Monthly Archives: November 2007

The Flat Universe

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chuck steidelkc coleWhile searching through their site to find something else, I noticed that there was a conversation on KPCC’s Zocalo between science writer K C Cole and Astrophysicist Chuck Steidel not long ago. Have a look at their listing of past conversations here – there’s a lot of good stuff about various topics and people in the Los Angeles area. I listened to it, and it’s very interesting indeed.

It is not quite your usual light touch conversation that you hear on public radio – it is a little more involved, taking you a bit further (without losing you) and gives you more insights into the work, the puzzles, the discoveries and the hopes for future ones. As a journalist, and the guest host of the program, K C Cole knows her material, and so is able to steer things rather well, while inserting useful remarks to help the listener keep up. This might be perfect listening if you want to get a sense of what it’s like to work in Chuck’s area of expertise (finding and characterizing the youngest galaxies and understanding their cosmological implications), either out of general curiosity or if you’re planning a career in that area. Take out some time and have a listen. Here’s the blurb from the site:
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Listen Against

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Oh boy. I laughed very loudly in my office at this in many places. I had the door closed, mercifully. I’m sorry, but most of you won’t get this, but I need to let the relative few who’ll find this hilarious know about it. So scroll on down to another post if you’ve no idea why this would be funny for you. Basically, you have to be into Radio, and moreover into BBC Radio. Quite a bit. If you’re familiar with it (especially Radio 4 and Radio 3) then please please please listen to this new program: It’s called Listen Against. It is a remarkably good and hilarious parody of Radio 4 and a host of other […] Click to continue reading this post →

Möbius Transformations

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This short video is simply lovely. It illustrates (with perfectly chosen music) an important set of mathematical transformations dear to many of us, the Möbius transformations. It is by Douglas Arnold and Jonathan Rogness of the University of Minnesota. It’s a pleasure to watch, whether you work in a mathematically related field or not. Try it:



Also worth looking at (for a host of other reasons) are the comments on the video from […] Click to continue reading this post →

Alexey Zamolodchikov

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alexey zamolodchikovSome weeks ago, I learned that Alexey Zamolodchikov died. Many of you who are theoretical physicists will definitely know the name, as the name Zamolodchikov is all over the fields of statistical physics and integrable systems, conformal field theory, string theory, and Liouville theory, for example: It would be either him, his twin brother Alexander, or both of them that you’ll have certainly encountered on that paper that was crucial to your work in one or several ways. (Photo (2000) by Craig Tracy. I found it here.)

I did not know him personally, and so will not go on at length here, but given how much his contributions have filtered into so much of what I’ve been doing since I was a graduate student (I remember being, as a student far away from the centre of activity in the field, somewhat fascinated with those papers […] Click to continue reading this post →

Antarctic Antics

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Tamsin Grayantarctic research stationsMy Correlations colleague Tamsin Gray has been updating us on her activities down in Antarctica. I still find it remarkable that there are people regularly going down there, doing all sorts of scientific experiments at several stations. Click the map on the right for a larger view of the layout of the many stations down there. Keep an eye out for Tamsin’s posts – not the least because there are occasionally pictures of cute penguins – to get an idea of some of the things her team are up to.

Recently, for example, Tamsin told us about some new (toys) tools they were working with – tiny airplanes! They fly around and do meteorological measurements.

Over on Correlations I did a post about Antarctica that briefly mentioned some of the physics being done there (AMANDA and IceCube, the neutrino telescopes), but the […] Click to continue reading this post →

I’ve Seen an Extra Dimension

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Astounding. I can’t get over how amazing it was. I’m stunned, just stunned.

What am I talking about? No, it is not some new experiment I’ve done in my lair downstairs to somehow test out whether there are extra dimensions. It is something else. Something that manages to switch on and exploit an extra dimension with such daring and abandon that one sees things much closer to the way Nature intended. The results are rather spectacular!
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Chess and Shopping

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Yesterday, on (one of) the biggest shopping days of the year, I went… shopping. Insane, I know. Oddly enough, it was not a disaster. After an hour or so the headache that usually develops (when I have to make so many decisions over prices and items of clothing and so forth) began to approach, but that was largely due to the barrage of Christmas Carols. I eventually found a way to see the humour in just how dreadful some of the treatments of various songs can be, and that kept me going a bit longer. The Mel Torme (“the velvet fog”) version of “Chestnuts Roasting on an…” (whatever it’s really called) has sunken to a new unanticipated low by having had a strangely irrelevant and mood-altering backbeat added to it for part of the song. I heard this in the Gap, which meant that I left rather hurriedly without buying anything because I was laughing too much. After three hours of this sort of activity in several stores, I came away with essentially one item. One. Sigh.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Well, nowhere in particular, but I thought I’d share my lunch scene with you. I was at Santa Monica for the shopping you see, and part of my agenda was to make the shopping bearable by having a late lunch down at the beach.

santa monica atheletics

I’d packed a sandwich, brought a book and an apple, and everything. On my way, I stopped at a store I regularly stop at to get the best deal in Santa Monica – the aforementioned simple jam tarts. A dollar apiece. I got two. Dessert, you see. They packed them into the usual pink box, and after getting a cup of coffee next door I wandered down to the pier, past the pier, and walked toward the area where all the chess tables are set up. Chess players were there, including many of the regulars I’ve […] Click to continue reading this post →

Bench

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Surprisingly satisfying sound to it, that word… Bench.

Feeling a bit off the tracks, internally, in one way or another and so I’ve decided to opt out of Thanksgiving this year and spend some time hiding out on my own. Consequently, there’ll be no cooking post, I’m afraid. I’ll have to refer you to last year’s. However, there are other arenas of derring-do besides the kitchen. Today, Asymptotia goes down to the workshop…

I’ll probably be drummed out of the Theorists’ Guild for admitting this, but I can’t go for long without making or doing something constructive with my own hands. The mood to make something hit me hard the other day. Not long ago I began to eye various aspects of my office (at home) and try to understand why I only use it to pick up printouts, find a book on a shelf, and add to the giant piles of paper on every surface. I never sit in it and use it, and I did not know why, annoyingly enough. Well, I think I figured it out, and after making a series of investigations, and a series of detailed measurements, the solution is on order. I will report later. The solution (and some other projects I have in mind) will require some careful woodwork, and I’ve not really got a good working space for that, having mostly done all my woodworking on the ground, patio, steps, and other improvised places.

So today’s project was to fix this. The plan began with a spontaneous purchase (for […] Click to continue reading this post →

Stem Cell Timeline

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wisconsin-madison image skin cellsNot surprisingly, there’s been a lot of interesting chatter about the recently announced stem cell research results I blogged about earlier. I did a longer blog post over on Correlations that might interest you (I managed to think of the pun for the title that I knew was in there somewhere, but could not manage it this morning over here).

Mentioned there are two more NPR items I thought were of note: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Stem Cell News

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kyoto nerve cell imageYou may have heard about the new stem cell breakthrough in the news. It seems to be quite significant – researchers (at Kyoto University and at Wisconsin-Madison) have managed to make human skin cells into stem cells (following on work done in mouse some announced some months back). If interested in the details (as I’m sure you are) you can read more about it in an AP story on the NPR web site here. (Yahoo’s version has pictures, such as the nerve cells above left from the Kyoto group. – try and spot the odd one out in their 14 image slide show.)

There was also a very informative chat about it with one of their science correspondents, Joe Palca, on Morning Edition, and you can listen to it here. There’ll […] Click to continue reading this post →

The DAMTP

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Since everything seems to be degenerating all too rapidly into holiday mood (giant Santas and huge batteries of lights and so forth have started appearing in my neighbourhood1 … students are leaving early to go home for Thanksgiving…which is this Thursday, by the way), this year I’ve decided to give in rather than resist. So my first holiday act of the year was to let my class know this morning that I won’t hold a Wednesday class after all. They must agree to do the homework and other practice I assign, and to use that hour (when it comes) to curl up with and start a new novel of their choosing1. My second holiday act is to get everyone singing. Yes. Singing.

What shall we sing?

Well, Oliver Rosten has written a song that’s quite appropriate, since it is related to physics and mathematics, in a way. It’s about an aspect of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, so I’ll be listening out for especially enthusiastic singing from you readers over there (you know who you are), ok?!

I’ll steal the words from his site by way of explanation, followed by the song itself. The tune should be familiar to many. Let me/him know what you think in the comments (be sure to close your office door the first time around until you get the rhythm right):

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Warped Ambitions?

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Just spotted this in the Guardian:

starship enterprizeNext Thursday, the British Interplanetary Society is bringing together physicists for a conference entitled Faster than Light: Breaking the Interstellar Distance Barrier. “The main purpose is to raise awareness of this obscure field of research within general relativity and quantum field theory and attract new and particularly young researchers to work on the technical problems,” said organiser Kelvin Long.

Wow! I had no idea there was such a meeting. Did anyone reading go?! What is the British Interplanetary Society? From their site I found this quote: […] Click to continue reading this post →