Nuts and Bolts

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notebook workingYes, part of my job is to sit and think about how the universe works. People hear this, and they wonder exactly what that entails. Well, it entails a lot of things – sometimes there’s the grand thoughts and the thought experiments and the like that you hear of from documentaries and books about Einstein and other famous scientists – but more often that not it is grungy nuts and bolts.

Take yesterday for example. After a week of working on various calculations and chipping away at improving my understanding of how to approach a certain problem, I decided to take Saturday and be outdoors a bit more…see what it was like outside. You know…. Have an actual Saturday Saturday. (I did not end up being booked to do that TV shoot, by the way, so I had a nice clear day ahead of me.)

What actually transpired was this:

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Sundogs

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Yvette (one of our regulars here) let me know about a photograph that she took of a sundog the other day. It appeared on the Spaceweather website (you’ll need to set the calendar there to June 14th to see it in context), and since there may be a few of you (like me) who wonder what a sundog (or sun dog) is, here it is:

sundog by yvette cendes

Yvette also put it up on her blog (which is an interesting and nicely illustrated read, by the way) together with a picture of the broader view showing the nearby sun.

My confession today is that I had no idea that is what those optical phenomena were called! No, really. You’ll also find them called parhelia (the plural; singular “parhelion”)…. they are always near the sun, you see. (Less common are the images that form somewhat further away from the sun (a “paranthelion”), or quite a bit further away (an “anthelion”). These are not, as I understand, properly referred to as sundogs.). I always used to wonder about them (and their cousins, the halos you sometimes see around the sun) when I was a child, but never talked to anyone about them back then (I kept a lot of wondering to myself) and the urge to find out what they were called was never strong enough I suppose. I think I’d satisfied myself that they were caused by refraction in the atmosphere, but again, I’ll admit that I’d never really gone and verified this anywhere. (Same for the effects around the moon you can sometimes see.) So I never learned of the significance of 22o, which is the angle the light from the sun bends through when it passes through the hexagonal ice crystals floating in concert in the upper atmosphere. (The other, further away ones are formed at larger angles.) It was when Yvette said sundog that I went a-Googling (as one does) Click to continue reading this post →

Name That Particle!

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As a followup to the post on Roz Chast’s Symmetry magazine cartoons, I get to tell you* about a fun competition! The prize? A Roz Chast autographed copy of the May edition of Symmetry magazine (yes, that’s the one she did the cover for) and an appearance in a later edition of the magazine!

You can find the entry details at Symmetry magazine here, and I quote:

roz chast on physicsFlerbs? Marteenies?? Tom, Dick, and Harry???

Cartoonist Roz Chast has busted the field of particle physics wide open with her pioneering cover for this issue of symmetry. We say it’s about time: Why limit ourselves to the same old list of particles that have actually been discovered, or at least properly theorized? So here’s the challenge: Invent an elementary particle and tell us what it does in 30 words or fewer. A drawing would be nice, but not mandatory. […]

So go ahead and send in your entries! If you like, come back here and tell us about Click to continue reading this post →

Roz Chast On Physics

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I learned from Often in Error that Roz Chast, whose work some of you may know from the New Yorker, had some physics-themed cartoons in the May edition of Symmetry Magazine (one of them the cover). Here they are (click for larger, then perhaps click again to zoom):

  roz chast on physics   roz chast on physics

I like the one on the left, I have to say. (A pseudoparticle called “poserino” is just Click to continue reading this post →

Reality Calls

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american inventor logoIn a bizarre twist, after a satisfying day of calculating I switched on the television, accidentally pressed a wrong number, and ended up on ABC just as a program called “American Inventor” was starting. I’m not really up on all these “reality” format shows, so I’ve no idea how long this has been in existence, but I must say that it was good to see a program in this format that was primarily about using one’s brain, inventiveness and engineering/construction skills! The format is a bit too gimmicky for my tastes (I’m not partial to all the fake drama and overwrought background music), but that’s probably because I don’t watch much of this sort of thing, so I probably won’t be a regular viewer. But again I must say it was good to see that such a show exists. Perhaps there are more that I don’t know about. It seems that I just saw the phase where they filter out all the silly ones (and goodness were some silly!) and pick the finalists from each city who get $50,000 worth of development money. They did LA and SF in this show, and apparently they’ll be doing the North East next. Questions you might be able to help me with: Do all these shows have a British judge on the panel to play a sort of mean guy? Is it a sort of requirement? The one other such show I’ve seen, American Idol, has that, and like a good theorist I am extrapolating wildly from two data points.

logo for design squadSeeing a reality show based on some intellectual skill actually reminds me. Even though I got a reminder from some of the people behind the show, I’m embarrassed to say that I completely forgot to tell you about the show on PBS for youngsters aged 9 – 12 called “Design Squad”. From the “about” part of their site:

Borrowing from the hugely popular reality competition format, DESIGN SQUAD is aimed at kids and people of all ages who like reality or how-to television. Its goal is to get viewers excited about engineering!

Over 13 episodes, eight high school contestants tackle engineering challenges for an actual client—from building a machine that makes pancakes to a “summer sled” for LL Bean. In the final episode, the top two scorers battle for the Grand Prize—a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel® Foundation.

I think it has now concluded, but you can watch all 13 episodes online here. Did anyone see it? (I did not.) What did you think? You can get more involved with Design Squad by following up on this part of their website.

Design Squad was co-sponsored by the IEEE, which is excellent to see. So will the American Physical Society (and other science societies) be doing something similar, one wonders? It’s a potentially good way of getting people interested in participating in science – on prime time television. We could, for example, have members of the Click to continue reading this post →

New Toy Tool!

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Trying to calculate all day long. Lunch break. During this moment of procrastination, I thought I’d tell you about the product of yesterday’s procrastination. At some point in the morning I decided that I was not thinking straight about aspects of my computation (like what it all means), and that this could be helped by having a bigger space to work on that I have at home right now.

I don’t know about others, but sometimes in addition to the need to change venues during research thoughts, I also need to change the medium I’m writing on. So at lunch I went shopping and after visiting far too many stores (art supply for one part, office supply for another) to get the right things, look what I got (see left picture)!

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Otherworldly Top Ten!

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extra solar planet GlieseAfter reading an article about how the “trickle of planet discoveries” as become a “flood” -referring to the many discoveries of extrasolar planets that are being announced these days, since they first started being discovered in 1995 1988/9 (there are more than 200 known now)- I looked at space.com’s “top ten most intriguing extrasolar planets”.
[Update: First detection of extrasolar planets is probably more accurately to be dated 1988/9. The first confirmed one was in 1995, but the planet Gamma_Cephei_Ab, detected in 1988(9) by two separate teams, took until 2002 to be confirmed. See e.g. here for more. Thanks commenter molliska!]

Have a look at that interesting article about the pace of discovery, and then when you’re done, peruse the top ten here. You’ll find:

  • 10: 51 Pegasi b, the first confirmed (see above update) one found, 1995;
  • 9: Epsilon Eridani b, the closest known one (only 10.5 light years away);
  • 8: the class of planemos, the extrasolar planets which are not orbiting any stars;
  • 7: SWEEPS-10, a “zippy” planet, that orbits its star every 10 hours as opposed to our sluggish 365.25 days;
  • 6: Upsilon Andromeda b, a planet which is tidally locked to its star so that it presents only one face to it all the time. So one side is always super hot, while the other is very cold;
  • 5: The youngest one known (it’s been in existence a bit less than a million years), orbiting the star Coku Tau 4;
  • 4: PSR B1620-26c, the oldest one known (12.7 billion years…wow!);
  • 3: The “shrinking one”, HD209458b, that orbits so close to its star that it’s Click to continue reading this post →

Amusement With Physics

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I learned from an NPR report today on Day to Day (by Robin Sussingham) that around the country there’s a nice combination of physics and fun going on in various amusement parks! You can hear the story here. From the website:

roller coasterPhysics students in Utah recently attended an event where they learned about concepts like acceleration, velocity, magnetism, and centripetal force.

But this was no boring science fair: It was Physics Day at the Lagoon Amusement Park, north of Salt Lake City. The kids tested theories by riding roller coasters and dropping raw eggs from the towering Sky Coaster ride.

One Utah high school that takes part in “amusement park physics” reports that it now needs three full-time physics teachers to meet growing student interest.

(“Boring science fair”. The cheek. Science fairs can be fun! Anyway, moving on…) It’s an interesting report. It’s been going on for some time, and this event is organized by the Utah State University Physics Department. I also found a report in the Deseret Morning News by Tammy Walquist, which was quite informative. (Photo above by Laura Seitz, of Jessica Rocha (left) and Shelese Sheffield, Kaysville Junior High eighth-graders, is from the article.) An extract:
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Amara Graps: What happened to Bush’s Cadillac One?

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amara grapsNow for something a little different…

I’ve been trying for some time to get one of Asymptotia’s regulars, Amara Graps, (click on image to the right for larger view) to give us a guest post. She sent me one by email, somewhat unexpectedly, a couple of hours ago, and I must say I did not anticipate the topic!

So here we have it… Amara telling us a bit about certain recent events in Rome. Enjoy!

-cvj

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What happened to Bush’s Cadillac One?

As recorded by a viewer of the motorcade and posted to YouTube [jump to 3:15 point to get to the main event]:

It apparently sputtered to a stop. It broke down, right there, on via del Tritone (near the Trevi fountain) in Rome, in the middle of the motorcade. He was ripe picking for a sharp shooter too; no wonder the police were pushing people further back, off of the street. It looks like the solution was to switch limos, because he got out of the limo with Mrs. Bush and climbed into another one.

This is a very special car. If it is a mechanical failure, then the manufacturers have a lot of explaining to do. His visit to Rome had been preceded by a large security operation (perhaps inconsistently). The Tiber was dragged. The sewers were searched. Squares were cleared and roofs occupied. The presidential motorcade Click to continue reading this post →

Entertaining Saturday

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Eight o’clock on Saturday morning. I’ve been up since before six (I don’t know why) and somehow I’m still late. The car wakes up easily, eager to go for a run. It seems to have extra enthusiasm, as though it knows that somehow I’m going to tear all the way across the city and back as quickly as I can, an adventure it is always willing to participate in. I’ve got a guest coming over for lunch at eleven and I think I’ll assemble a nice meal from scratch. I’ve made my mind up to go for ingredients to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market instead of the more local, smaller one in Silver Lake. Although I’m more of a fan of shopping locally, my usual market run is on Sunday, in Hollywood, and the Silver Lake one does not have most of the vendors that I know well from the other two markets, and I want to take no chances with my menu today. So, the highway for me this time.

The plan is to wander the market in head chef mode, looking for which items look good, choosing some of them and planning something simple and tasty around them. At the back of my mind is a salad, and maybe asparagus or artichoke as a central feature. I’m open to ideas, however, but the watchwords are fresh and simple. But I’ve got to get there, find the ingredients, and get back and make it all before eleven.

farmer's market and saturday lunch menuI break some kind of record for getting over to Santa Monica. Road was pretty open, and while I’m not saying whether I violated any speed limits, you can be pretty sure I hurt their feelings a bit. The market is still pretty empty and I can wander through at a good pace with my basket and check out the whole scene, retracing my steps on a second pass in reverse, this time buying things as I go. Three different kinds of tiny potatoes to form the base of a salad (after roasting them) along with two colours of carrot from the same people. For dessert I pick up three types of delicious berries -blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries- making a mental note to get some whipping cream (for hand-whipping later) as a topping.

farmer's market and saturday lunch menu

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Yellow Pear Tomatoes

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Tasty yellow pear tomatoes (click for larger):

tasty yellow tomatoes

They have been showing up all of a sudden (it seems) on this plant from last year. I’d read that this is quite a hardy plant and it certainly is, lasting through from last season, through the cold snap, and now coming back more strong than last year. Apparently, it is quite an old variety, going back to at least the 1750s.

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TASI@Home

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This year’s month-long Theoretical Advanced Study Institute -TASI- looks especially good, from my point of view, with a great combination of topics and lecturers. As usual, it is held in Boulder, Colorado. It’s all about current ideas and experiments and observations in particle physics and cosmology. Three USC students are there and I’ve heard from them that things have been great so far.

raphael bousso at TASIWell, the great news is that the TASI people are making the lectures available online a fairly short time after their delivery. The link is here. So even though not there, you can schedule some time to take these lecture courses if you like. I glanced for a while at Raphael Bousso’s first lecture in the series “Cosmology and the Landscape”, and it was clear and very well presented. (This is not entirely surprising – Raph is always an excellent lecturer.)

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Hunting the Higgs is not a (D)Zero Sum Game

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D0 data shotWriting in Slate magazine, James Owen Weatherall seems a little confused about how particle physics works. Based on a rumour that there’s a new and significant signal seen at the DZero detector at the Tevatron at Fermilab (Illinois), one of the article’s titles is “Why the rumored discovery of the Higgs Boson is bad news for particle physics”. Supposedly, the big new machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC – see more about it here, and what physicists are hoping for from it), about to switch on later this year, would have nothing to do, and would be a waste of billions of dollars. You can read about the original rumour here. (Above right: A random collision event I grabbed from the DZero experiment.)

Well, this is wrong for so many reasons. It is hard to know where to start with this. The major fallacy with the whole thing is that these machines are just somehow discovery devices (in the most naive sense) of some sort. You build it, switch it on, see what’s there, write the paper and the press release (not necessarily in that order) and then you’re done. Completely neglected is the notion of such an experiment as a device for Click to continue reading this post →