The Cry Baby is on sabbatical ....

Monday, April 4, 2011

MUST SEE: "Just the Way You Are" played on invisible instruments


This cover of "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars, performed by Tim Soo on the Invisible Instrument is incredible. Soo: “Originally, I built an extremely simple ‘invisible violin’ in part because I left my violin back at home and needed to perform a short composition for an intro music theory class,” he says. “I thought it’d make for an easy grade. The concept, however, took hold.” Read more on Mashable.

Remarkable video of skyscrapers in Japan swaying during earthquake


This home video is a testimonial to Japanese engineering –– at least when it comes to building construction (we'll leave out the nuclear plant design/construction for the moment). The fact that these buildings can withstand the amount of movement is incredible. Unfortunately, there's no information on where in Japan this is, which would be very interesting to know.

Charlie Sheen posts his video - sadder and crazier than ever


Exactly why Charlie Sheen would make this video is something I'll let you figure out. He's been retweeting comments on it this morning, but after watching it, I have to say it's just sad, sad, sad.
"RT @RDisher This @charliesheen video made me laugh harder than the whole 8th season of 2.5 men After the flameout in the motor city on Saturday night, perhaps this was supposed to give him a boost, but it just keeps on going in the wrong direction for Charlie – straight down."
Have a watch of the video and see for yourself.

Scientists break a law of nature – very briefly


Particle paths after gold ion collision
For a very, very brief instant, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken. Sounds a bit like a detective thriller at this point. The law of physics that had been violated is called "parity", which in simple terms means all things are equal; the universe is neither right or left handed.

The scientists created a quark-gluon plasma — a kind of "soup" that results when energies reach high enough levels to break up protons and neutrons into their constituent quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of matter. The plasma was created by accelerating gold nuclei to 99.999% of the speed of light and smashing them together. Theorists believe this plasma, which has a temperature of four trillion degrees Celsius, existed just after the Big Bang, when the universe was only a microsecond old. The plasma "bubble" created by the scientist lasted for a mere millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second.

Have I lost you yet? A little more ..... The break in parity was detected by the way particles, quarks in particular, traveled along the huge magnetic field produced by the plasma — the strongest ever created.

"If the effect proves to be real, it could help scientists understand a similar asymmetry that led to one of physics' most fundamental mysteries — namely, why the universe is dominated by ordinary matter today when equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created by the Big Bang,"  concludes the Yale University press release.