Hacking particle accelerators for unexpected science

[pesco]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/29/hacking-particle-accelerators.html

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[anon62122146]

Of course, this only works to a certain point:

www.abstrusegoose.com/156

[Jorpho]

So… Synchrotron radiation and carbon dating? Doesn’t sound at all “unexpected” to me. But “hacking” just sounds so much cooler.

[fuzzyfungus]

Some of the now preferred gene sequencing mechanisms actually have a rather smash-them-up-and-math-the-fragments flavor to them, which probably makes particle physicists feel at home.

Do some shotgun sequencing, get the reads, crunch on them with your sequence assembly software of choice.

They might be particularly comfortable in metagenomics, where you can smash first and then identify, rather than having to identify and culture before smashing to see what’s inside.

[FGD135]

So, art historians have particle accelerators now?
Watch them. They’re up to something.