Category Archives: science

Of Spies and Spacetime

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Stephanie DeMarco interviewed me a few weeks ago for an article she was writing about the science in the TV show Agent Carter (season two). As you know, I did a lot of work for them on the science, some of which I’ve mentioned here, and we spoke about some of that and a lot of interesting other things besides. Well, her article appeared in Signal to Noise magazine, a publication all about communicating science, and it’s really a nice piece. You can read it here. (The excellent title I used for this post is from her article.)

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It is a pity that the show has not been renewed for a third season (I’m trying not […] Click to continue reading this post →

Competition Results!

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design_film_competition_logo_mediumThis year’s USC Science Film Competition saw another crop of films with a great variety of approaches, with live action and animation, comedy, drama and documentary, and all sorts of hydrids of those forms. Thanks to all who took part. As for the results, and seeing the films (do take a look!) I’ll repeat here the post I did over on the competition’s blog:

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We had a lot of fun at the screening and showcase last Thursday. The films looked great on the Imax screen. Many thanks to Matt Scott for working hard to make sure it all looked great, and also to him and the Large Format Cinema Club for co-hosting the event! Once again, thanks to the Burg Foundation for supporting the competition financially with prize money, grants for helping with the filmmaking, and funds for refreshments and logistics.

The results are as follows: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Southern California Strings Seminar – Santa Barbara

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KITP_SCSS_2For the first time in its history, the Southern California Strings Seminar was held in Santa Barbara, at the KITP! It was probably the largest meeting that has been held under that banner, with attendance from all over the map of theory groups in the region. Thanks for Edgar Shaghoulian for organising it!

Although I was a bit under the weather (never really figured out what the matter was) and super-pressed for time, I went along to support it and learn a bit about what was going on. I think that there’ll be a posting on the KITP’s online talks website at some point with the various talks, so you can look in too (keep an eye on their website).

I did not fancy driving there and playing dodgems with the traffic and so -as seems to be my custom when [….] Click to continue reading this post →

QFT Book Review

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9780199699322This month’s issue of Physics Today has a review that I wrote of the book “Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur”, by Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell. I took the opportunity to give a broader view (albeit brief, given the word limit) of the landscape of books on that subject and how it has changed a lot, in a way that I think reflects some excellent changes in formal theory brought about by (at least in part) research into the many topics pulled together under the broad umbrella of string theory. As you might know from reading here and elsewhere, I’ve long been pushing for the increased application of the ideas and techniques of string theory to other areas of physics, and it has become quite the thing these days, I’m happy to see. Such research has resulted in the blurring of the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Great Big Exchange

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Here’s a fun Great Big Story (CNN) video piece about the Science and Entertainment Exchange (and a bit about my work on Agent Carter). Click here for the piece.

(Yeah, the headline. Seems you can’t have a story about science connecting with the rest of the culture without the word “nerd” being used somewhere…)

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Space at the Movies

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first_fridays_nhm_space_movies_eventWell, that was a fun event. Here’s a photograph* of Sean Carroll and me as guests of the always-excellent host Patt Morrison at the Natural History Museum as we talk about aspects of the science of space (and time) as it appears in the movies, how we go about giving advice to filmmakers, and so forth. It was part of the First Fridays series which has a special focus on […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gyration…

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Extract from Wednesday’s General Relativity class:

Me, at the board writing equations: “…and so the ratio of the earth’s radius to its radius of gyration is about 0.577…”
Student raises hand and asks: “What’s radius of gyration?”
Me: “Er… It’s the average spacing everyone has to give you at the night club when you go Ker-ray-zay on the dance floor.”

As luck would have it, everyone laughed. That would have been a terrible time to have an awkward silence.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Weekend Reminder

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NHM_poster_April_1_2016_2While wandering with the family in the Natural History Museum this weekend, I spotted a reminder (click for larger view) for Friday’s event, which you might be interested in.

I’ll be on a panel about science (particularly space-related) and the movies, with fellow panelist Sean Carroll, and it is hosted by the awesome Patt Morrison! It’s part of the Natural History Museum’s First Fridays series, which you might recall me blogging about here before (actually, last time I was at one, I was a host so I imagine it’ll feel a bit different this time).

Here’s a website with all the details.

-cvj
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Reaction…

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Apparently I was on an episode of the BBC program Horizon a couple of hours ago over in the UK. I completely forgot that was coming up and forgot to mention it. Sorry! I’ve no idea what parts of the interview with me they used, or what the final thrust of the episode is, but I did have a lot of fun shooting the episode with the filmmakers over in Joshua Tree some time last year. See a post I did about it here. I spent some time explaining why negative mass is problematic, especially in the context of gravity… The program talks a lot about people who are trying to find anti-gravity of various sorts. I was reminded that the episode aired since I found myself tagged on social media, and wondered what the ruckus was about. Then I found the following tweet by @homeworkjunkie with a screen shot, and the caption “Nice reaction to runaway problem;zero cost energy proposed by some people in BBC Horizon”:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Sabbatical Dreams Fulfilled!

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NYT_Simons_fellowship_announcement_2016Well, today’s hunt for a print copy of the New York Times (click for larger view) was easier than the Wall Street Journal hunt a couple of months back. Been a while since I was in the Science Times, and I’ve not been in it in this capacity before. The Simons Fellowship announcement was today, and I was awarded one. I’m honoured to be in such fine company! Nice to see my friends Lawrence Hall, Jeff Harvey, Petr Horava, Andy Strominger among my fellow Fellows, and congratulations to everyone!

This is a major part of my sabbatical planning for next academic year (half book-completing, half research), and it sure is great to get it. There aren’t many fellowships of this sort for my area of work. Thanks Simons Foundation and all concerned.

-cvj

*And when I say fulfilled… Well, there’s still the matter of actually doing the thing and getting all my planning to work out… Click to continue reading this post →

Retreated

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retreat_placeIt’s Spring break. For the greater part of the last week, I’ve been in hiding. I’m alone in a quiet town somewhere, getting a good long stretch of work done on the book project for the first time in a long time. For most of each day I’d sit at this tiny table, writing and doing rough layout sketches, glancing out of the window from time to time, listening to music on headphones during the long stretches of concentration*. Yes, and drinking tea and coffee. For lunch I’d […] Click to continue reading this post →

Visualizing Zero Matter

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zero-matter-in-actionWired has a video piece about the VFX work done on Agent Carter to bring the substance known as “zero matter” to your screens. They very kindly mentioned me, which is a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of conversation early on with the writers, show runners, and the head of VFX (Sheena Duggal), discussing what it might look like, and what kind of aesthetic drivers were in play for the look of the show overall (less ZAP! and more ooze and flow), and what you see on screen is the result of a lot of that conversation. It’s really great to see so much of what we brainstormed make it up on screen. The main physics input I wanted to use as a guide was the idea that this is some sort of special fluid from “elsewhere”, in a very special physical phase (inspired by various super fluids and perfect fluids in actual physics from our world, which I explained a bit about to them…Sheena was also very taken with ferrofluids, which was a very smart design input to use as reference). We also talked a lot about the idea that zero matter manifests itself in different ways depending upon the biology of the host. (See a post I did about other aspects of zero matter here, including the naming of it, and “elsewhere”.)

The amazing company Double Negative played a huge role overall, doing the rendering and bringing all sort of techniques to bear to make it all work. You’ll maybe recognize that name since they were the people who worked with physicist Kip Thorne […] Click to continue reading this post →

BPS Panel on Science and Entertainment

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BPS_panel_1Yes, I’ve been panelling again, down at the LA Convention Center. It was a fun conversation, moderated by Rick Loverd the Program Director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, entitled “The Science of Hollywood” as part of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society*. With me were Amy Berg, who is a Film/TV Writer and Executive Producer, Jessica Cail, Professor of Psychopharmacology, Pepperdine University, and Mike Ireland, Senior Vice President, Production, 20th Century Fox.

Despite the title, we were not trying to put observations of, experiments done on, or theories constructed about Hollywood on any firm scientific footing! We did engage in a lot of discussion about the connections we work on between science and Film and TV. We spoke about why we do it, how we try to do it, and […] Click to continue reading this post →