Author Archives: Clifford

Categorically Not! – The Worlds We Make Up

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kc_frankThe next Categorically Not! is this coming Sunday September 13th. 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. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Image above right is from the inside of the jacket of KC Cole’s book on Frank Oppenheimer, who will be celebrated in this month’s Cat Not! as you’ll read below. I talked a bit about the book here.)

The theme this month is The Worlds We Make Up. Here’s the description from K. C. Cole:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Laser is Coming Soon!

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Well, here it is. After lots of interruptions over the last 24 hours, I give you the trailer for Laser, the next of my films. I think it is a bit more playfully enigmatic than the trailer for the first film. (I’ve only just (half an hour ago) finished recording the music for it, and so it really is being rushed to you straight from the cutting room, as it were.)

See earlier posts for my thoughts about the project, and see the trailer for the first film here, and the actual first film, Shine a Light, here. Sorry it is so late… the semester started and I got swamped. See my chatter about that here.

Anyway, here it is! Enjoy!

-cvj

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A Little Behind…

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Well, here are a few thoughts:

(1) I’m behind on pretty much every deadline. In addition to the externally set ones (article to finish, class material to prepare, etc), I’m behind on those I’ve set myself.

(2) An example of the latter is the fact that I am two weeks late bringing out the film “Laser”, the followup to “Shine a Light”. The semester started, and all the time I thought I’d have to sit and cut a trailer for it and record some music to go on it never materialised….

(3) …Until the last 24 hours. I cut together some images into an interesting (I hope) sequence, and just now finished recording some music onto it. It is more enigmatic than the last trailer, or at least that is the intention. It is being crunched on by YouTube right now and when it is ready I will release it to tease you to return for the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Ten Things That Go Boom!

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the_universeWell, ok… Boom is not quite accurate, but the idea is that there will be ten kinds of blasts/explosions/major_energetic_events discussed tonight on the History Channel’s The Universe:

The Universe is full of explosions that both create and destroy. The Chicxulub impact on the Yucatan peninsula, which may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, was two million times more powerful than the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated on Earth. But guess what? That’s only good enough for the very bottom of the Biggest Blasts top ten list. This episode works its way up through supernova explosions and gamma ray bursts all the way to the blast that started it all–the Big Bang.

Sounds good doesn’t it? There’s a lot of good people contributing again, so I know it’ll have some good material and explanations.

In addition, I’m reasonably confident I play a role in this one…This one was a blast (sorry) to film. You saw some posts earlier reporting on some of the filming. Assuming they used the material I did with them, you’ll get to see why I was at the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Thursday was Monopole Day

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Here’s an odd coincidence. Thursday, just for fun, I declared it Monopole Day in my facebook status. It was largely because I was prepping a class on Dirac’s ideas about magnetic monopoles (roughly: point sources of magnetic fields analogous to point sources of electric fields), why it seems (from looking at Maxwell’s equations – the defining equations of electricity and magnetism) that Nature might very much like the idea of them (using a symmetry argument – roughly: electric and magnetic fields can turn into each other so if there’s one kind of point source, isn’t it strange that there’s not the other?) but chose to hide them away…

monopole_workIt’s a favourite topic of mine (and many physicists – it is one of the first grown-up tastes of modern ways of thinking about physics that you get as an advanced undergraduate, actually), and so I was excited to lecture about it (as I am every year… I find en excuse to bring monopoles into every course I teach… almost). I even handed out one of my class worksheets, which was all about how to build a monopole (on paper – you take a semi-infinite solenoid (a “Dirac String”) and let the magnetic flux lines spill out […] Click to continue reading this post →

Oops!

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Forgot to report on this email exchange from last semester:

From one of the staff in the physics office:

Subject: 499 Syllabus
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:01:38 -0700
From: Beverly
To: Clifford V. Johnson

I was reading the syllabus you sent over for the 499 class. I am not sure if this is a type-o but in the Extra Books section it reads “/Black *_hoes_* and Time Warps: Einstein’s outrageous Legacy/” should it read
“/Black *_holes_* and Time Warps: Einstein’s outrageous Legacy/”.

Thanks,

My response: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Kiss and Tell

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I make it a rule to never do that. It’s bad form. Best to be avoided.

Seriously, though, over on the Intersection, Sheril wants your kiss and tell photos. What she’s really looking for is…. well, here are her words:

Have you ever taken a picture of bears nuzzling in the field or kissing fish? How about a provocative pair of human subjects? (With their permission!) Are you interested in having an image credited to you in a science book debuting next Fall? If you’re a photographer with intriguing pictures of kissing and cuddling [no higher than PG-13 content please], email me before September 14 at srkirshenbaum@yahoo.com.

So go and send her some of your material if you have what she’s looking for! If not, consider making some new material. It’s for science.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

It Fell From Space…

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the_universeTonight’s 9:00pm episode of the History Channel’s The Universe ought to be interesting. It is all about objects that fall to earth from space. It’s a good opportunity to learn things about the universe (both near and far) from the perspective of things we glimpse arriving here on earth. You’ll get to learn about the earth as well, and how it (and life on it) has been affected by these things. There’ll be asteroids and planetary science of course, and maybe other things. I know from hearing some chatter of the program makers that there’ll be lots of demos using impacts and collisions and so forth. I know some good people were involved in making it, such as the writer/director Laura Verklan, and my friend and fellow regular on the show, JPL’s Amy Mainzer (who has an excellent blog here). […] Click to continue reading this post →

Head in the Clouds…

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clouds_and_smoke_2Stepping back from the unpleasantness going on at ground level for a moment (see the four previous posts, 1, 2, 3, 4), it seems that there is something else going on that’s actually quite fascinating. I went over to the top of one of the USC campus parking structures to take a look and gather some data and I’ve been chatting to people at random about it*. (This might also be a sign that I’m procrastinating on some other task… 🙂 ) That white part of the cloud is not smoke, is it? It is actually a cloud of vapour. Like a cumulus cloud you’d normally see in various weather conditions. I’ve heard some chatter about these systems “making their own weather”, and I can see that you could get a lot of localized heat dragging air in from other areas and so creating winds and so forth, but is that also generating this cloud? If so, how? Where is it getting all this moisture from? Is it from the water that is being […] Click to continue reading this post →

Mount Doom?

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Continuing my series of posts on the approach of the fires to Mount Wilson and the threat to the Observatory (see previous for information and discussion – this morning I am happy to hear that the radio news is now mentioning the Observatory and not just the tv and radio antennae up there)… Last night at about midnight I decided to look out to see whether I could see anything going on, and was greeted with a sight from the pages of Tolkien describing Orodruin (Mount Doom):

flames_near_wilson_2

You can see the flames in the canyons near Mount Wilson’s summit, and as I watched […] Click to continue reading this post →

Wish the Observatory Good Luck!

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60 inch at mount wilson The fires are racing up the sides of Mount Wilson as I write (19:38). They expect the burn to get to the top sometime in the next few hours, and yes, I imagine it’ll affect the Mount Wilson Observatory in some way.

[Update (20:59): You can get regular updates from the director at this page*. Seems that fire crews will remain on site for when/if the fires sweep through the grounds. ]

All of the working scientific equipment, including the solar telescopes and of course the historic telescopes (the 60 inch is pictured to the right) with which astounding discoveries were made about our universe (such as the fact that it is expanding, and the fact that the universe is vastly more than just our Milky Way Galaxy) are presumably in some danger, as well as support buildings of various kinds. I’ve no idea how much since I do not know what fire-proofing measures are in place up there, although I am sure there are several – such as keeping brush away from the buildings themselves. Here’s a camera up there on one of the solar telescopes where you can see regularly updated pictures that it snaps. I grabbed this one just now (click for larger view):

solar_tower_camera

So keep your fingers crossed for luck for the instruments, and of course for all […] Click to continue reading this post →

Smoke

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fire_sunriseThere’s a remarkable amount of smoke in the skies here in Los Angeles. Strangely there is little or no wind to accompany this super-hot day, and so the smoke is largely staying over the region where the fires are – the San Gabriel mountains, North of La Canada, Altadena, etc.

There was a bit of movement of the smoke overnight, and early this morning (while the sun shone dull and red like a sunset instead of a sunrise) there was some ash fall over where I live (I was working outside on some writing while it was still cool), a good number of miles away from the fires, in the city of Los Angeles itself, but this seems to have gone away. So there are clear skies in all directions, and then ominous-looking mushroom clouds in one direction. It is odd. This stillness is the reason the firefighters are having a lot of difficulty fighting the fires, actually – the smoke is affecting visibility for the various ground and airborne crews. There’s a lot of concern about what the fires will do next, (including a threat to the Mt. Wilson Observatory) and so let’s all keep out fingers crossed for luck. [Update: 6:30pm – I’ve heard that they have no choice but the let the fires take Mount Wilson. I hope that the Observatory survives ok. If you’re not familiar with the significance of the Mount Wilson Observatory, read here and here.]

Here’s a recent (about 5:00pm today) shot of the mushroom clouds of smoke. You can […] Click to continue reading this post →

My Achilles Heel

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Heat. Following is a little bit of a whine. You’ll be even less sympathetic once you read the postscript, but such is life. Once the temperature gets up to a certain point, I can’t think any more. Well, not at the level needed to earn my living, if you see what I mean. Long periods of concentration start out well, but usually just turn into a nap. Not good at all, really. For the second or third day running we’ve had super hot temperatures with little movement of air to ensure a decent amount of throughput. This is not always unworkable, since one can simply nap during the day, do tasks that don’t require much sitting and thinking, and then work in the very early morning hours, but this time around there are two additional effects that ruin that approach.

fires_with_downtown_laThe first is that the heat has been carrying on into the night (as opposed to dropping away rapidly in the evening as is the usual pattern), and the second is that there are two huge fires nearby, making the air a bit… chewy. (Left is a shot I took of downtown Los Angeles from the South showing the huge clouds of smoke from the La Canada and Altadena fires in the San Gabriels’ foothills in the background. From some views it looks like there’s been a small nuke detonated. Anyone remember 24 a few seasons ago? For some maps of the fire’s progress see here, and a view from one of the Mount Wilson observatories is here*.)

Both of these make for less than great sleeping conditions, and the feeling of lack of […] Click to continue reading this post →

New Beginnings

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campus_1Yes, the new semester and new academic year started yesterday, and today saw my first class of a new course for me to teach – Physics 508b: Advanced Electricity and Magnetism. The bad news is that it is a new course for me and so I have to write new material, plan new things entirely, and generally put in a lot of raw preparation from scratch for some things. The good news is that it seems that I have, overall, a good group of students to teach, based upon the willingness to interact that I saw, with good humour, good questions, interjections, and so forth. Further good news is that I’ve an excellent TA for the course (who also does research with me and so we can go back and forth from teaching matters and research matters) and that I’ve taught Physics 408b for a few years. The latter is an undergraduate advanced E&M course (based on Griffith, in case you’re wondering), and while this 508b course (based on Jackson) is heavier in detail and depth on the same material, I can borrow some of the more challenging material from the […] Click to continue reading this post →