Monday, September 22, 2008

Spectacular way to die

With all the fuss going on about LHC, only thing that interests me is not whether I will be sucked into black hole (if you worry, see wiki entry), or whether I want to be sucked into black hole (as I've mentioned before, I am not averse to mass extinction), but rather how it will be like if I did. Little search points to this great article on Slate which claims the experience "the most spectacular way to die". What will happen is that force of gravity will rip me apart into tiniest of particles since difference in force due to difference in distance will magnify (inverse square law) because each particle infinitesimally closer to black hole is accelerated at faster rate than particle away.

If you were caught by the pull of a black hole, you would be sent into free fall toward its center. The pulling force would increase as you moved toward the center, creating what's called a "tidal force" on your body. That is to say, the gravity acting on your head would be much stronger than the gravity acting on your toes (assuming you were falling head-first). That would make your head accelerate faster than your toes; the difference would stretch your body until it snapped apart, first at its weakest point and then disintegrating rapidly from there as the tidal force became stronger than the chemical bonds holding your body together. You'd be reduced to a bunch of disconnected atoms. Those atoms would be stretched into a line and continue in a processional march. — Slate

If you can tolerate bad rap and dancing, then see this video to learn some interesting thing. I didn't know what "Higgs" are, got to find out!

Book Review - Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy (2003)

I can say, with some modesty, that I am familiar with the subject of mathematics more than an average person is. Despite that I hadn’t ever ...