As you may have heard, the Phoenix craft on Mars (remember? seven minutes of terror?) which had already been running beyond its design lifetime, has probably sent its final message from Mars. There is not enough daily solar energy (now that it is Winter) coming in to support its energy needs.
There’s a NASA press release here, with links to the mission pages for a reminder of […] Click to continue reading this post
Some reflections over breakfast – at least breakfast part II. Well, elevenses, really. Today is, I hope, a day to spend mostly on thinking about research issues. There’s a project I’m still unhappy with, in terms of where I’d like it to be, and I want to try to move things on. I had a new idea on the bus yesterday that I’ll be testing out today. Since I’m giving a seminar about this project on Friday, I’d also rather like to get it all uploaded back into the more active buffers of my brain, as it were.
Tuesday is a welcome day, being between my two biggest teaching days of the week, days that usually completely drain me. I try to use it to remind myself that I’ve a ton of other activities besides teaching that I should be getting on with. Research is one of them.
This morning began with something else, however, and I thought I’d update you on […] Click to continue reading this post
Last night, Stephen Colbert suggested that the Large Hadron Collider is responsible for Obama’s victory on Tuesday! When it switched on back in September, it kicked us into an alternative universe in which everything was the same except that McCain’s position in the polls had been eroded, and, well, you know the rest.
(Apparently it also explains the World Series result, but as I know nothing about baseball, I cannot tell if that is really supposed to be an anomaly or not.) Clip here, and item in question is about 2 minutes in.
Hey team, run and cover… he’s on to us!
I’ve been running around so much today I forgot to actually mention the event for which I’ll be acting as host tonight, here at USC. This is how I quickly described it to my colleagues, but bear in mind that it is open to all:
I’d like to remind you one last time about the Apollo Visions and Voices event today. Whether it interests you or not, please encourage your students to go. It is the College Dean’s V+V event for the semester, and was chosen to have a focus that would attract science and engineering students and faculty to sit with our friends and colleagues from the arts and humanities. It is at 7:30 pm in Bovard, with a reception at the end. I think that it will be very interesting and enjoyable.
Information about it is here.
It should be fun!
-cvj
Wonderful result!
This is, it seems, the long-awaited return of reason. The return of an atmosphere where ideas, and careful, thoughtful, nuanced argument and persuasion can become the centerpiece of how we go about solving our collective problems and shaping and reshaping our world. So among all the great things said yesterday about the meaning of it all, it is worth noting that it was a good day for Science.
Well, the initial phase is over, and now it is time to start the restoration work, the strengthening of the foundations, and then the true building anew.
Actually, this is a bit of a late announcement, but worth doing anyway, in case you happen to be looking for something fun to do with the Society of Physics Students. From yesterday’s talk at the Center For Inquiry on particle physics and string theory (thanks to the many of … Click to continue reading this post
Well, at some point this week I ought to get around to preparing for this. I spoke about the Center For Inquiry before, here. Well, the promised talk that I was going to give at some point is on Sunday. If you’re up for some thoughts about the universe on your Sunday morning, do come along. Details at this link. Some of their publicity is reproduced below: […] Click to continue reading this post
I don’t know if you read the report (released on the 15th October) about the damage to the LHC that occurred during the “September 19th incident”. Just in case, it is in pdf format here. The upshot is that there’s a lot of work to do. There are of course … Click to continue reading this post
I got this cute postcard from the people at Workaholic Productions. (Click for larger view.)
You may recall a post I did some time ago about some things I was doing in a demo lab here at USC for a pilot for a new TV show. (Or, you may not. That’s what the archive is for – browse several of the Tales From The Industry” series here.) At the time I did not tell you about the show in detail, since I don’t like to reveal details of show ideas and so forth when things are still in development.
Anyway, the show is done. It’s a pilot, and so with your support, they may well get the go ahead to make more. So if you’re inclined, go and have a look. What is it about? Well, the idea is to start off with some standard (pulp) sci-fi scenario (alien invasion in this case) that you might see in a movie or tv show, and then through the course of the show examine aspects of what you see to investigate the science behind it. They have actual scientists (and engineers, since a lot of can be really about technology) come on and discuss things, explain science, do demonstrations, and so on and so forth.
This particular show, the pilot, has a lot of the standard alien invasion combat weaponry on display – shooting of ray guns, casting of lightning-bolt-like bursts of […] Click to continue reading this post
I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)
Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:
In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”
The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.
Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.
Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat […] Click to continue reading this post
The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday October 19th (tomorrow!). 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 on left is of bubble master Stirling Johnson, in action during the September 14th 2008 event on Bubbles.)
The theme this month is Entanglement. Here’s the description from K C Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post
I like David Bacon’s musings about the sorts of arithmetic being thrown around a lot in the turbulent financial news these days. He starts out: I wonder how many people this week realized that “ten percent down” followed by “ten percent up” does not equal “no change.” […] Indeed,
Well, another super-busy week has gone by. Work has been crazy, life has been crazy, and so forth. It is so good to be able to sit here for a while on a sunny Saturday morning and reflect. I thought I’d take you with me on some of the reflections.
The Nobel prizes seemed to come up so much faster this year, and go by even more quickly. I’ve not had as much time to contemplate them as I’d have liked. It was certainly really good to see that the physics one was a celebration of some of the key ideas in my field (see here), of course, but I’d have liked to have had more chatter about all of them, as I usually try to do. It is good to learn more about other things – get out of one’s comfort zone. Two years ago while I was departmental colloquium organizer, I set aside one date to be a colloquium where the three science prizes were highlighted – “Who, What, Why?” There’s always going to be local faculty who can […] Click to continue reading this post
Don’t forget to be looking out for the other Nobel Prizes announced this week. Monday saw the Physiology or Medicine Prize go to Harald zur Hausen for work on the human papilloma viruses (which cause cervical cancer), and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for work on the human immunodeficiency virus. Announcement and more details here. Meanwhile, today’s Chemistry Prize was to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Details here.
No, no, no. The Chemistry prize was not for the discovery of a substance that’s just pretty and sparkly-glowy. (Although, you know… maybe that is a good reason on its […] Click to continue reading this post
The announcement has been made. It’s for spontaneously broken symmetry in particle physics and it is to Nambu (1/2 – “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”) and Kobayashi (1/4) and Maskawa (1/4) (- “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”). It’s all about what might be better termed “hidden symmetries” in Nature, showing that the world (the structure of fundamental particle physics, specifically) is in fact much simpler if looked at in the right way. It is a powerful technique that does not just propose what the hidden patterns (symmetries) are, but tells you what the consequences of those patterns are in the form of predictions such that physicists can go out and measure those predictions and verify the existence of those symmetries. In some sense, this type of approach is the driving force behind a lot of fundamental particle physics these days – finding the hidden, simpler structure that lurks under the surface.
Here’s the announcement:
