Asymptotia

Being a loyal fan of Scottish single malt whisky, I never thought I’d be blogging about Irish whiskey, but this is why we get out of bed in the morning - we seek the stuff we can’t guess*.

So I was going to point out to you an amusing distraction. The series of radio ads for Jameson Irish Whiskey that you can listen to here. There’s one featuring a physicist, you see, and a friend of mine sent me the link for that reason**. There’s the idea of attraction, and so gravity is brought in by the ad man trying to use the concept to sell the product, and the physicist is obviously not having it… a short bit of fun play between segments of some program on some station somewhere or another. I can see that they’d work rather well. Have a listen.

That was going to be it, until I found another - real - physics connection. Turns out that Guglielmo Marconi - he of the use of electromagnetic waves for telegraph communication, Nobel prize, and so forth - is the the key to the connection. Do you know what it is?

Continue reading ‘Physics and Whiskey’

It all began over dinner on Thursday night, before the rains began. Some of us met up at Ciudad (a favourite place of mine to eat in downtown Los Angeles, primarily for the mojitos) and the began to get to know each other in person, as opposed to online. I’m talking about the Correlations bloggers, and members of the team who work on the entire Wired Science website (which is excellent, by the way) with which Correlations is embedded. I met most of the latter group at various KCET events (the first screening of episode 1, the wrap party a few weeks ago I never got around to blogging, etc). This however, was the first time I got to meet Sheril Kirshenbaum, although we’d got to know each other so well online I have to say that it sort of felt as though we’d already met. Co-blogger (and show producer) Damon Gambuto arrived a bit later - I’d met him before at the party. The other bloggers coming from out of town to the meeting, Tara Smith and Michael Tobis, I would meet the next day since Michael’s flight was coming in late, and Tara was not feeling well. Tamsin Gray, being stationed in Antarctica, was not going to attend. Of the show host co-bloggers, Chris Hardwick (who I’d already met at the wrap party) would be there next day too. Ziya Tong was away.

Here’s a shot of some of us chatting at dinner (see also Sheril’s thoughts on this here):

Damon Gambuto is second from left, and there’s Sheril Kirshenbaum and cvj on the right - click for larger view. There’s also Liz on the left, and Philip Dunn in the centre, both from New Media.

The main purpose of all of this from the bloggers perspective was simply to meet and Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XVI - Correlations Meetup and More’

It’s time to do that other thing that people do at this time of year: Reflect upon the year that is coming to an end. People start doing highlight programs on the radio and tv, surveying the year of blog posts on blogs, and so forth. Also, various science editors start doing their “top science stories” of the year. They are usually smart enough not to try to rank them, but even so, I do find myself wondering about what makes it to the lists and what does not. I’m particularly curious as to the nature of the discussions that must have taken place in order to compile the list.

Of course, science does not work to a tidy calendar (even though that would be rather nice and neat for our funding agencies), and - more significantly - it is often very hard Continue reading ‘Reflection’

Ok, a sidestep into politics for a short, but important moment.

With all that’s going on with all the presidential debates and press conferences and other appearances, has anything struck you as a major topic (or class of topics) that is simply missing from the national discussion? A topic that affects our lives in so many ways, and helps shape our futures in a most profound manner?

I’m thinking of science. I’m thinking of it in all the forms in which it intersects with politics - where decisions made by the president involve policy directly related to science (climate change and stem cell research are two of the most obvious), scientific research (both basic and applied), safety and security issues (consider the EPA, Katrina and other natural disasters), resources (the ongoing and coming battles about water sources, for example, pollution and air quality go here too, as well as under other headings), and energy (well, take your pick of example issues there). There’s also science education, on which there ought to be coherent effort for many reasons Continue reading ‘Political Science’

A quick note of interest, particularly to those interested in these science outreach matters:

Last night’s “Cosmic Holes” episode on the History Channel (part of their new science series “The Universe” - see here and here) apparently had an unusually huge audience. Word must be getting around that the History Channel’s got this fun and informative new series, and it is spreading beyond their standard viewers it seems. Apparently the episode’s first showing at 9:00pm got well over a million viewers, which I’ve heard the Channel was rather pleased about.

Continue reading ‘Cosmic Holey Moley!’

If you saw it, did you get the joke? They included it!

Ok, here it is:

Continue reading ‘The History Channel Joke’

Over on Correlations, I talked a bit about the History Channel’s science show “The Universe” (as I have here), and pointed out that the new season (season two) has already begun being broadcast. Here’s hoping that it’s a good series of programmes that will be enjoyable and informative. The show’s website is here.

Well, I’ve learned that the second episode, tomorrow’s (showing at 9:00pm), is one of those that i did some shooting for over the last two months at a number of places around LA. Rather than repeat, here’s what I said:

The next one, to air on Tuesday the 4th December, is called “Cosmic Holes” (yeah, I know), and the subject matter will be right on the edge of the known and the unknown, talking about black holes, white holes, and wormholes. While we know that the first are out there, the second two, while also solutions of Einstein’s General Relativity, are still theoretical constructs (and not without problems). The show explores some of the ideas and the prospects for the ideas surrounding Continue reading ‘The Universe Tomorrow’

Ok, ok. Since more than a few people have spotted it, I think it is best to (as they used to say in Hill Street Blues back in the 90s) “get out in front of this thing”.

You’ll recall (see list of related posts) many of the good things that I’ve talked about concerning the work various program makers are doing for the History Channel’s The Universe, and KCET is doing for PBS’ WIRED Science, Discovery’s Science Channel, and other science shows I’ve mentioned (and there are more I’ve not yet mentioned). I’ve shared with you some details about some of my own small role in some of these sorts of things so that you can see some of how these programmes come to be, including various shoots I’ve mentioned here and there, various behind-the-scenes activities, and my optimism about what seems to be a general renewed interest by program makers on various channels in making more and better science programs, working more closely with scientists in the process.

From all this you’ll be of the expectation that within a year or two, my dream that everybody on the street will be chatting about science topics/culture just as often as any other topic in our culture might be realized. Well, of course, that’s a bit hasty. The vast majority of stuff out there is just as it always was, and some efforts go rather wrong. Here’s an example:

You’ll remember a couple of fun shoots I did last year. I blogged them here and here. I had high hopes that they’d turn out to be part of something promising. I was (and am) willing to try to bring a little science flavouring to places where it is not normally found, to audiences who don’t normally seek out science programming. Who knows where that can lead? But… the show turned out to be, how shall I put it? Low on science and high on… other stuff, shall we say.

The show I’m talking about is on Spike TV and it is called MANswers. I always knew it was going to be close to the mark, but was willing to take the risk just in case it got a few people thinking about science for a second or two or more. My reasons? No Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XIV - MANswers’

I don’t know if you’ve been watching the new PBS series WIRED Science, but I recommend that you give it a try. There was another excellent episode Wednesday night, covering topics as diverse as organ regeneration, neutrino oscillations, and research in supersymmetry (interview of Jim Gates by Zia). You can see video of lots of the segments here.

To my delight there was another excellent new short segment, called “Hack”, again done by Chris Hardwick in the studio. Recall that I spoke about the “What’s Inside” pieces a few weeks ago. “Hack” shows you how to make something familiar, as opposed to just find out what’s inside something. In this one, Chris (who’s impressively very funny while he does the chemistry: “a funnel…’cos it’s got the word `fun’ in it”) shows you how chemoluminescence works by demonstrating how to reproduce what glow sticks do! Here’s the video:

While I’m on the subject, there’s some news over on my other blogging gig,
Continue reading ‘Hack!’

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

The strange object pictured above is a rather nice demonstration of the “field lines” around a bar magnet. It is not a great photo (all my fault), but the demo is great. The designers suspended the tiny bits of iron in oil, inside a sealed chamber, forming a block. There’s a little cylindrical hole through the centre of the block (but still outside the chamber) that allows you to put a bar magnet in. This makes for a demo far more exciting than any shake-it-up snow scene: You shake block and the iron filings are all over the oil in three dimensions, randomly arranged. You then insert the magnet. They slowly but determinedly arrange themselves into the familiar pattern, in three dimensions. It’s great. (Why didn’t they have these when I was growing up?! I might have gone into science… Oh, wait…)

I was looking around one of our demo labs last week for things to use to demonstrate some of the principal effects of magnetism. The above demonstration was one of the Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XIII - Magnetic Moments’

In my fog of too many things to do, I forgot to tell you about this event, which happens today at 5:30. I only remembered this morning as I dug a slightly better than normal shirt (for the event) out of the laundry pile and started to iron it:

At USC’s Annenberg School of Communication:

“Does Science Get A Fair Shake in the Media?”

USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism and Scientific American presents a discussion with leading journalists and scholars to “examine all the elements that go into informing the public about the latest scientific discoveries and the challenges the media faces in getting the science right for a story. Guests include author and journalism professor K.C. Cole, astronomy and physics professor Clifford Johnson, biological sciences professor Michael Quick, Reuters biotechnology reporter Lisa Baertlein, and author and environmental journalist Marla Cone. Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie will moderate.

Reception follows discussion.

So that’s going to be great. I recommend it. Location and travel information here.
(I borrowed the picture above from their publicity site.)

I have a dilemma. On the one hand, we have an interesting colloquium today in the Continue reading ‘Too Many Events Today’

Below I’ve reproduced the text of the approximately 20 minutes of that which I presented at the What Matters to Me and Why event on Wednesday. I mentioned my preparations for it in a previous post. The event was well attended, in an excellent setting (a hidden campus cafe I’d somehow not known about before, Ground Zero). There were students, faculty, staff, alumni, and several others. I chose to give a structured address to start so as to make sure that I did not go on for too long, as I might in a more off-the-cuff delivery. I very much wanted to leave plenty of time to interact with the audience through their observations and questions. I delivered it partly from memory and partly from reading, and wanted it to have a bit of a feel of being read a story, rather than a formal speech. I don’t know how successful that was, but it was fun for me. I think I might try that approach again some time.

[Update: - Audio of the event here.]

Overall, I think the event worked well, and I had a great time. A number of people (kindly) said at the end that they had a good time, and I hope everyone else did too!

___________________________________________________________________________________
Hello Everyone.

First let me say that it is an honour to be here. I’d like to thank everyone concerned for inviting me to speak in this series. I imagine that everyone starts their piece by saying that they struggled to find a way of saying What Matters to them and Why in a short time. So I won’t dwell on that, except to say that it’s especially hard when, the day before preparing, you realize that it’s not going to be that hour long presentation you were expecting to squeeze your essence into, but 20 minutes!

Some time ago, when people started mentioning that they’d seen that I was a guest in this event, and that they were looking forward to hearing what I will say (!), I’d respond that I too was curious about what I was going to say, and would also try to show up and find out. This was actually true. The other thing that I (half-)joked was Continue reading ‘Some of What Matters’

A quick reminder. The show WIRED Science (that I mentioned earlier) debuts tonight! Notice also that the website with all the extra material is now live (and rather amazingly well designed -well done the New Media division at KCET), and - don’t forget - debuting also (and already live) is the new blog Correlations (I gave you the back story on that here). You can find a link to it from the site, or go directly here (but go look at the main site too). Please go along and say hi to us over there on our welcoming blog posts. And Tell Your Friends! (That includes you, science-oriented bloggers - it’s in a good cause!).

Here’s a teaser for the program, and one of the reasons I have high hopes for it. Here, they strip aside all the fancy stuff and just put a good person in front of the camera to get people thinking about something simple. This is a great thing when done well, and they’ve got the people who can do it. Here’s presenter Chris Hardwick doing a brilliant job of telling you what’s inside a simple everyday product in an entertaining way (link with transcript here, or play right here by clicking below):

Continue reading ‘WIRED Science - Show Tonight and Website is Live!’

I’ll let you know.

Huh? Today, I’ve to think about two things I have to talk about over the next couple of days. I’ve to give a physics seminar on Thursday at UCSB, but more urgently, I have to think about What Matters To Me and Why. Why? This is because in the Spring I agreed to be one of the presenters of the four-times-a-semester USC event of the same title, hosted by the Center for Religious Life. This excellent series is run by Rabbi Susan Laemmle, the Dean of Religious Life, with a committee of students. Here’s how it is supposed to work (extract from their site):

At each WMMW session, the featured guest spends about twenty minutes addressing the topic “What Matters to Me and Why,” and then the floor is opened to informal dialogue for the remainder of the hour. Just as there is no one way to address the topic, so there will be no one direction in which dialogue will proceed. The student contact from the WMMW committee introduces the speaker and makes sure that the session goes forward in a professional yet friendly manner. An indirect purpose of WMMW is to maintain an arena in which people can talk about important, personally charged questions in an open, mutually respectful way.

A typical session is described here. This is going to be a tough one. Not because nothing matters to me but because everything seems to matter, and I cannot effectively rank these things to say what matters most in any way. I only learned yesterday that I only have about 20 minutes to say what it is that matters. This either makes things harder or easier, I can’t decide yet. Probably harder. Now I really have to think.

I jokingly thought a few months ago that I ought to just look at my last few blog posts the day before and just talk about what’s in those. What can I see… Well, there’s public transport, community and the environment, composting and gardening, science and television (and scientific honesty). Not bad. (Good thing I did not do that post on dating. Probably not a good topic for WMMW…) I can probably weave something out of those. Do I blog about those things by accident, or because there are some themes there that are being brought out? What are the big themes in those then? Random scattered thoughts follow….
Continue reading ‘What Matters?’

Some big news:

As I said in the previous post, there’s more to the new WIRED Science TV show on PBS than just the TV show. The website is going to be full of quite a lot of additional material, starting next Wednesday. There’ll be show episodes, extensions of some of the segments, extra links to expand upon the stories, materials for schools, and so forth. But there’s also something else in the works. There’ll be a dedicated blog for the show, and it is called “Correlations”.

Correlations is a new group science blog, with bloggers of a range of interests. It will be connected to the show in many ways, but will expand well beyond the show into aspects of science and technology of all sorts, according to the tastes of the bloggers involved. There’ll be all sorts of interesting material, from serious stuff to fun stuff, and points in between. I think that it’s a great combination of bloggers (the team was assembled by Leighton Woodhouse, of KCET - we had a great conversation about the whole business of science blogging and science bloggers back during the Summer) and I’m quite excited to see how it goes. Who are they? Well, here’s the list:

Continue reading ‘Correlations’

I promised some interesting television news earlier, and here it is. Well, it is actually blogging news too. First let me step back a touch. Recall that some time back I mentioned that there were a number of new science shows vying for the nod from PBS to be their new primetime science show? Viewers could go in and vote on which show they preferred. Well, the show that won this was WIRED Science, the show I also told you more about here. I’m pleased about this since I thought it was actually the best of the bunch.

So they’ve made some cast changes, and made new episodes (and are in the process of making more). The format is sort of like a magazine, so there are two people based in the studio (Chris Hardwick and Kamala Lopez) who introduce segments that are then played. These segments are essentially field reports from various reporters and agents in the field (Ziya Tong and Adam Rogers are two other principals in the studio at the start, but they are mostly doing field reports). There will also be some studio interviews (Ziya interviews Paul Kedrosky in the first show), and some other studio segments, like “What’s Inside” by Chris Hardwick, where he goes through a description of what’s inside an everyday household object or material. (I hope they do more of those - he’s really good at that.) For those of you from the UK, you’ll recognize the format - it is essentially like Tomorrow’s World used to be, but with more science¹ (although since this is a WIRED project too, there’s going to be the fun/cool toys aspect).

The first one airs next week, on Wednesday October 3rd at 8:00pm. There’s a page here you can go to in order to have a look at the cast, and also see some clips from Continue reading ‘WIRED Science’

Here’s my promised report/diary on yesterday’s adventures in film-making.

6:45am Got up a bit earlier than perhaps I should have, given that I got to sleep at 1:00am. Spent a while reading a ton of email, and sending some more. Will be away from my regular professoring duties for the whole day, and so wanted to make sure the fort was held. Prepared some appropriate TV clothing (pretty much what I wear normally anyway - simple solid colours), and so forth. Attempted to beautify myself just a tad (with the usual…inconclusive results). Shower and so forth. Coffee and oatmeal, sprinkled with NPR… Read a bit of stuff on dates of historical background on material I’ll be talking about. I often forget that sort of thing, and its never ever needed whenever I do remind myself of it, so after a few minutes I decided not to bother. The core physics ideas are more important, ultimately. Spent time looking for rain gear (the micro-brolly, basically), since supposedly there’s going to be a rainstorm later (hurrah! finally!). Ready to go.

8:45am Fifteen minutes later than I intended to (how did that happen?), I set off to walk to the Sunset/Vermont Red Line subway station. Waved to a neighbour, and we exchanged pleasantries about how nice a day it was.

8:47am Walked past surprised neighbour back toward home…. briskly.

8:52am Riding the Brompton (the folding bike, for those of you not keeping up), I cycled off to the Sunset/Vermont station.

9:01am Arrive at said station on schedule (one minute late does not count in LA), and Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry, XII - A Shooting Diary’

Gosh, a thoughtfully-written general level (more or less) article on some of the general outcomes of string theory research! It’s written by Matthew Chalmers, and is in the Sept. ‘07 edition of Physics World*. The article can be read online here, and downloadable pdf is here. The graphic on the right came with the article. I don’t fully understand what it is, but the title, like that of the article, is “stringscape”… Look, let’s not over-think this cvj - it’s a pretty decoration.

I’ve done a quick read of it (should re-read more carefully later on - it will no doubt have some emphases with which I disagree somewhat**) and I’d say it is very much worth reading. While not a perfect summary (what is?), compared to a lot that’s been out there, you’ll find it rather more informed, less sensational, (refreshingly unpoisoned by various prejudices, such as the presentations of Smolin and Woit - see numerous earlier discussions in the “More Scenes from the Storm in a Teacup” series of posts, and others), and unafraid to go to some length to unpack the issues somewhat carefully.

Very importantly, it contains numerous quotes from various respected researchers in Continue reading ‘Whither String Theory? - Too Soon To Tell’

Ok. So I want to make this post timely, but it means that it will begin to let a cat out of the bag. We’ll see how much I can save for a later post as I write¹.

So, as I walked to the subway this morning (yes, they have one in LA), I went through my little checklist of things I take on self-assigned assignments of this sort.

Notebook for scribbling: Check
Pen for scribbling: Check
Camera: Check
Phone (now with decent back-up camera): Check
Spare battery for camera: Check
Decent excuse/reason for being spectacularly late: Check
Water: Check
Good footwear for endless walking back and forth: Check

By now you get it. I’m either doing one of my parade reports, or perhaps a street fair/party, museum exhibit, or some random science fair, object or installation or other. Yes, but which? Well, apparently I was going to the future:

The scene: The Los Angeles Convention Center. The event: The NextFest, brought to Continue reading ‘I’ve Got Next’

So the conference here at the Newton Institute in Cambridge is simply marvellous. I’m so glad I came, and so happy that I was invited to attend and make a contribution to it by giving a talk and having discussions. It’s a rather splendid combination of experimentalists, phenomenologists, and various hardcore theorists of various sorts, and there are ideas just flying around and bouncing off the walls. The title is “Exploring QCD: Deconfinement, Extreme Environments and Holography”, (it’s organized by Nick Evans, Simon Hands, and Mike Teper) and the focus is very much the fascinating nuclear physics of heavy ion collisions at the RHIC experiment at Brookhaven, and the experiments to come on heavy ion collisions at the LHC at CERN. The latter is an aspect of the physics to be done at the LHC that you don’t hear about much because it is sidestepped in favour of discussions about the Higgs, origin of mass, supersymmetry, theories of everything - such as strings, microscopic black holes, extra dimensions and all that other good stuff. (See earlier discussions here, here and here.)

Well, the great thing is that there’s been plenty of discussion of black holes, extra dimensions, strings, and so forth at the conference because of a great deal of promise of its relevance to nuclear physics. It’s been right alongside the discussion of experimental results, and other theoretical approaches such as work on computer simulations of aspects of QCD (”lattice QCD”) and studies involving other techniques. There’s very much a spirit of open-minded exchange among all the various parties Continue reading ‘Exploring QCD in Cambridge’

My hand hovered over the August issue of SEED last night in the magazine section of a bookshop. I was not really sure whether I was going to buy it or not, to be honest. Then I glanced through, and two things made me go for it. The first was seeing that there’s something on Chuck Hoberman. I love his designs and constructions, and am dismayed by the fact that they are not just everywhere in our cityscapes. The second was a photograph. There’s some extracts from the collection of photographs of Nobel Prize winners taken by Peter Badge (beware, the cover makes you think that all 295 are in the magazine… there’s actually eight). I flipped to that part of the magazine and landed immediately upon the one of David Gross. It’s just great, in that it captures certain aspects of David just perfectly. There’s the intensely penetrating gaze of a great physicist combined with playful movie-star quality of the same. You end up convinced that if Hollywood was casting an actor to play the physicist, they’d have no choice but to use him to play himself.

There looks to be some interesting things in there to read. I see that there’s a piece on Science Journalism by Chris Mooney (also available here), and there’s what reads a bit like a commercial by Paul Steinhardt for his cyclic universe models with Neil Turok, and a discussion about the definition of life by Carl Zimmer. I hope it’s all as good a read as it looks.

-cvj

There’s another article about the search for the Higgs particle, the recent rumour kerfuffle involving the Tevatron, and the upcoming LHC experiment at CERN. (See related articles at bottom of this post.) This time it is in the New York Times and it is by Dennis Overbye. There’s a bit of discussion about how the fact that there are physicists blogging about these topics tends to amplify some things that might not (or should not?) get amplified otherwise. I’ve nothing really to add to the discussion, except to say that it is far better written -showing better understanding of the science, and the scientific implications of the rumour- than the article in Slate, by James Owen Weatherall, that I criticizedin an earlier post . Ironically, Weatherall is a recently trained (in particle physics) scientist. Go figure. To be fair, Overbye has the benefit of a long wait for the rumours to die down and reality checks to be done (and lots of good journalistic experience under his belt, and maybe a bit more seniority to fight with his editors, if that was part of the issue for the Weatherall article), so we all hope Weatherall will get better with time. (Above right: A random collision event I grabbed from the DZero experiment.)

See some other posts on this article here (starting with Gordon Watts laying down a welcome mat and a useful road map to physics and earlier blog posts for the NY Times readers he’s expecting to visit his site - he’s mentioned in the article), here (Tommaso Dorigo is also mentioned, and so points to some earlier links too), here, and here (John Conway was also in the article, and has previously discussed these matters too).

Now, if only the New York Times would have the guts to stop with the stupid “God Particle” term, that they must know by now is not a term used by any self-respecting particle physicist in the course of their work. I’ll wager that it creates more confusion in the minds of the public than almost any other aspect of the discussion. (See an earlier post on that here.)

-cvj

[Updated with a bit of video!]

Earlier this week I went for a walk with Nick Halmagyi to chat about physics, and since he had not been down to the meadows and gardens over by the neighbouring Aspen Institute, we wandered down that way. It was just after lunchtime, and a very hot day, and as we got near the Institute, we diverted away from physics so that I could tell him briefly what the significance of the Aspen Institute is. I explained that it was an important “think tank”, host to thinkers in the humanities, sciences, and diplomats, presidents, ex-presidents, and other dignitaries, who come and think great thoughts about the problems of the world. Well, let me use their own words from their website:

The Aspen Institute, founded in 1950, is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue.

As an example, I explained, it is probably the sort of place that Al Gore might have come to in order to think deeply about the environmental issues he champions. It is nice that the Aspen Institute is right next to the Aspen Center for Physics, and the two organizations, while now independent (but the Center actually grew out of the Institute, see here) sometimes work together on various matters including public outreach. The public lecture I gave here last year as part of the Heinz Pagels Memorial Lecture series (see e.g. here and here), for example, was actually over in the Paepke auditorium, one of their buildings.

We approached the main grounds of the Institute, near their residence buildings, and were greeted by a most frustrating -and ironic- sight. Their sprinkler system was fully on, spraying water unnecessarily into the air and onto the asphalted walks, with some making it onto their lawns, where even there it would mostly evaporate (in addition to aiding the hot sun in scorching the grass somewhat). For once, I did not have my camera and so cannot share this horrible sight with you. For a moment it was as though I was back in LA, but this was Aspen, where everyone talks about the environment. Then I remembered - everyone talks about the environment. At the same time, there are more and more SUVs every time I come here (rental companies even try to force SUVs on you when you try to rent a regular compact car - did you read my story of that last year?), more and more land seems to be cleared to build ever-larger houses, and so forth. On the other hand, bicycle use is very high here, there’s an excellent free bus system, an enforced reduction of individual car access to the Maroon Bells wilderness area, and I imagine several other worthy environmental efforts that I have not seen are being made. So it is a tale of two communities and mind sets. It’s complicated, as with any populate. But you’d have thought the Aspen Institute would be “fostering enlightened leadership” by not watering their lawns and (sidewalks) with vast amounts of water at the maximally worst time of day to do so in terms of effectiveness. (Frankly, given the environmental disaster most lawns are, one could go further and hope that in the spirit of leadership, they’d turn more of their expanse of lawns into other use, perhaps expanding the excellent wildflower garden they have in one corner, or letting more of the surrounding meadows repopulate the grounds. It could be rather beautiful.)

Anyway, we shook our heads at the irony of the sight and we wandered off toward the river, continuing our chat about matters in other dimensions (no, really). The next day I came back at that same time to check the sprinklers again (with camera), since such systems are often on timers, but had it rained very heavily the previous night and so -happily- it did not seem that the sprinklers had been used.

On Wednesday I returned once more. The sun was overhead and strong again (not as much as Monday) and the main system was not on. But once again I noticed signs of watering, and saw a smaller component of the lawn being watered by a hose-driven system. I now think that it might be that they were sprinkling (well, gushing) on Monday (and partly on Wednesday) in the mistaken belief that pouring water (and into the air, where it rapidly evaporates) on the lawn while the sun is baking it will somehow help, and they did it on an ad hoc basis, but I can’t be sure. Either way, it is a terrible waste of water resource by an organization that is committed to leadership in matters of importance, such as the environment.

Then I noticed that many people wearing name badges were heading from the Institute toward the direction of the auditorium and the Aspen Music tent. This fit with the next deliciously ironic thing: Al Gore was going to be talking! He’d been at the Aspen Institute (I’d no idea of his presence or the event until a radio announcement on Wednesday morning), and the sprinkler matter, this was remarkable. Convenient, one might say.

It turned out that it was not taking place in the Paepke auditorium, as I thought it Continue reading ‘The Man of Tomorrow?’

Confession: I’ve no idea what Torchwood is, and I find the current Dr. Who shows annoying overall (there have been some good episodes that I’ve seen, but they’re swamped in a sea of such poorly thought through and simply phoned-in crappy episodes that I find it too annoying to take the risk of wasting an hour I could have better spent with my head in the oven…) Feel free to disagree with me, and I have not seen the most recent season, so maybe things are better.

But anyway, where was I? Oh, right. Someone called John Barrowman (apparently one of the stars on those shows? He plays a scientist? I honestly don’t know, but you will, if you’re a fan) took a visit to CERN (the particle physics lab in Europe you often read about here and elsewhere) to better inform himself about the intersection between science and science fiction. One of the resulting jumpy noisy and (reportedly) fun videos can be found on YouTube here. There are some somewhat interesting animations alongside some of the, er…jolly madcap fun, illustrating the physics. Following the particles along the beam-pipe to the collision is not a view I’ve seen before, I’ll admit.

Much more interesting is something they mention at the end. A series of podcasts on the LHC (the big experiment at CERN we’re all interested in and excited about). This is driven by Brian Cox (no, not that one, this one, the physicist), and seems to be in a Continue reading ‘LHC Podcasts: Science Meets Science Fiction’

I learned from Often in Error that Roz Chast, whose work some of you may know from the New Yorker, had some physics-themed cartoons in the May edition of Symmetry Magazine (one of them the cover). Here they are (click for larger, then perhaps click again to zoom):

I like the one on the left, I have to say. (A pseudoparticle called “poserino” is just Continue reading ‘Roz Chast On Physics’

In a bizarre twist, after a satisfying day of calculating I switched on the television, accidentally pressed a wrong number, and ended up on ABC just as a program called “American Inventor” was starting. I’m not really up on all these “reality” format shows, so I’ve no idea how long this has been in existence, but I must say that it was good to see a program in this format that was primarily about using one’s brain, inventiveness and engineering/construction skills! The format is a bit too gimmicky for my tastes (I’m not partial to all the fake drama and overwrought background music), but that’s probably because I don’t watch much of this sort of thing, so I probably won’t be a regular viewer. But again I must say it was good to see that such a show exists. Perhaps there are more that I don’t know about. It seems that I just saw the phase where they filter out all the silly ones (and goodness were some silly!) and pick the finalists from each city who get $50,000 worth of development money. They did LA and SF in this show, and apparently they’ll be doing the North East next. Questions you might be able to help me with: Do all these shows have a British judge on the panel to play a sort of mean guy? Is it a sort of requirement? The one other such show I’ve seen, American Idol, has that, and like a good theorist I am extrapolating wildly from two data points.

Seeing a reality show based on some intellectual skill actually reminds me. Even though I got a reminder from some of the people behind the show, I’m embarrassed to say that I completely forgot to tell you about the show on PBS for youngsters aged 9 - 12 called “Design Squad”. From the “about” part of their site:

Borrowing from the hugely popular reality competition format, DESIGN SQUAD is aimed at kids and people of all ages who like reality or how-to television. Its goal is to get viewers excited about engineering!

Over 13 episodes, eight high school contestants tackle engineering challenges for an actual client—from building a machine that makes pancakes to a “summer sled” for LL Bean. In the final episode, the top two scorers battle for the Grand Prize—a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel® Foundation.

I think it has now concluded, but you can watch all 13 episodes online here. Did anyone see it? (I did not.) What did you think? You can get more involved with Design Squad by following up on this part of their website.

Design Squad was co-sponsored by the IEEE, which is excellent to see. So will the American Physical Society (and other science societies) be doing something similar, one wonders? It’s a potentially good way of getting people interested in participating in science - on prime time television. We could, for example, have members of the Continue reading ‘Reality Calls’

Writing in Slate magazine, James Owen Weatherall seems a little confused about how particle physics works. Based on a rumour that there’s a new and significant signal seen at the DZero detector at the Tevatron at Fermilab (Illinois), one of the article’s titles is “Why the rumored discovery of the Higgs Boson is bad news for particle physics”. Supposedly, the big new machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC - see more about it here, and what physicists are hoping for from it), about to switch on later this year, would have nothing to do, and would be a waste of billions of dollars. You can read about the original rumour here. (Above right: A random collision event I grabbed from the DZero experiment.)

Well, this is wrong for so many reasons. It is hard to know where to start with this. The major fallacy with the whole thing is that these machines are just somehow discovery devices (in the most naive sense) of some sort. You build it, switch it on, see what’s there, write the paper and the press release (not necessarily in that order) and then you’re done. Completely neglected is the notion of such an experiment as a device for Continue reading ‘Hunting the Higgs is not a (D)Zero Sum Game’

Don’t forget to catch the latest installment of Joe Polchinski’s rather thorough deconstruction of the nonsense, obfuscation, selective memory, and other confusions that constitute the bulk of Lee Smolin’s attack on string theory.

All the points I’ve had the energy to raise have been made here on Asymptotia Continue reading ‘Masterclass, II’

Jean-Jacques Sempé does it again, with another great New Yorker cover. This time, his subject is- my people! (click for more detail):

Pretty interesting to see the choices of equations actually (mostly various quantum mechanics statements - Schrodinger’s equation, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the definition of the Hamiltonian in question (there seems to be an external electromagnetic field?), then there’s a reminder of what happens in beta-decay of the neutron…and there’s the inevitable Einstein’s E=mc² thrown in at random… and more…).

It’s great to see all this up there… although it is worth noting that a more typical blackboard would have (instead of definitions/statements known very well to the physicist) much more of a working computation in progress, probably.

Of course, if the physicist knew that he or she was to be on a New Yorker cover, perhaps they would have Continue reading ‘“Simple Physics”, by Sempé’

One of the Large Hadron Collider’s detectors, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS).

As you gather a lot when there are discussions on the topic here and elsewhere, there’s a lot of excitement and anticipation among high energy physicists about a number of things. I would go as far as to say that we are already in a very rich experimental time for results pertaining to high energy physics (or, if you insist, “fundamental physics” issues (I have in mind, for example, all the wonderful cosmological and astrophysical data that continues to come in, with more to come), and it is set to possibly get much richer - maybe even a new Golden Age with a little bit of luck - when the Large Hadron Collider starts producing results. We are really going into the (relative) unknown with this experiment, and this will be a great time to be working in the field - with a little luck, as I keep repeating.

A number of substantial articles have recently appeared in the general media that give you a good sense of what is going on, more reasons (and more detail) for why there is Continue reading ‘LHC Coverage’

Ah yes, it is that time of year again. The LA Times book festival is on, starting today, and it was kicked off with the swanky Book Awards festival last night, followed by a reception. This all takes place on the UCLA campus, in Westwood. You might recall that I went last year and reported on it. (If in town, go to the LA Times website for more information and find your way over there either today or tomorrow!)

So I went to the Awards show again because:

1. I enjoyed it last year,
2. I like “book people”,
3. I like the idea that in the city where there’s a swanky Awards ceremony for everything else, they have one for books,
4. I like the unashamed delight that everyone takes in the value of the word on the page… there were some very nice speeches from the master of ceremonies (Jim Lehrer this year) and the various presenters in each category (all authors themselves) about the various aspects of this (all the way from history to Children’s books, to Science…)
5. I wanted to see if they would have chocolate fountains again. They did.
6. I wanted to see if they had old typewriters embedded inside ice sculptures again. They did.
7. I can never be mistaken for an actual author at the reception too many times,
8. I like dressing up, from time to time. (Never let it be said that I am not honest with you on this blog.)

(Above: MC for the night, PBS Newshour host Jim Lehrer, and the LA Times’ Kenneth Turan, on the set/stage. I really like the work of both of these guys…)

Spent most of the evening after the ceremony at the reception talking with LA Times (or related) people and their spouses. This was not my intention, but it was a happy occurrence, as they were all really interesting people - two science writers (Rosie Mestel and Alan Zarembo, who I’d not met before and who were just great to talk to) and also some more general columnists, such as (novellist and essayist) Meghan Daum, and others whose names escape me now. K C Cole, my friend and USC colleague - and ex-LA Times science writer - was there for good conversation, as was Tom Siegfried. So it was just excellent to stand around and munch on the excellent food, drink the wine, and talk (and yes, sometimes gripe) a bit about science coverage and science writing. Briefly chatted with poet and author Michael Datcher (remember him from the point of view event?) and his wife as well, who told me about an upcoming event I’ll be mentioning later, I hope.

Rosie and I turned out to have some interesting points of commonality, which was a pleasant surprise, and so we talked about not just science and science-writing, but England, gardening, and the East/West divide in Los Angeles.

(Above: Available light (sorry) shot of Alan Zarembo dipping a bit of pineapple into the chocolate fountain. Meghan Daum and Rosie Mestel look on.)

Some friends and colleagues from USC were there in an official capacity as well, such Continue reading ‘Chocolaty Book Fun’

Well, the cat’s out of the bag. Since Tuesday, in fact. What am I talking about? I’m going to get so beaten up in the playground for this…

Well, I did a post a while ago about a trip I did to New York to take part in a day long shoot for a magazine, all dressed up in my tuxedo on a “Casino Royale” themed set. You can read about it in full here. What was the point? Reaching out. More science in the public domain, and on the lips of the regular person on the street. The usual things you know (from my writing here and elsewhere) that I’m passionate about. The readership of the magazine in question is not commonly exposed to images of scientists. The world of science and practicing scientists hardly intersects with the world of R&B, hip-hop, sports, fashion, the primary foci of this magazine and many others. I see no reason why not, but those who work in the media that control most of the images we see think otherwise.

Except for some creative people at King magazine. King magazine is a men’s magazine aimed primarily at young African Americans. (See a Wikipedia summary here, and the magazine website here. Warning! This is a men’s magazine aimed at a very specific demographic/readership, and while it does not warrant being on those shelves in the store that are behind the black glass, it is decorated from cover to interior in a manner that is… shall we say “somewhat differently” from the magazines I usually point to, such as SEED, National Geographic, or Scientific American! Ok?)

Every year, King magazine does a feature shoot of a group of people making interesting noises in their respective fields, people that you’ve either heard from (if you’re into those fields, and sometimes even not) or that they expect you’ll hear from soon. It’s all glossy and fun and so forth, and they decided (to my lasting surprise) to call me and ask if I’d take part. Hence the New York trip. The magazine is out on the stands now (June edition), and you can go and look at it.

I took the liberty of making some scans of the pictures for you (I hope the magazine’s staff don’t mind!), since I’d teased you so much in the last post with some of the shots I took, but could not reveal details about who was in the group, etc. There’s more in the actual magazine, such as quotes from the subjects about their work, life, etc.

So here goes:

Continue reading ‘When Worlds Collide, III’

What small things? Elementary particles! The second of David Kestenbaum’s excellent report on CERN’s LHC aired yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered. You can see what I said about the first part here, and the second part can be listened to on the NPR website here. There’s also more video, extra audio, and a transcript.

(Image: The seven story tall Atlas detector at the LHC. (photo: Serge Bellegarde))

The focus on this one broadens out to marvel at the sheer scale of the experiment as a civil engineering feat, and also as a feat of human cooperation (consider the many countries, languages, different people, etc, who are collaborating to make this happen). It’s great to hear the many voices of the various scientists he talks to.

(It’s also great, on a personal note, to hear Jim Virdee (the CMS spokesperson) Continue reading ‘Small Things Considered’

National Public Radio’s David Kestenbaum, who’s quite reliably an excellent reporter whose field reports I always enjoy, did a report on CERN’s (soon to be switched on) Large Hadron Collider (see also a Wiki here) today! Or rather, it was played on this morning’s Morning Edition. Here’s the site where you can listen to an archived version of the report, and read a transcript of some of it. It’s rather well done.

(Image: A simulation from the CMS experiment - part of the LHC - showing the decay of the Higgs particle after being created in one of the high energy collisions.)

It starts with a few theoretical physicist clichés in the introductory remarks leaving up to talking to Alvaro De Rujula, but it’s fine - not really too over the top, and done with good humour. Really good is that fact that once the physics issues start being discussed and described, he focuses on doing that well. The bottom line is that if your subject -the science- is good, that should take center stage in forming the core of the report for attracting and holding the audience’s attention.

And report does it well. Through interview and Kestenbaum filling in with further Continue reading ‘NPR goes to LHC’

Sometimes the journalists and editors get it right. In fact, they get it right a lot of the time, but you hear more about the complaints (sometimes from me, sometimes elsewhere) about them getting it wrong, when it comes to things like science coverage especially. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the set of questions and answers that are in a new article on MSNBC that a number of people pointed out to me yesterday and today. It starts out as an article about Brian Greene’s science outreach efforts (books, and tv and movie appearances, including a new one), with some discussion of how this is regarded by his colleagues, the value it has had in raising public awareness of physics (and fundamental science in general, I would argue), and so forth. All that is interesting, but not nearly as interesting to me right now as the later parts of the article which is simply a question and answer session. (Picture above right is from a fun joke I carried out last year that you can read here - be sure to read the comments too.)

Alan Boyle, the science editor, asks Brian a series of very thoughtful questions, and Brian gives some very thoughtful answers. The topics include research in string theory (of course), hopes and possibilities for experimental and observational results (such as from the LHC and Planck) that can inform and ultimately test the ideas coming from string theory and open up new vistas in fundamental physics, research on issues such as the landscape, the idea of multiple universes, research on better developing our understanding of string theory (to the point where we can, it is hoped, extract firm predictions from it), and many other things. (I wrote an introduction to aspects of the landscape issue here - see also the comments - and talked a bit about a Tom Siegfried article on the discussion amongst researchers here.)

It is nice to see an honest, non-inflammatory and non-hyped conversation about the issues, and read Brian’s personal take on some of these matters. The bottom line is, Continue reading ‘Questions and Answers about Theories of Everything’

The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 25th March. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. There’s a new website showing past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at some of the descriptions I did of some events in some earlier posts (such as here and here), and the description of some of the recent special ones on Point of View and Uncertainty that I organized with K. C. as USC campus events (here, here (with video) and here).

Here is a description from the poster for the upcoming programme:
Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Vulgarization’

You can catch up on some of the earlier Scenes by looking at the posts listed at the end of this one. Through the course of doing those posts I’ve tried hard to summarize my views on the debate about the views of Smolin and Woit - especially hard to emphasize how the central point of their debate that is worth some actual discussion actually has nothing to do string theory at all. Basically, the whole business of singling out string theory as some sort of great evil is rather silly. If the debate is about anything (and it largely isn’t) it is about the process of doing scientific research (in any field), and the structure of academic careers in general. For the former matter, Smolin and Woit seem to have become frustrated with the standard channels through which detailed scientific debates are carried out and resolved, resorting to writing popular level books that put their rather distorted views on the issues into the public domain in a manner that serves only to muddle. On the latter, there is a constant claim that string theory and its proponents are somehow brainwashing and/or frogmarching young people into working on that area to the exclusion of all else. The authors seem oblivious to some simple facts to the contrary there: (1) that you simply can’t do that to genuinely smart, creative young people; (2) that even students who have string theorists as their Ph.D or postdoc advisors often work on non-string theory research topics (3) that they’re doing an excellent job of either driving young people away from working on some of their favourite alternatives - or from pursuing theoretical physics altogether - by failing to clearly explain their merits and by using the press to help turn this into a distorted spectacle.

I’ve summarized a lot of what I think in the latter part of this post.

There are two major problems with how live debates take place in the public sphere. One is that the average person listening to the debate cannot know whether much of what Smolin and Woit claim as facts are right or wrong (or anyone on the other side of the debate, for that matter). When someone disputes a claim that Smolin makes, he Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VII’

I think I ought to explain, as promised, why I am in New York. The first thing to mention is that I wrote the previous post in this miniseries (it was written on a flight to Dublin, and finally posted when I returned) before I knew about any of what I’m about to tell you, so it is rather funny to me…

The week that I returned from Dublin I noticed a phone message from an editor of a magazine asking me to return their call. A couple of days later I learned what it was about. It’s a magazine that largely focuses on buzz about people and projects in the entertainment and fashion industry - Music (R&B, Hip Hop mostly), Movies and TV, etc., as far as I can tell, along with some coverage of parts of the business world. Its readership is mostly younger African American males, I think. As far as I can tell, the intention is not to be about those things in particular, but it is largely reflecting the interests of the readership it is targeted at. It’s a major product, jumping out at you immediately when you are in the magazine store (the striking picture of a woman on the front helps it grab your attention, of course).

Each year, the magazine does a special issue featuring a group of individuals who are doing “major things” in the industries I mentioned above. It is a combination of a focus on new talent that’s about to become more widely known, or just bringing to readers’ attention the existence of some of the people who are making significant impact in what they’re doing.

Somehow - I do not know how - they got my name. It turns out that they spent some time reading some of things I’ve written here at Asymptotia too. Now normally, you’d expect things to stop at that point, but in fact it did not. They decided to broaden things out a bit and include me (if I was willing) in this year’s feature issue.

I thought about it for a day. It is quite an honour to be approached, and I’m also impressed that the magazine’s editors are being creative in this way (it would be easy Continue reading ‘When Worlds Collide, II’

In Physics Today last month, Helen Quinn wrote rather well about the issue of language in science and in common (non-scientific) usage, with a focus on when the two collide. I recommend the article, which you can read here.

There are cases in our own teaching where confusions arise, which mostly get resolved as the students learn the concepts associated to specific words….

A few words in elementary physics— force, work, momentum, and energy—have carefully defined physics meanings. Their much broader everyday usage causes students a great deal of confusion until they learn the precise physics concepts.

…but she’s much more interested in the cases where some words -often powerful ones, commonly invoked- contribute to “considerable public misunderstanding of science”:

belief, hypothesis, theory, and knowledge.

None of these words has a unique physics meaning, but their meanings as we use them among ourselves and as non-scientists hear them are very different. We need to be much more careful how and when we use them in talking to the public.

She goes on to discuss them in turn. I recommend reading it in full. One of the things I like most about the article is that she talks not only about the process of using those Continue reading ‘On Language in Science and Beyond’

There’s a nice story about new photographic evidence from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for water having flowed on Mars. It is not really as dramatic as the photographs of late last year, but it is still an important piece of the puzzle overall (so do read about it), if harder to sell to the public as a “stop-the-press!” type of story. So here’s how three different news agencies tried to bring you in:

• The BBC: Rocks reveal Mars’ watery past
  

  Not bad. The layering and colour gradations seen are is not direct evidence of water, of course. It could have been some other fluid flow, but…ok.

Next, we have:
Continue reading ‘Mars Attracts!’