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More slightly shoddy science reporting. From the Guardian:

“Thanks to German astronomers, we now have the most accurate measurements yet of the giant black hole that sits at the centre of our galaxy.

“And what a beast it is: as wide as Earth’s orbit around the sun and 4.3 million times more massive than our home star.”

Whoever did that calculation got it wrong.

The “size” of a black hole (really the size of its event horizon, the point of no return) is given by its Schwarzchild radius:

r = 2GM / c²

So a black hole 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun would have a Schwarzchild radius of around 13 million km, more than ten times smaller than the radius of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

(Or a black hole as wide as Earth’s orbit would be around 50 million solar masses. But the one in the centre of our galaxy is the former case.)

One might almost expect this from most journalists, many of whom are borderline innumerate. Ian Sample has a science PhD.

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The Large Hadron Collider sent its proton beams through its entire 27km for the first time today. It’s expect to wind up to full power by the end of next month.

Exciting times. The atmosphere at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s “Big Bang Breakfast” switch-on event this morning was a little bit like what it must’ve been like just before the Moon landings — only fairly limited to the scientific community.

And with an overtone of doom-mongering.

You expect this kind of bollocks from the Mail, but the Guardian has been even worse: as many of their articles on the LHC have been about its alleged (and completely fictitous) world-ending potential as on the actual science.

They didn’t even relent today. On the video feed from Geneva that we got in London, I heard one of their reporters asking one of the CERN managers: “I was wondering if you’ve seen anything in the machine which would cause you concern so far?”

No.

This is from what is supposed to be a serious newspaper. Their coverage over the last few days has been as depressing as it has been tedious.

The Times and the Telegraph, however, have been pretty good, the latter if only for their quote from Brian Cox, who said what I suppose most people with any sense must have been thinking: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”

UPDATE 11/9/08 1044:

The first casualty of the LHC Otto Roessler’s boneheaded scaremongering:

“A 16-year-old girl in Madhya Pradesh allegedly committed suicide after watching news on channels about possibility of the end of earth following the atom-smasher experiment in Geneva that began on Wednesday.

“Chhaya, a resident of Sarangpur town in Rajgarh district, consumed sulphos tablets (an insecticide) yesterday, her parents said.

“The girl was rushed to Indore’s MY Hospital where she succumbed on Wednesday.

“Her parents told reporters she was watching about the world’s biggest atom-smasher experiment in Geneva on news channels since the last two days following which she got restless and ended her life.”

Last night I attempted but somehow failed to post a comment on this spacktacular YouTube video (via) along the lines of: “The Large Hadron Collider isn’t nearly as dangerous as the people who think that the Large Hadron Collider is dangerous.”

QE fucking D.

UPDATE2: 11/9/08 1535

I take back what I said about the Telegraph.

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At 5ft 10in, 12st 5lb and a 36E, she is keen to point out that the average UK woman is a size 16 like her.

She told Newsbeat: “I’ve always been bigger than most girls.

If this Miss England finalist is both average size and bigger than most girls there must be a handful of truly massive women unbalancing the weight distribution.

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The Queen, better value than an iPod download

The Queen and the royal family cost each taxpayer 66p a year, an increase of 4p from 2007, Buckingham Palace accountants said today.

The accounts showed the cost of keeping the monarchy in the year to March 31 rose by £2m to £40m. Officials said this was 3.1% lower in real terms than in 2001.

The per person expenditure each year was said to be just under the cost of two pints of milk and or an iPod download.

Cheaper, yes. But not necessarily better value.

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Pakistan’s impenetrable Tora Bora is unreachable because of its alienation, in legal and civic terms, from the rest of the country

So alienated, in fact, that’s it’s in Afghanistan.

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