Just in case anyone cares, the article has now been corrected. The kinetic energy of a mosquito is about right, too, but I would have rather had it in slow-moving mint imperials. I’ve just been thinking about mosquitos: do they really crash land with their maximum velocity, or do they do some elegant braking procedure during the last moments of flight?

The following correction was printed in the guardian’s Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday November 22 2006

The energy of all the particles in Cern’s collider in Switzerland will “pack as much punch as a 400-tonne train travelling at 120mph”, and not the energy in each proton, as we stated in error in the article below. The usual comparison for a single proton is with a mosquito landing on skin.

Basically it’s a line from Warren Ellis’s [Ocean], a graphic novel, with somewhat shaky science, about a strange and highly alarming discovery in the deep ocean (I’m being coy; there’s a twist which is given away in the blurb, but I think it works well as a surprise, so, I dunno, get a copy in brown paper covers.

The time is some way in the future, and the hero is a United Nations weapons inspector who looks like Samuel L. Jackson and gets all the girls.

He takes one of the girls (who is badass) on a visit to The Doors Corporation (uhuh), whose minor employees have their personality replaced by efficient Doors software for the duration of their contract. Apparently this serves business needs but makes them about as able to process unexpected inputs as androids in 1960s Star Trek stories are (you remember how they used to have smoke coming out the ears), and badass girl says something like I momentarily thought Ben said when one of the station staff introduces himself by job title. It doesn’t actually disrupt the guy’s function, it just lets her let off steam, I think.

It’s the grauniad, for God’s sake. Of course it’s riddled with errors.

There are loads of protons in the beam – which means that the *total* energy of the stored beam is about a gigajoule, which is about as much a speeding train. This needs good cooling and a reliable beam dumping system that guarantees you won’t blow a hole in your expensive accelerator.

I find it amazing that a science correspondent – especially one so predestined for a geeky career as to be named Mr Sample – can write a sentence like that and not pause with a feeling of unease.

place upper end piece into flange – tighten nipple on flange, screw in end piece.

oh my word how we laughed…

“each proton will pack as much punch as a 400-tonne train travelling at 120mph”

in yesterday’s article means. If you’re interested, take a look at

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19866#19866

It hasn’t got old yet.

*sniggers*

I didn’t know that was one of its side effects?

if you’re investigating the high-energy hardon interaction, and you’re having trouble keeping it up, what do you use?…

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/0102-97/question.html