Category Archives: science

Google Glimpses

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Well, don’t forget the total lunar eclipse tonight! It is already starting… Apparently it will be the longest one for over ten years. It won’t be visible in North America, however, but google has provided a way to make sure you get your, er, lunatic desires to see the moon in earth shadow. For a start, there’s another excellent google doodle on their front page today (snapshot right) that allows you to slide the shadow over the moon to your heart’s desire. Furthermore, there’s a live feed of the eclipse on their YouTube channel, here.

Enjoy!

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Lightning in a Bottle

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Did you hear yesterday’s Fresh Air? It was very interesting indeed, being, as it was, about a subject that you probably know interests me a lot – electric cars. The guest was Seth Fletcher, and he was talking about electric cars, hybrids, and so forth. Not focusing on far futuristic matters so much as what is possible now (with all the exciting things going on in the market), and where we might go next in terms of the development of the science and technology needed to continue to change our world by moving away from gasoline as our primary energy source for transport. A lot of his focus in on the development of batteries, and he does a good job of explaining […] Click to continue reading this post →

Stick with the round balls, for now

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So, apparently, electrons are round. Very very round. So when drawing those terribly wrong but evocative pictures of atoms as a lump in the middle (the nucleus) with a collection of round balls in orbit around them (the electrons), go ahead and make them nice and round. Very round. How “very” are we talking about here? According to this report on the recent experimental measurements in the Guardian:

Were the electron scaled up to the size of the solar system, any deviation from its roundness would be smaller than the width of a human hair […]

So you’d have to be using a pretty impressively sharpened pencil to draw it that accurately round. But give it a try.

Ok, what’s the story here? Well, oddly, this seemed to be on a lot of news sources yesterday, and I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe because it mostly seemed to be pitched as a “back to the drawing board for the theorists” story (two major sources I heard had it spun this way), which editors seem to like running with. And the roundness? What’s that about? Well, what they’re taking about is the result of a long careful set of measurements done by Hudson et. al. at Imperial College (my […] Click to continue reading this post →

Chatter

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The characters in the story (“The Arena”) that I’m currently working on for the graphic novel are firmly mid-conversation here… (See more on The Project here.) Been away from it for some weeks now. Need to re-engage and push this one to the end. For those interested in the process, here’s a series of illustrative clips of: (4) rough pencils and layout (done on a bus ride back from Westside one day), (3) tight pencils (done that second morning of the retreat between breakfast and lunch), (2) inks, (1) inks, flat colours and letters (bubbles present, but letters hidden):

(1)

(2) […] Click to continue reading this post →

Telling the story of the Revolution

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The good people at Revolution Books made me quite at home when I arrived, and the talk (see previous post for background) was fun. There were about 20 people there in the end, all very engaged and asking many excellent questions*. So I spilled over the allotted time as a result, but in a good way, since people really wanted more, it seemed. I managed to explain all the key parts of Special Relativity that I wanted to, unpacking in a way that seemed to work, and even went on to explain the Equivalence Principle and set up the key aspects of General Relativity.

The prep for the talk was a blast… I’d just written out some thoughts on several sheets of large drawing paper – the big stuff I like to do large life […] Click to continue reading this post →

Movie Notes

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Going to the movies this weekend? Lots of interesting choices, but perhaps you especially want to see some portrayals of people in academic careers by some of the hot young phenoms. Well, here are two you might not have considered, both films released May 6th.

1. Observe Nathalie Portman as an astrophysicist in Thor. I don’t find this to be too much of a stretch since the actress always seemed to me to radiate an intensity and intelligence that would help make such a role believable, even in films where everything else is rather a disaster as far as believability is concerned. (cough, cough, Star Wars prequels, cough, cough) Well, it turns out that Thor is not the disaster I thought it would be and is rather well put together, all things considered (this is one of several Marvel characters that I was underwhelmed by in the old days). So go for Portman, stay for the hammer, lightning bolts, and other stuff. Turns out the physicist aspect of her performance was not as well studied as her ballet in that other film, but oh well. It was not like it was the central issue of the film. But enjoy all the Einstein-Rosen bridge mentions!

2. Observe Jessica Alba as a mathematics teacher who loves numbers in An Invisible Sign. Now, er, this for me was casting that did not bode well, but to be fair,[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Revolution!

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Ah. Should have mentioned this before. Tomorrow I’ll be talking at Revolution Books. No, I won’t be stirring up political buzz or anything like that, rallying the troops, singing the songs and so forth. Sorry to disappoint. I’ll be there doing what I usually do – trying to put a bit of science out there among the rest of the culture where it belongs. I ran into Keith James of Revolution Books in the market one day some time ago and he recognized me from a tv show explaining science – and I was hanging out with a writer friend whose work he was a fan of, and so it was a two-birds-one-stone thing for him, stopping us to say hi. He raised the idea of me coming and explaining Einstein’s Relativity at the bookstore, and I readily agreed. It has been a long time in the making -largely due to me- but we finally settled on a date, and it is tomorrow. I also suggested that I put them in touch with a friend at the Griffith Observatory so that after my […] Click to continue reading this post →

Go Visit JPL!

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This weekend is the JPL Open House! You might recall from my visits there in the past (or, at least, my reports on them – see e.g. here) that it is a fun and informative time. I recommend it. It runs from 9:00am to 5:00pm today and tomorrow, and you can go along to see what’s up with various JPL/NASA missions, hear about future missions, learn the science and technology behind various equipment and the various science goals, and much more.

See the website here for more information.

Here’s a video I made two years ago (including a Mars Rover roving over children!!!):



I hope I can go today, but I’ve got rather a lot on, including trying to find some time […] Click to continue reading this post →

Done. Sort Of.

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Last night I graded the exam for my advanced string theory course, computed the final grades, and will enter them into the System today. Hurrah! It was a fun class to teach, maybe even to learn (you’ll have to ask them). The final exam took me most of Sunday to write and LaTeX carefully, checking for typos since there were a few “show this” type questions where I gave a complicated expression that they had to derive. In […] Click to continue reading this post →

In Progress

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I had an early rise this morning, to make it down to campus early enough to set up (with the help of my co-conspirator Tameem) the room for the all day meeting I mentioned earlier, in order to start at 9:00am. All worked well… And things are progressing nicely (see photo of some of us in the lovely room we’re using) with local participants from USC, UCLA, UCSB, and even Stanford! It is excellent to see such support and enthusiasm for this semi-annual event!

-cvj

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Southern California Strings Seminar

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We’re hosting the next Southern California Strings Seminar here at USC. It will be on Friday 6th May. I’ve been working on it a lot over the last several days* and put the finishing touches on the arrangements just this morning.

scss_fall_2010_6_small There’ll be no Saturday morning component this time, since there’s yet another huge event down at USC this weekend, and things will be rather disrupted, I understand, as there’ll be lots of people, street closures, and so forth**. (It is the Revlon Run/Walk event in exposition park, across the street from us, an excellent event!)

So I’ve packed five exciting talks into Friday, and I think it is going to be fun! Here’s the schedule:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Science Fair Judges Needed!

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My colleague Chris Gould, who organizes the California State Science Fair (currently on down at the California Science Center!) is also working on the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) this year, to be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. In addition to more volunteers to help out in a range of capacities, they need more judges for the fair in many categories, so please consider giving of your time to help out. These things can be fun, as you may recall from my posts in previous years on similar fairs (e.g. here). There’s apparently a specific need for more people in aspects of life sciences and environmental sciences, so please pass this message on to people who you think might be suitable and interested.

Here’s an extract from Chris’ recent email about this: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Festive Weekend!

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It has been another rather busy week this week (including a marathon seven-hour video interview!) and so posting was a bit light. I apologize for this, including for not getting to blogging about an event (or cluster of events) that I’ve been gleefully waiting for since the news broke last Fall that (as I’d mentioned back then) the LA Times Festival of Books is now being hosted by USC. This is something I fantasized about many years ago, in fact – I simply think it is a better fit for the city of Los Angeles for many reasons.

Anyway, the first festival of the new era is tomorrow and Sunday, with a wonderful program that can be looked at on the LA Times website. It will continue to be the largest literary festival in the USA (and perhaps beyond?), and it is hoped that it will get even larger… Next year, we’ll have the new branch of the subway system running, giving three stops at the campus (hurrah!), but in the meantime there’s a dedicated shuttle bus connecting USC to Union Station downtown and the Convention Center (not to mention all the many regular public transport links), and so you don’t have to bring your car to the area to deal with parking issues.

As you know from my blogging about all this in previous years (see list of links at the end), in a sense the whole thing kicks off the Friday night before (tonight!) with the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Retreat

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photo1_output_smallSome of this weekend was spent in the mountains a few hours East of the city, where we had a departmental retreat for a short while. It was fun – lots of fun. There’s a lot to be said for going off to some other place with your work colleagues, being together with them for meals, business, and recreation, and getting to know people you had not met before, or getting to know better people you’d already known.

There were several short talks from people sharing a bit about what they or their research group have been up to, with coffee breaks and meal breaks. The latter were signaled by a nice gong, and we were served tasty vegetarian food that everyone seemed to enjoy (even those who eyed longingly the In ‘N Out Burger in the town at the bottom of the mountain before making the trip up – you know who you are!) with wide ranging conversation among ourselves and occasionally with the Buddhist monks and volunteers who run the centre. (Hence the sitting cross-legged on mats in the above picture…)

photo3_output_smallThe evening had a few more talks and then was free for socializing. A large game of trivial pursuits broke out and hilarity ensued in one corner, along with chatting, guitar strumming and drawing (me) in other corners.

After what was a cold and windy night outside (I was glad of the extra layers I brought), Sunday had an early start for breakfast, 7:30am, and then a large group headed off for a hike. I decided that I needed to get some work done on The Project and stayed by the toasty fire in the dining room and did some drawing and inking, listening to […] Click to continue reading this post →

Lounging

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20110416-220116.jpgI’m lounging around. In Cincinnatti Ohio. Why? Well, it has been a long day, and I’m tired. I spent the whole day yesterday traveling to get here, changing planed in Chicago, eventually getting to my hotel at 10:00 pm, having arisen at 6:00am. I spent the flying time thinking about physics and writing the talk I was invited to give here as part of the regional SPOCK meeting at the University of Cincinnatti. The letters stand for something, but I can’t recall what it is right now. It does not mean, as the title might suggest, that several emotionally-challenged and otherwise tv-cliche-handicapped individuals were meeting to discuss arcane matters in a room somewhere. It was a meeting of several people from the region’s string theory community to discuss…. Ok, ok, Ok…stop giggling!

I got up at 7:00am -really 4:00am my time- transferred all my pages of notes to the iPad, and got ready, leaving to do the short (I assumed) walk to the physics department in the wind and rain. I enjoyed that bit… I had however mis-estimated how long it would take me to get to the Physics department building, largely due to […] Click to continue reading this post →