Science Discovery: Bushcronium - A New Element

Yeah, I know I haven't been blogging, blah blah blah! I'm in nursing clinicals, I have a three-month- old baby, I have a very full time job! Boo hoo! OK, I'm good, just needed to work out the guilt! Anyway, my man Ernest, who I haven't seen in a dog's age give or take six years, sent me this. It's been floating around the innernet for a while and my apologies for failing to properly attribute this but its provenance is hazy. Anyway it's funny and kind of science related...

*Science Discovery: Bushcronium - A New Element*

Heaviest element.

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Bushcronium." Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an Atomic mass of 311. These 311 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Bushcronium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Bushcronium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Bushcronium has a normal half-life of multiples of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Bushcronium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element which radiates orders of magnitude, more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

(photo credit: Element originally uploaded by Jason Hightower )

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Ok, Here's a real physics story!

World's Fastest Image Processor Aids Search For Elusive Form Of Matter (February 9, 2006) — It is the new particles created by the crashing protons that scientists are intensely interested in, as they may well permit researchers to drill down to the true fundamental units of nature and sample conditions that existed right after the Big Bang some 15 billion years ago, when mass and energy were almost infinitely compressed. But how do scientists study those particle-collision events and the newly created but ephemeral particles that result? The answer, according to a team of UW-Madison scientists, is you build the world's fastest digital camera.