“One of the movie bad-girls, the Baroness — because she’s married to a French baron — forces her physicist husband to activate some nano-bot missiles using a “particle accelerator in France” … anyway, the scene involves the ninja assassin Storm Shadow slicing up some innocent particle physicists (experimentalists, no doubt)."

Particle physicist grad student Flip Tanedo assesses the role of the Large Hadron Collider in G.I. Joe, the latest big-screen summer blockbuster (US/LHC blogs).

“Suddenly, North America is awash in natural gas.”

Rosemary Boulton, president of Canadian company Kitimat LNG, which is building a natural gas export terminal in British Columbia to export gas to Asia (WSJ). A 30 July Nature editorial has more on North America’s gas bonanza.

“Today, NASA’s investment in advanced concepts and long-term technological solutions to its strategic goals is minimal.”

The US National Research Council released a report on Friday recommending that NASA revive its Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), closed in 2007.