This just in: The world didn't end this morning. Granted, some of you may not have known that it was supposed to end today.

At approximately 5:00 AM Eastern Time this morning, the first particle beam was successfully circulated through the entire Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is no small feat, considering that the LHC is 17 miles around, and runs from 160 to 560 feet underground. The first actual particle beam injections were actually carried out last month, but this is the first time a particle was circulated through the entire LHC.

Because the purpose of the LHC is to study previously unknown realms of physics, including aspects of black holes, and even the Big Bang itself, many doomsayers were predicting that a black hole would be created that would destory the entire earth. While the Earth itself wasn't destroyed, Google announced some damage was done to their logo. They said that, while there was no permanent damage to the logo, they would have to replace and polish the Chrome:

To help clear things up, How Stuff Works provides a very clear article about the ideas behind the LHC, including a TED video. Popular Mechanics points out 5 things you need to know about the LHC now.

It took plenty of time and specialized knowledge to put the LHC together. To give you an idea of how long, the first 5 years, starting in 1983, were spent just building the concrete-lined tunnel that houses the LHC!

I won't ask you to put together the entire LHC. You only have to put together a picture of the time projection chamber (TPC) of the ALICE detector's endplates. On the other hand, I can't allow you 5 years just to get started on the puzzle.



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

Click on any block next to the empty space, and that block will slide into the empty space. The Shuffle button mixes the pieces, the Original button shows the finished picture, and the Numbers button puts numbers on the pieces, to give you a better idea of where they belong. The clock begins when you move your first piece, and when you solve the puzzle, the empty square will appear.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

(ALICE TPC image courtesy of Skalex.)

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The big news in technology today, of course, is the announcment and release of the new iPod Touch, released by Apple and announced by the formerly late Steve Jobs.

No, that wasn't Apple's only announcement. After all, there's also the new “nano-chromatic” iPod nanos, and the announcement of the new iTunes 8 download being made available. The poor iPod classic getting upgraded to 120GB almost gets lost in the, er, shuffle (which also got upgraded today).

However, out of all the new releases, we can make an educated guess that, out of all of today's announcements, it's the iPod Touch that is most likely to shake things up.

Speaking of shuffling and shaking things up, that's just what we're going to do with today's puzzle. Your challenge today is to see how many English words you can make from the letters in IPOD TOUCH in 10 minutes. There are 130 words, not including the words “pod” and “touch”, that can be made from this phrase. How many can you name?

Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to name as many words as possible from the given phrase above.
• The clock will start counting down as soon as the first letter is typed in the answer box.
• Each letter may only be used as often as it appears in the given phrase.
• The only words included in the answers are those found in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary, as used in the USA, Canada, and Israel. Words from the Official Scrabble® Words International that do not appear in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary are not included.
• Other words may be excluded, as described in the article above.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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Google has had an interesting week, hasn't it?

First, a comic book is leaked, discussing Google Chrome, their new open source web browser. It creates plenty of buzz, and the browser itself was relased on Tuesday.

The big launch comes, many people download it, and a few even read the EULA. Those that did read it were horrified, as the agreement seemed to give Google the rights over any content you submitted through their browser. Fortunately, Google quickly removed the vague language from the EULA.

Just when everything was starting to settle down, a serious security flaw was found in Google Chrome!

In the real world, chrome has the reputation of making something look good, but not doing anything to improve the workings. Let's hope Google Chrome doesn't take on this association.

While Google works to put Chrome back together, why don't you try and put Google itself back together? Below is a mixture of three images. Below are the description, in the order they're employed in the puzzle (which, as you'll see in the instructions below, is important):

1. The Googleplex welcome sign


2. Google co-founder Sergey Brin (with the purple background)


3. Google co-founder Larry Page (with the dark classroom background)

(Java required)
Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle, called FlipSwitch (conceived and programmed by Eric Harshbarger), is to put together any 1 of the 3 images used. The images are designated in a certain order, as described above. Each time you click a particular square, that square's image, as well as the images in each square in the same row and column, will move forward to the next image in the sequence. Any square containing the 3rd image will be changed to the 1st image.

The Scramble button will give you a new arrangement of picture pieces with which to work. The Increment button will move each square's image to the next one in sequence. The Solve button will show one completed picture. To see the complete set of pictures, click Solve, then click Increment to go through the complete pictures one by one.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

(Googleplex welcome sign image courtey of Coolcaesar. Sergey Brin image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc.. Larry Page image courtesy of Ehud Kenan.)

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