixin' that ain't gonna be cheap for folks on H5.

Then there will be the decline in property values on H5, as we duplicate the 600-mile Central Pacific trash spiral 1500 miles above Tyvekia. Aurora? What aurora? We don't see no stinkin' aurora. We'll change the colors of those skies faster than a mood ring.

Finally, Steve Winn will come along and turn Tyvekia into The Casino Planet, simply because there was no one to contest our bid to be recognized as native peoples and the land-use permits were already in his name.

Everyone on H5 will come to Pennslytucky for the same reasons we go to the State Fair---to gawk at the tatooed loser wastrels. All the dealers with be Heliostomites--those 3-tiered faces come in real handy for nabbing cheaters, but the cocktail waitresses will continue to be "imported" from home by Russian traffickers, still angry that the Hammer and Sicle never made it to the moon.

Or... they just nuke our ships before we get too close.

we just use the best we got against them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FhQxZnSqc0

I saw a y in there. All I could think is "Geez, Bob's gonna post how hit Mini is".

Let bbigwyres talk to them, he would fry their minds.

Hey, JB, don't be dissin' Slim Whitman. ;D

Today CERN announced that they have narrowed down the "hiding places" of the "God" particle.

If they find it, there go my Higgs Boson references. Damn!

Don't we turn energy into matter every time we use the toidy?

They are at 98% certainty. It's not considered a "discovery" until they are at 99.99994 percent. So you can keep them coming for now.

Just change your tagline to state that your Higgs Bosun remark has a 1.99994% chance of not requiring requiring retraction.

On the more serious but perhaps inane side of that topic. I read that article last night before going to bed so ended up in that annoying mental state where your brain starts uncontrollably contemplating a topic until it eventually goes into a loop mode where you just keep having the same thought over and over again until you go to sleep. Ummm, that does happen to you guys too right????

In any case, I was thinking about the reference of Higgs Bosun often being called the God Particle and how it is the last piece of the puzzle in the 'Standard Model' theory which is said to cover absolutely 'everything'. Everything that is except gravity, which remains to be yet a bit of another holy grail of sorts.

My thought that turned into the dreaded, half conscious loop was that in pretty much every model starting with "the big bang," gravity is actually the force that drives creation. If matter was not attracted to each other, then the vast majority of the particles would have continued spreading outward in a straight trajectory, forever increasing in distance from the center and in distance from each other as the constant vectors from the center drive them further and further from each other.

Yes there would have been some intermingling of particles in that first instance but there would never have been enough condensing to form large amounts of more complex particles, no giant pockets of gasses and elements forming, no condensing these gases into giant balls so dense that fusion spontaneously begins, creating a star. No planets and finally, no billions of years of randomly mixing elements until eventually a simple cell happens to occur and eventually a sentient life form evolves.

Setting religious theology aside, as this isn't at all meant to be a religious or anti-religious statement, I sleepily and probably deliriously present to you that if Higgs Bosun is the God particle, then gravity is the God force.

When I lie in bed I think of boobies.

I agree, Mark. Why waste precious time on all that silly science stuff?

The funny thing is that the God particle name came about because the author of the book wanted to call it The Goddamn Particle. His editor or publisher changed it.

I don't know if it's so much funny as sad that the author wanted to call it that in the first place in addition to being too wussy to stick to his guns.

Calling it the Goddamn Particle could have been enough to start a war. Wise move.