Look Up!

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Comet McNaught seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. Last night here in Los Angeles, just after the sun set, I stepped out to look from a nearby elevated spot – and there it was. With binoculars, it’s an impressive sight, and possibly the last naked-eye visible comet sighting for a long time. Unfortunately, I have no equipment that I can use to take a decent photo for you, so I can’t share what I saw. (Some pictures from around the world are here.)

But you can go out and look. I give some viewing tips below. [See update at end, however.]

What you’re probably puzzled about now is why the experts kept getting the “last chance to see” message wrong. People seemed very sure back on Wednesday that it would be gone from view -and I did a post to that effect myself- and and the same thing was said on Thursday and then on Friday.

I’m guessing that this is because although they can track the position rather well, they Click to continue reading this post →

Conference in Progress

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Well, I checked in on the Women in Physics conference today, and it seems to be going very well. I went to lunch and sat with a number of the students (and some faculty) and I also chatted to some in private about their interests, current stages in their careers, etc. It’s always so wonderful to hear people so enthusiastic about physics, and listen to them wondering what their part in the great story of science will be.

Here are a couple of shots of the delegates at lunch – it is a sort of panorama (click each component for larger view):

  women in physics conference   women in physics conference

I’m off to paint the town red, so I’ll post a bit more about this either later tonight or Click to continue reading this post →

Just Go

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From time to time I manage to make it to a movie theatre and sit down to watch a film that I have heard nothing about (which is really hard to do these days), and then am treated to the pleasure – if the film is at least half-decent – of having a film open before me like a box of delights, letting me discover all the things it contains completely as the film-makers intended: right in the moment. When a film is half-decent, novel, or merely pretty good, it can be made into a very enjoyable film-going experience by doing thisa. When a film is very good, or extremely good, this business of having seen it cold can really make it a truly wonderful experience, reminding me of when I went to see movies for the first few times as a youngster. Remember those times?

It’s not easy to pull this off these days with so much (too much!!) information out there about the content and story and back story of a film everywhere in the media, well before you see it. For particular films I want to see, I try to ignore as much as I can by not reading reviews, not listening to stuff that comes on the radio, or tv. But sometimes, it all sneaks through because often you don’t know in advance whether you want to see that film. You might not have even heard of it, and then it is spoiled a bit by too much detail. It has to be said that even a film tht

Anyway, I’ve had that lovely see-the-film-cold experience happen with a small number of films in recent times, and it happened last night. I was set to see another film, but my brother (who showed up in town to stay overnight unexpectedly) arrived Click to continue reading this post →

De-Lurking Week!

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delurk buttonApparently it is De-Lurking week everywhere in the blog world. This means that even if (especially if) you have not commented on the blog before, this is the time where you come in and say hello, before (if you prefer) returning back to lurker status for a while. You can do it as “anon” or under another assumed name if you wish to. I know – you’re shy, you don’t think that anyone cares, or that you have anything to say at all… No. We (that is, the community of regulars and me, your host) care, and what you say will be interesting!

You can just say hello, or tell us how you found the blog, how you find the blog (if you see what I mean), tell us something about yourself, or not, or just make a little noise! Or pick a topic that you prefer.

(And of course, even if you’ve commented before -rarely or frequently- we’ll be happy to hear from you too!)

-cvj

(*Via Uncertain Principles and Adventures in Ethics and Science.)

Site Map of Asymptotia

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For your viewing pleasure, I’ve installed a new feature of the blog that allows you to see all the post titles under each category in a set of pages called site map. It will always be available to the right, near the top of the sidebar. It is an alternative to the archives page that might be useful when searching the blog’s content in a particular way.

I’ll be cleaning up some of the categories a bit over the next few days. Right now, it is admittedly a bit messy here and there.

Enjoy!

-cvj

Last Chance For Some To See McNaught

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comet mcnaughtSo the new comet, McNaught, is now very much a naked-eye visible object. Apparently it is the brightest comet in the last 30 years or so. I learned* that (for those in the Northern Hemisphere) Wednesday evening might well be the last chance to see it before it becomes a Southern Hemisphere object. [Update: It seems that it’s still been visible these last few days. Maybe it will be tonight (Saturday).] [Update: See later post here.]

So take a peek outside if you can. It might be a chance in a lifetime!

Have a look at this SkyTonight page for finding instructions. Come back and let us know if you saw it! (If you get a picture, share it with us too! I can post it here for you. The one above, by Gary W. Kronk, is at the gallery at SkyTonight.)

-cvj

*Thanks Amara Graps, and Nick Warner.

iLike iPhone

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My lovely Sony-Ericsson T616 phone is just marvellous. I can use it all over the planet (more or less), it talks to all my other devices using Bluetooth so that I can sync calender and other data seamlessly. But it is old and falling apart. My ipod is a bit frustrating because I got one of the bad battery batch from long ago, and never got around to getting the replacement battery from the class-action suit. So it runs out of charge really fast.

But I’m not one for rushing to the new gadget until something really moves me, and so I’ve managed this situation quite well for some time now. Well, this could be the device I’ve been waiting for – Just announced by Apple at the CES in Las Vegas MacWorld in San Francisco:
Click to continue reading this post →

Andromeda Now Makes Sense

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andromeda IRThe Andromeda Galaxy is bigger than previously thought. Perhaps as much as five times bigger. I know that you’re thinking – “Oh, that’s because most of it is dark matter, right?” No, this is not another dark matter story. In fact, there are many newly discovered stars from a recent study! The suburbs of the galaxy are much more extensive than previously identified. It’s rather good news, since the galaxy makes more sense than it did before, in the context of our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. (Image above is of Andromeda in the infra-red, from NASA.)

The point here is that current theories of evolution for galaxies have the oldest stars Click to continue reading this post →

All Hands on Deck

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all hands on deck Well, it’s the middle of the Bleak Midwinter, and the first day of classes of the new semester. Mine start tomorrow. It is time to get myself back into the classroom-teaching frame of mind -although to be honest I don’t think the break was long enough for me to have got sufficiently far removed from it: 85% of the research tasks that I wanted to do during the break remain undone.

Anyway, I must sit and contemplate what I am going to talk about in the graduate course entitled “Selected Topics in Particle Physics”. It’s my lunch break, so I thought I’d chat to you for a bit.

Rumour has it that everyone is expecting some sort of string theory course, reasonably complementary to the one that my colleague Nick Warner taught here two years ago. I’ve no interest in just teaching the standard string theory topics – a good and motivated graduate student can just look them up in a book if motivated enough (if they can’t they’re in the wrong business) – and so I’d like to throw in some material that is not packaged together in the standard way, and give them an education that emphasizes powerful ideas and techniques that are relevant to more than just standard string theory research, but theoretical physics in general.

You see, this is one of the wonderful things about the topic that you don’t hear about much when people say things (and write books for a general audience) about how much it is supposedly taking over smart young minds and leading them astray: It is a fantastic framework for training good physicists for whatever new and useful ideas and physics will come along in the future, whether it is string theory or some other topic. The point is that string theory has developed in so many different ways, and Click to continue reading this post →

Budgetary Blues

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AAAS budget graphic for New York Times Yesterday there appeared a New York Times article by William J. Broad about the effects of the congressional budget delays on funding for scientific research. It’s not cheerful reading, but it is worth knowing about, especially since the forecast is not set to dramatically improve any time soon.

The article is here.

There’s not much to say here, since the comments I could make are obvious.

On the right is a look at the AAAS graphic that was used (click for larger) in the article. It does summarize things a bit, but you should of course learn about the details in the article.

-cvj

(Via Dynamics of Cats)

Dark Matter in 3D

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Have a look at this:

hubble 3d dark matter

What is it? It is an image of part of the three dimensional (see below) distribution of clumps of dark matter in our universe, produced by an extensive survey using the Hubble telescope. How did they produce it, given that dark matter is -by definition- not visible? They deduced the presence of the chunks of dark matter by looking at the Click to continue reading this post →

Potential

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Recall that a little over a month ago I reported about the Tesla electric car to you? In that article, I congratulated the car makers on their choice of name, and speculated about what other names might be used in the future when more car manufacturers get into the game. One of my favourites was the “Volt”. Well, today, GM announced a new electric car in development, and guess what they called it? The Volt! I was rather prescient, it seems! More on the announcement of the Chevy Volt at Newsweek (I borrowed the picture from there) and the San Jose Mercury News

chevy volt

What will the Volt do? It is a hybrid, but the driving mechanism is purely electric. This is different from what other well-known hybrids do”:
Click to continue reading this post →

The New Plastic Revolution

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electronic paperThe writing’s on the wall. Well, it really will be, and in several other places. The revolution’s very nearly here, you see. We’re on the cusp of it. It’s been talked about before, but it’s really here. Within a year or few we’ll be carrying around completely new devices based on this technology, and there’ll be all sorts of things in the household and office. You may have heard the buzz, but if not, I’ll say it here too. It’s all about microscopic electronic circuitry based on polymers that conduct electricity. The novelty here is the plastic nature of the resulting circuitry and devices that you can build, where I am using the word “plastic” in its descriptive sense – it is flexible and can take lots of shapes quite readily.

There’s a revolution on the cusp, not because this is hugely new (it is not, and the Click to continue reading this post →