Reminder of Uncertainty

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This is a reminder of today’s event here at the USC campus. I’ve no idea what is going to happen. Uncertain, I suppose I should say. That’s the fun of it…. we’ll just see what serendipity brings.

To kick off the events, I’m going to show that lovely clip from one of my favourite Coen brothers movies, “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, where the fancy lawyer from out of town, Freddie Riedenschneider, (played wonderfully by Tony Shalhoub) all of a sudden does this long speech about the Uncertainty Principle. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it…. – it is rather overstated by the end of the scene, but as a piece of drama, it is excellent. Have you seen it? If not, get it. It’s an excellent movie all around.

Anyway, for more information on the event, see earlier post here. See poster below (large pdf here). Come back here for more discussion, or just give your impressions of the event!

uncertainty at USC poster

-cvj

California Steps Forward, Again

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You’ve probably heard the news wherever on the planet you are. California’s legislature is commiting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels (so, by 25%) by the year 2020. I’ve got a class to prepare, and so can’t spend a huge amount of time writing a long cheerleader-type post about this, but I am so delighted. (Stories in the BBC, LA Times and New York Times, for example.)

This is so important for so many reasons. Besides the obvious one of us just getting on with the task of doing this sort of thing, there is the symbolism. This flies in the face of the Bush administration’s lack of leadership on the whole issue, and will help nullify that lack of leadership, since the other states will be able to look to California’s lead on this as a powerful example. The world takes notice too, since California is -as an economic force in its own right- the number 8 economy in the world. None of this will happen if the economics are not done correctly.

The point is that it can make economic sense (despite fears that possible resulting Click to continue reading this post →

When Stars Go Bang

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supernova CAS-A

This is the lovely composite Hubble space telescope picture that is going around, showing the debris of a supernova – a star’s explosion. This is Cassiopeia A, and the explosion happened in 1680 AD, our time. See HST’s website for more on this , and discussion on the Bad Astronomy Blog

In other supernova news, there’s a lot of news today (Wed) about a new supernova explosion, recorded this year (2006). This particular event is highly significant since astronomers were able to watch most of the entire event in real time. The thing that signalled that something was about to happen was a (relatively mild) gamma ray burst (GRB060218 – it was seen in Feb. 18th) picked up by the Swift telescope. After the burst (really it was an X-ray flash… a GRB’s younger sibling, as it were) faded, the star exploded -essentially on camera.

Quote from an AFP (via Yahoo News) article:

“Usually these events are not detected until after the supernova has brightened substantially in the optical wavelength, many days after the initial explosion,” said Keith Mason, chief executive of Britain’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), which operates an ultra-violet/optical telescope aboard Swift.

“But on this occasion we were able to study the remarkable event in all its glory, from the very beginning.”

Other articles at the BBC (with images of the event – an article is due to appear in Nature tomorrow), and Reuters (via Yahoo).

-cvj

Keeping the Flame Alive

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[Updated, see below.]

hubble space telescope image of Pluto and CharonYou’ll recall the news I reported about a number of members of the astronomy and planetary science community asking people to sign a petition to get the IAU to reconsider their Prague decision to accept the planetary definition that resulted in the “Pluto demotion”. See this link where you can find the precise language of their objection. (HST image of Pluto and Charon on right. Click for larger.) The short statement at the header of the petition itself is:

We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed.

Well, this is an update to let you know that they have gathered all the signatures that they wanted, from members of the scientific community. The petition is now closed. I don’t know if I’m allowed to point to the website where you can see the list of signatures (I hope someone will let me know), but I can report that there are 300 signatures (after a quick count), from a truly international group, from every continent, and from pretty much every astronomy department (or other institution) that I’ve heard of. [Update: I’ve got permission from Mark Sykes, one of the proposers of this petition, to make public the website. It is here, and has the list of signatories. There is now a press release there. If you’re a member of the press, I imagine it might form the basis for an interesting story.]

Also on the website is the following:

Click to continue reading this post →

Longing

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I don’t know about you but I melt each of the (very few these days) times I receive a real letter, by post, that contains… stuff we used to put in letters. Not the endless formal letters from business, nor the fake personal ones from businesses (like the amazing fancily embossed wedding invitation I got a while back that turned out to be from HBO… it was an ad for the new TV series on polygamy, “Big Love”… did anyone else get that? Must have cost them a huge amount…. I’ve been to a few fancy weddings, and that invitation was in fact comparable in quality to some of those…)

It is all so rare to get real personal mail the old fashioned way these days. So many things done by email. Hundreds of emails. Too many sometimes. Fast. Too fast sometimes. Or is it just me?

I love the look and feel of a nicely addressed (airmail especially) envelope, with firm, flowing writing by an actual human being… I really miss that. I loved getting this one so much, loved the look of the exterior so very much, that it took me a while to actually (carefully) tear it open to get at the contents.

the letter

In fact, at the beginning of this Summer in a fit of good intentions, I bought some airmail envelopes and a pad of writing paper, with lots of mutterings about starting to actually write real hand-written letters again. It has not happened yet. Sigh….

-cvj

Cute!

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Lovely yellow folding bike, spotted on campus outside my building. Soooo cuuuuuute!

cute folding bike

Two comments:

(1) I wish they’d raise the seat on this bike, give it a bit of self respect so that it does not look like a children’s toy. (Assuming it is not… I am not familiar with this model. [Update: It is a “Zport” folding bike.]) Granted, I guess that it could be a small person riding it…. but most bikes are so often mal-adjusted to suit the rider, so I’m betting the person is taller than it would appear.

(2) Love the yellow. Obnoxious on a Hummer… cute on minis, beetles, and folding bikes.

(3) Ok, three comments. Poor thing, left outside on its own. Sad thing to do to a folder. Very sad. Should always be picked up and taken inside.

On point (1), since people can’t get past the small wheel prejudice….. you can have a properly adjusted seat post, and -on well designed models like the Brompton and others- have enough spread to allow as comfortable ride as on any bike regardless of size…. actually, sometimes more comfortable.

Here they are (the bike and my B) in conversation, in their respective park modes:

two cute folding bikes

My student, Tameem, almost got an injury from laughing at this picture. I’ve no idea why. He said, over IM (which I’ve cut and paste here with permission):

it almost looks like a bike bully trying to get money from the smaller bike….

wow, my head hurts from laughing so hard….

My response was to be “So how’s that calculation coming?” But he might have thought I had a sense of humour failure….. and actually, it is sort of funny.

-cvj

Mama Never Said There’d Be Two Contiguous Days Like This

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So yesterday continued the stretch of unfortunate events. I decided to hide and work on the paper to make up for the lost time from the day before. Got a good start, and then after a couple of hours, the computer started its weird behaviour. Slow….. applications hanging up for a long time… etc. Then I realized that it was super hot, perhaps more than it ever has been before. Perhaps brought on by it being a really hot day. Then I realized that I can’t recall the last time I have heard the fan on the computer. In fact, I’m not sure I ever have. A check via IM with one of my students confirmed that it is really obvious when the fan is on with this computer. So I formulated a theory that somehow the computer is not able to cool itself down in these extreme conditions. The fan needs repairing, the system is overheating and it is producing problems. I put it to sleep and into the freezer for a little while. A few minutes later, nice and crisp and cool (like a KitKat straight out of the fridge -delicious!) I started it up again. Runs perfectly. Aha!

So I went like this for a couple of cycles… Computer overheats, I cool it down, I get another hour of work or so done. But I’ve begun to worry that I’m about to lose my hard drive. This is a particular horror for me, since I’ve not backed up this computer for a long, long time, because….. The LaCie d2 250gb external hard drive I bought for the purpose mysteriously started to remain in stealth mode, i.e., not allow itself to be recognised by any of my computers.

So I spent several hours in the afternoon trying to figure out how to resurrect the drive Click to continue reading this post →

From Dwarf Planets to Hobbit Galaxies

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dwarf galaxyI learned from an article in New Scientist by David Shiga that there have been recently found four more small satellite galaxies of our Milky Way galaxy.

The satellites are dwarf galaxies a few hundred to a few thousand light years across. The tiny galaxies are thought to be the building blocks of large galaxies, such as our own Milky Way – which is about 100,000 light years wide.

As you may know, we’ve known for some time that there have been such satellites (the number knwon has gone from 10 to 20 in the last two years, and some models expect as many as 50), but the small ones are very hard to detect. How do you distinguish them from other stars in the way? As part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the researchers have been looking for….

the particular types of stars expected to lie in dwarf galaxies, then detect the dwarfs as slight “overdensities” in these types of stars – patches of the sky where there are more of the stars than in surrounding areas.

The Cambridge team named them after the constellations in which they were found:

[…] Coma Berenices, Canes Venatici II, Hercules, and Leo IV, all of them lie between roughly 100,000 and 500,000 light years from Earth.

[…]The largest and smallest are Hercules and Coma Berenices, which are about 1000 and 200 light years across, respectively. Like most of the other dwarfs discovered by SDSS, the new finds are much smaller and fainter than the 10 dwarfs that were known previously, [Vasily] Belokurov [the team leader] says. “They should not really be called dwarfs – they are more like hobbits,” he told New Scientist.

Hobbits. Right. Does that make the Milky Way a Cave Troll? Or maybe a Numenorian? (Picture above is one of them. This one’s Farmer Maggot, I think. They’re not as Click to continue reading this post →

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This

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Oh Boy. So it started this morning with me making some plans to do things on the bike, starting with a visit to the Hollywood Farmer’s market to get some supplies (especially some more superstring beans, which are delicious!) and meet a friend. Idea would be then to -after excellent tamales for lunch from my favourite stand, of course- visit a couple other places, such as a bike store in West Hollywood to get some equipment for my friend’s bike, and then maybe over to the Sunset Junction street fair (you might remember my blogging about it last year), to par-tay. Then I’d go home and work.

Bad thing number 1:

  • Halfway to the middle of Hollywood on the way to the market: Catastrophic puncture. Flat tyre. Guess what? Puncture repair kit I carry around with me all the time is of course in my other bag, not the one I use for market. Sigh. So after wheeling the bike all the way to the market (I could have folded it up and taken it onto a bus or train, but I was halfway there and already late and did not want to wait for either), fun, shopping, and tamales were had, which was good. Could not do the other bike things, so I then wheeled bike to the subway, folded it and took it on a train to my ‘hood, then wheeled it home at other end, which all took a while. Actually, wheeling with shopping in its bag is a great way to get the shopping home and see what’s going on in the ‘hood, which I like to do from time to time, so not so bad.

    As this is only the second problem I’ve had with this bike in almost 18 months of cycling it around the city, I decided (yeah, I know!) to take a commemorative picture of the sad scene:

    flat brompton tyre

But by then I’d lost a lot of time and I’m supposed to be working on writing a paper today. So I decided to pass on the Sunset junction activities (I can hear them from my place a bit, and I encouraged some of my students to go, so I can sort of live vicariously -even though I know they won’t go) and work on the paper. I want to give a draft to some of those students for them to get up to speed on the idea, and once the week starts, I don’t expect to get much time to work on this sort of thing before next weekend.

So okay, no par-tay-ing this afternoon. But first I’d better get bike back to functionality for work tomorrow.

Bad thing number 2:

Click to continue reading this post →

Blue Asymmetry

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blue flowers
I’ve temporarily forgotten the name of this beautiful flower. I’ll let you know when I recall it. [Update: Athena worked it out and reminded me….Scaveola, or fan flower] Its blue is more dramatic than the camera has captured. It nods somewhat more to purple than is suggested here. It grows reasonably fast and close to the ground, and is drought tolerant, so I used them as a quick ground cover to repopulate a part of the garden. They’ve done very well since I planted them in the Spring.

blue flower closeupOne thing I love about them is the asymmetry of each individual flower. Look closely (click on left image) and you’ll see that there are five petals on each, but the five are on only half the flower. Very asymmetric on that scale, but on a slightly larger scale, symmetry is restored by arranging a five of these “half-flowers” around a central leaf cluster to make a sort of larger, symmetric super-flower.

Very elegant.

-cvj

A Glimmer of Hope for Pluto?

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So despite the announcement yesterday, reliable sources tell me that some members of the astronomy community are hoping that there is still maybe a small window of opportunity for Pluto.

Some members of the community are preparing a petition which protests the IAU planet definition! They don’t agree with the decision, and point out that a rather small percentage of the astronomical community actually voted at the Prague IAU. They give the following additional reasons for their questioning of the decision:

They say that the community voted….

… for a definition of ‘planet’ that uses dynamics (location) rather than intrinsic properties to decide if an object is or is not a planet. This result is counter to other classification schemes in astronomy (e.g., stars, galaxies, nebulae, even asteroids) in which dynamical context does not play a controlling role. Furthermore, it produces results that are incongruous and cannot be extended within our own solar system or to extra-solar planetary systems without producing immediate results that are patently absurd: e.g., a Neptune-sized object discovered beyond 150 AU could not be a planet, the presence of an Earth orbiting its star between a Jupiter and a Saturn would mean the Earth could not be considered a planet since it could not clear its “neighborhood”. This definition also excludes Pluto from planethood in our solar system, something that is both scientifically questionable and publicly problematic. Both Pluto and a distant Neptune would be classified as a “dwarf planet”, which is not to be considered a subcategory of “planet”.

The petition is to be among the community only, so I will not give you details about how to sign it. Also, I don’t know if I have permission to reveal the names of the people who put forward the petition, so I will not do that, at least until I know more.

This is rather unexpected and quite interesting, I hope you agree.

-cvj

Spinach Blogging

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I learned a new term from a producer at a television studio the other day (in a context I do not know if I’m allowed to blog about yet): “Spinach TV”. I love it. This is a term expressing the idea of television programming that is supposed to be “good for you” since it is educational in some way. Some of us are doing this sort of thing in the blogging world, for better or worse. See my about page.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer some words about this week’s science coverage of the two big Astronomy/Astrophysics stories. I’ve heard the issue raised a number of times today (including by my colleague Sean over on CV) that it is somehow to be thought of as a bad thing that there’s more coverage in the press of the Pluto demotion than there is of the new results giving new direct evidence of Dark Matter. The former is supposed to be all about the politics of science while the latter is supposed to be covered more since it is a profound new result.

With all due respect to my friends and colleagues who have expressed that opinion, I would say that such a view is somewhat short-sighted and has more than a whiff of elitism about it. They’re just missing the big picture. I completely agree that the Dark Matter result is vastly more important new science than the simple fact of Pluto’s demotion, but from the perspective of science education, the value of the Pluto coverage is immensely important, and maybe at least as important as the Dark Matter coverage. I can think of several reasons, and here are some:

Click to continue reading this post →

Bleep Bleep Yet Again

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If, like I am, you’re tired of people getting ensnared by the nonsense in the “What the Bleep…” movie, and asking you to explain it….(I scared myself just now by looking at the technorati tags for and …yikes)… please please help out Jennifer Saylor, a blogger who is a freelance writer with a passion for science. She wrote a post about the movie recently, which you can read here. She let me (and my colleagues over on CV) know about it, and -more importantly- let us know that she’d like to do something more than just blog about it expressing her annoyance. Let me reproduce some of her email:

Click to continue reading this post →