As a follow up to my earlier moon post of the day, here’s a link to the (excellent) Police singing the excellent “Walking on the Moon”. Seems to fit somewhat with the occasion. No embedding, sadly, so you’ll have to come back here to finish your reading. Click on the picture. Enjoy!
Well, it can’t have escaped your attention. I imagine that whatever news sources you use are full of stories about today being the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. (Well, the first by human beings, anyway. 🙂 )
I won’t be writing a long thoughtful piece reflecting on the matter. Right now, I can’t really think of much to say that has not been said. Perhaps it is just because it is too hot here. I’m not sure.
However, I will encourage you to find a quiet moment sometime today, stop, look […] Click to continue reading this post
Hmm… so this PhD Comics episode* (image left… click will take you to their site) is a really good idea, but I’m underwhelmed by the actual execution.
This might be because it is hard to do, and not because the person (people?) at PhD comics, whoever they are, aren’t smart and funny people, since there’s a lot of evidence that they are.
So I find myself thinking that this is an opportunity for some fun reader participation! Surely there are more science-tweets to be thought up? Perhaps even […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, that was a hugely tiring day indeed. I’ve just returned from a full day of shooting for an episode of the the 
History Channel’s The Universe, and all I can do is collapse on the sofa for a long while.
I’ve grabbed the essentials (a nice cold Leffe, some tasty corn chips, a cup of tea – I made it before I got the Leffe idea – , some books I’m reading, etc) to have within easy reach so that I need not get up for a while. I simply don’t want to.
It was tiring mostly because it was so terribly hot for most of it. The first half of the […] Click to continue reading this post
Here’s an interview that I missed when it first came out back in April. It is with Edward Witten, the single most influential person in my area of theoretical physics for quite some time now. This is for no other reason than his off-scale abilities in every key area of theoretical physics. He was my mentor back in the early ’90s, and the […] Click to continue reading this post
On the BBC’s Daily Mayo the other day there was a science focus! Scientists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw joined Simon to talk about their new book Why Does [tex]E=mc^2[/tex]? that looks at Einstein’s famous equation which explores the principles of physics through everyday life. Commander Lee Archambault, currently on … Click to continue reading this post
Well, I bet you have not read any articles connecting Michael Jackson and research in string theory before. No, even though I spend a lot of time and effort trying to bring science into everyday conversations people have about the broader culture, I cannot claim credit for this one. I was reading an excellent article* in the Village Voice written by Greg Tate, and to my surprise, there it was. It is by far the most thoughtful and insightful of any of the articles on Michael Jackson that I’ve read, and I’d already concluded that before noticing any mention of physics. I strongly recommend it, especially if you don’t know what all the fuss is about, or if you think that the fuss is only about some pop music.
Tate examines not just the impact of Jackson on the culture, and where he sits in the pantheon of black people who have made such impact (he’s mostly focusing on America), but also the role of adversity and struggle in focusing talent in a way that produces people who create at such a high level and which such seismic effect. He […] Click to continue reading this post
One of the words I dislike most in my field – or more accurately, a common usage thereof – is “fundamental”. This is because it is usually used as a weapon, very often by people in my area of physics (largely concerned with particle physics, high energy physics, origins questions and so forth), to dismiss the work of others as somehow uninteresting or irrelevant. 
I don’t like this. Never have. Not only is it often allied to a great deal of arrogance and misplaced swagger, it is often just plain short-sighted, since you never know where good ideas and techniques will come from. A glance at the history of physics shows just how much cross-pollination there is between fields in terms of ideas and techniques. You never know for sure where valuable insights into certain kinds of problems may come from.
Fundamental physics is a term I used to hear used a lot to refer to particle physics (also called high energy physics a lot more these days). This was especially true some years back when I was an undergraduate in the UK, and it persisted in graduate school too, and is still in use today, although I think it is declining a bit in favour of less loaded terms. Somehow, a lot of particle physics is regarded as being all about the “what is everything made of at the very smallest scales” sort of question, first discussing atoms, and then atoms being made of electrons surrounding a nucleus, and the nucleus being made of protons and neutrons, and those in turn being made of quarks, and so on, in this was arriving at a list of “fundamental” particles. There’s the parallel discussion about the “fundamental” forces (e.g., electromagnetism and the nuclear forces) being described in terms of exchanges of particles like photons, gluons, and W and Z particles and so forth. There’s no real harm in the use of the term fundamental in this context, but this is about where the word gets elevated beyond its usefulness and starts becoming a hurdle to progress, and then a barrier. 
Somehow, “fundamental”, meaning “building block” gets turned, oddly, into “most important”. The issue of what the smallest building blocks are gets elevated to the most important quest, when it is in reality only a component of the story. It is rather like saying that the most important things about the Taj Mahal are the beautiful stones, tiles, and other components from which it is constructed.
Perspectives have evolved a bit since my salad days, with the rise of wider […] Click to continue reading this post
The things I do for physics. (Including trying to remember how to play tennis after 15 years…) (Click for larger view.) […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, it has been a busy few days. Since Sunday’s activities I’ve been up to my ears in various things. Interesting things, I’m happy to say, and only a few annoying things. Besides getting back on track with life in LA, I’ve been working (with a student collaborator) on various very interesting physics projects that I hope to find time to tell you about soon, involving various applications of string theory of the sort I mentioned in an earlier post.
I’ve also been working on the two films I’m making. They’re now in final iterations of editing, and in addition to working on the iterations writing notes with directions for my editor, I’ve been making some extra bits of special footage for one of them. I hope it won’t be too long now before I call them finished.
On top of that business, I’ve been communicating with several filmmakers about ideas and material for the History Channel show The Universe. (I’ve told you about […] Click to continue reading this post
One of the offerings for my 17 guests during my solstice celebratory cooking session yesterday. (Click for larger view.) For background, see yesterday’s post.
I produced five or six core dishes for the menu, overall. Boy, that was fun! (There were also some excellent dishes brought by guests, and I had various other things […] Click to continue reading this post
The Sun stood still earlier today! Don’t panic – It is Summer Solstice. I’m talking about an apparent motion of the sun, or, more accurately the migration of its path across the sky. Take a moment to think celestially for a bit and ponder the earth as it goes around the sun on its annual path. There’s a tilt to the earth’s own rotation axis, remember? (About 23 degrees). That tilt results in our seasons, and the path of the sun through the daily sky. Visualize this for a moment and it’ll make sense, if you let it. Today the sun’s path has got as northernmost as it will get, and it is now turning around, being more Southern each day until Winter Solstice. To turn around and change direction, you first have to stop. No way around it. So, the sun stood still today.
So, I decided to celebrate all this lovely geometry on the spur(ish) of the moment. Will you? I’m going to cook up several tasty dishes and have some friends around to […] Click to continue reading this post
I learned from Phil’s blog that (recently launched) Hershel’s official first image has been released:
…At least in my field, as submitted to the ArXiv. Just saw “Remarks on the world-sheet saga” by Bert Schroer. The abstract (and the paper) is full of excellently derisive turns of phrase that are hilarious to read! Example from the abstract:
Attention is given to how such misleading metaphors originate and how their support is maintained by quantum mechanical analogies to models which for good reasons never existed before in particle physics physics and whose only purpose is to uphold the string metaphor. The correct localization is inconsistent with the idea of world-sheets and the string-theoretical interpretation of T-duality.
He’s not actually trying to make the reader laugh, I think, but is attempting to make some serious physics points in there, apparently suggesting alternative lines of […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m a creature of habit, it must be said. Part of my morning ritual while at Aspen is to slowly stir some steel cut Irish oatmeal (click for larger view) for a while (properly spiced, of course, and soaked overnight ), while listening to NPR and making some tea. The tea is also seasoned with spices and finished in a pan for a while. Why?
Tea up here is horrible if you just pour boiled water on to tea leaves (bag or no bag). This is because at this altitude, boiling water isn’t actually very hot. This makes for […] Click to continue reading this post
