Author Archives: Clifford

Get Wise to WISE

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explore_missionsOnce again I’m excited about a new piece of machinery. This time it is a space mission again. There have been several remarkable missions launched (many in very recent years), doing all sorts of excellent science, helping us discover all sorts of things about our universe, near and far, young and old. I’ve spoken about (and sometimes followed live) the launches of some of them here on the blog, or spoken about the science results they’ve helped produce. See the graphic on the right for some of them.

wiseWell, very soon (possibly as early as December 9th), there will be the launch of WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer! I learned from my friend, colleague and fellow presenter on History Channel’s The Universe, JPL’s Amy Mainzer, who is a senior scientist and the deputy project scientist on the WISE mission, that they made a series of exciting videos about WISE for you to learn about the science that WISE will do and how it will go about […] Click to continue reading this post →

Peer Review Reactions

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hitler_peer_reviewAh yes. I’ll admit it: Except for the moustache and a few other details, the scene is eerily familiar… 😉 (The embed for the video is below.)

Does anyone know who originally started this brilliant series? For those who don’t know it is a 4 minute clip from the 2004 film Der Undergang that several people have periodically re-subtitled with words that have Hitler reacting to an event of some sort. (Warning: Many of them are full of language some might find a bit strong, so watch out!!)

Here it is*: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Working and Playing Hard

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tapas_madrid_1Well, I’m simply exhausted. I gave my second two-hour lecture today and drained my energy resources quite a bit. This is after an early(ish) start to the morning (7:30am) and with going late to bed last night (1:30am). A good lunch afterward helped restore things to a balance a bit, but I need to rest some more.

I’ve been modifying my lectures during the process of giving them, making adjustments for time and the kind of questions I get. This means that I end up kicking some parts to later lectures, and then trying to spend some of the afternoon writing new material, as well as on the train back to my hotel, and in the evenings.

Well, briefly in the evenings so far. That is because last night was set aside for a tour of some of the tapas you can find in the old part of Madrid. I had the presence of mind to go back to my hotel and get a short nap first, and then met my gracious […] Click to continue reading this post →

Wham!

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aliceWell, a very gentle sort of wham. Yesterday the Large Hadron Collider at CERN had its first collisions of protons! It is a warm start, making sure everything is working before ramping up the energies to regimes where we hope to see new physics, but it is a very exciting milestone nonetheless*. Recall that a few days back they hit the landmark of getting the machine to circulate beams again for the first time. (If you’ve forgotten what all of this is for, please search the blog for “LHC” and/or look in the related posts list at the bottom of this one.) Above right is a visual reconstruction of some of the collision data seen at the ALICE detector, and you can see more of this sort of data at CERN’s website (from where I got this graphic).

From the press release: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Coming Around the Bend Again

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0911187_135-a5-at-72-dpiIt was in the news today, I’m told*. The LHC is circulating beams again!! This is exciting news indeed. Look out for a press conference on Monday, and here is a press release about the event that took place yesterday. Also, collisions are said to be going to happen next week! This is all very wonderful.

I’m mid-travel, and should be sleeping for an early start tomorrow, and so I’ll simply point over to […] Click to continue reading this post →

Here, There, and Everywhere

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british_library_1Well, it has been quite the week so far. I’ve been mostly in England. First I spent Tuesday getting over the main effects of jetlag and a short but strong cold (both more or less gone now), and then Wednesday I went to King’s College London to give a seminar to the three groups in the Triangle series of seminars – King’s, Imperial, Queen Mary are the three places the participating research groups in theoretical high energy physics come from. It was excellent to see so many old friends and colleagues, meet some new ones, and chat physics at the pub and over dinner later on. The seminar seemed to be well received, although I know I was far from my best, given jetlag and cold. The next two days saw me saying hi to family and friends at coffee and dinner in the evenings and visiting at Queen Mary and Imperial for the day, and hiding in the British Library for most of Friday, writing.

What am I writing? Four lectures on D-branes and string theory and M-theory, with a focus on some of the fun and instructive applications (and potential applications) of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tape Noir

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rocking_chairsI had a lot of time to kill in Philadelphia’s International Airport on Sunday (I was changing planes), and I must say that is not a bad airport in which to be in such a situation. I like the city a lot, and so am not surprised that its main airport is to my liking. First of all, who can not like an airport that supplies you with… (you’re expecting free wireless, and they had that, sure, but no, I mean)… with… Rocking Chairs!!!

I saw some excellent art as well. And lots of displays of various types. I’ll share a couple more in a post or two, but look at some of the pieces I snapped pictures of for you. They are done with packing tape! Yes, packing tape. That brown thin stuff you know well… It was part of a series of scenes from noir films, rendered in this way. Very effective indeed, I felt. The series name is “Tape Noir”.

tape_noir_khaisman_1 […] Click to continue reading this post →

Market Matters

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As you may know from earlier posts, I love markets, a place where people come together with lots to see, talk about, interact over, and of course to taste. Community. One of my favourite things. Here’s a lovely stall at Granville Island in Vancouver when I was there briefly a short while ago. (Click for larger view.)

granville_island_market_4

I can’t resist showing you this display: (Click for larger view.) […] Click to continue reading this post →

More Gold for Everybody!

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metro_gold_celebrationI’ve learned over the years that news about public transportation often does not reach people in Los Angeles who aren’t already inclined to use it (that’s a lot of people) and so I ought not to assume that everyone’s heard about the exciting events of tomorrow. So here’s a quick post to let you know that the new Eastside extension of the Gold Line opens tomorrow! This is very exciting indeed! Spread the word! There’ll be lots of events to celebrate during the course of the day, and you can learn a lot about them at this link. You can ride the whole Gold line free to explore the system.

Those of you who will no doubt continue to insist that public transport in Los Angeles will never have anything to do with you (until there is a personal stop with a single-person train carriage right outside your home and a corresponding one wherever you want to go) can also join in the fun (just for the day, you understand) and come to the farmer’s market, see the bands and the people and so forth, and confirm your familiar position that it “won’t work for you” because it “doesn’t go anywhere”, just like the rest of the entire system supposedly doesn’t.

Soon, I’ll be doing a post on progress that has been made in recent months on the Expo line, by the way. That’ll be another celebration when that opens in late […] Click to continue reading this post →

Wet Moon

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Aha! So you were thinking the mission last month was a bit of a failure, right? Because there was no big splash (literally) of a plume for the press to gush about? I’m talking about the October LCROSS mission on October 9th that smashed an impactor onto the moon’s surface (at the Cabeus crater) to create a cloud of dust for analysis. I remember people thinking, encouraged by various reports, that the event was rather a damp squib, since it did not produce a Hollywood-style flash and plume. See an NPR report on the mission here from back then.

lcross_dataWell, science is known for being able to carry on steadily even if there are no overt special effects and a catchy soundtrack. Today, NASA announced that their analysis of the data produced from measuring the dust cloud’s properties has shown very definite signs of water (confirming and strengthening the results accumulated by other missions (India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Deep […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gloomy Sunday

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vancouver_boatsDespite the title, which is also the title of an utterly depressing but wonderful song that I love, which starts out: “Sunday is gloomy/my hours are slumberless/dearest the shadows/I live with are numberless/…” and wallows in further and darker gloom for the rest of the song until near the end, I mean gloomy here in a neutral way.

It applies not to my mood but to the skies over Vancouver on the Saturday and Sunday set aside for wandering and exploring. I actually found a lot of it quite refreshing (recall that we’ve not had much rain in LA all year) and managed to see several beautiful scenes made all the more lovely for the shades of grey provided by the rain and clouds. The scene with the boats above left is an example. Overall I had a great time exploring, and was shown some nice parts of the city by my hosts, Moshe Rozali and his family (thanks guys!).

The trip was a success, in that I had a lot of great conversations with various people about physics research matters, and also in terms of the main point of the trip which […] Click to continue reading this post →

Slaughter at the Podium

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debate_on_catholic_church1I simply insist that you take the time out to watch this video*. It is of a debate that took place on BBC television, the motion being “Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?”. It was between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry on one side (against) and Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan on the other (for). Dogma vs Reason, when it comes down to it. Now, it is one thing for the side that is in favour of the motion to be a bit lame compared to the duo they are up against, but it is really unfortunate that Anne Widdecombe was put up as the defender of the church as she has been so utterly arrogant and unpleasant in every appearance I have ever heard or seen her in, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Time Bandit

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dining_at_vijs_3Well, that was not altogether terrible, I gather, but I was so tired and a little bit out of sorts* when I started giving the talk that I was running very slowly. So by time I got to the end (even though I hit my right pace later on) I was some 15 minutes over. Ugh. People seemed to like it, but I definitely need to whittle out a few of the more superfluous slides (which I’d always intended to) and strike the intended pace I wanted to hit earlier than 3/4 of the way through the talk. My reward (besides some nice remarks at the end of the talk that sort of made my day) was a visit to another excellent restaurant for dinner, with some good company. The extraordinarily good Vij’s. The hour’s wait for the food was perfectly fine given the nibbles they bring you while you wait, and the food itself once you get it. Here’s a shot or two of some of the excellent food just after its arrival, and the empty dishes and satisfied hosts just after polishing it all off: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Remote Office

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I’m in remote office mode again. I’ve to give two colloquia while visiting two physics departments in Vancouver area over the next two days. (Subject matter will be essentially the same as the one I gave a month ago.) So tonight, I’m eating dinner at the splendid restaurant Banana Leaf not far from my hotel while reviewing the slides of my presentations on my pda (my iTouch dining_at_banana_leaf– I dump lots of files I want to read on it using an application called filemagnet. Very useful. See here. In this case I’m looking at the pdf output from the keynote presentation software I use. ) I’m making a few notes on changes I’ll make when I get back to my hotel. I’m also reviewing a few other documents that were sent to me for response, and tying off various loose ends here and there before the evening ends.

I sometimes worry that it might be considered rude that I’m apparently doing a bit of work and so not fully paying attention to the food, but I’m not too worried, really. Once the actual food arrives I’ve been quite appreciative of it, giving it my full […] Click to continue reading this post →