Wet Moon

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Aha! So you were thinking the mission last month was a bit of a failure, right? Because there was no big splash (literally) of a plume for the press to gush about? I’m talking about the October LCROSS mission on October 9th that smashed an impactor onto the moon’s surface (at the Cabeus crater) to create a cloud of dust for analysis. I remember people thinking, encouraged by various reports, that the event was rather a damp squib, since it did not produce a Hollywood-style flash and plume. See an NPR report on the mission here from back then.

lcross_dataWell, science is known for being able to carry on steadily even if there are no overt special effects and a catchy soundtrack. Today, NASA announced that their analysis of the data produced from measuring the dust cloud’s properties has shown very definite signs of water (confirming and strengthening the results accumulated by other missions (India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Deep Impact and Cassini probes) that I Click to continue reading this post →

Help from the Bugs

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On NPR’s Morning Edition the other day there was an interesting piece by Nell Greenfieldboyce about a lovely piece of research on the effects of various cultures of microbial organisms in our stomachs on how we extract nutrients from food. The key point is that what lives in our stomachs and how it interacts with what we eat is a key consideration in worrying about issues like nutrition, obesity, and other issues. I recommend listening to the audio of the piece, which you can find (along with a transcript if you prefer) here. (Actually, while searching for the audio for the story I found a related story by Robert Krulwich from almost exactly a year earlier. You can listen to that here.)

-cvj

The Universe: Cool Cars, Hot Sand, and Fast Balls

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flows in death valleyYou may recall my mentioning a desert trip to shoot something for TV, some time back. One done at precisely the wrong time of year. And to Death Valley, one of the hottest places on earth, to boot. Well, I meant to mention that the episode of the History Channel’s The Universe that the shoot was for aired a week or two ago and it was really excellent. It was entitled “Liquid Universe” and it was a rather beautiful and thoroughly pleasant episode exploring the role of liquids in our universe, a matter not often raised in questions of astronomy except when it comes to matters of water from time to time. This was not about water per se, but rather the whole matter of material that flows and the role it plays in diverse areas of the solar system and perhaps the universe at large. I was using sand to demonstrate how sometimes there are surprising places where you can find fluid/liquid behaviour, and mentioned some of the new phases of matter found in the context, for example, of quarks and gluons at RHIC. (I’ve spoken about that here a number of times in the context of some of my research. See the archives.)

It was an excellent episode and another example of how one can take a topic under the “The Universe” heading and showcase lots of exciting science quite accessibly Click to continue reading this post →

Gloomy Sunday

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vancouver_boatsDespite the title, which is also the title of an utterly depressing but wonderful song that I love, which starts out: “Sunday is gloomy/my hours are slumberless/dearest the shadows/I live with are numberless/…” and wallows in further and darker gloom for the rest of the song until near the end, I mean gloomy here in a neutral way.

It applies not to my mood but to the skies over Vancouver on the Saturday and Sunday set aside for wandering and exploring. I actually found a lot of it quite refreshing (recall that we’ve not had much rain in LA all year) and managed to see several beautiful scenes made all the more lovely for the shades of grey provided by the rain and clouds. The scene with the boats above left is an example. Overall I had a great time exploring, and was shown some nice parts of the city by my hosts, Moshe Rozali and his family (thanks guys!).

The trip was a success, in that I had a lot of great conversations with various people about physics research matters, and also in terms of the main point of the trip which Click to continue reading this post →

Slaughter at the Podium

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debate_on_catholic_church1I simply insist that you take the time out to watch this video*. It is of a debate that took place on BBC television, the motion being “Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?”. It was between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry on one side (against) and Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan on the other (for). Dogma vs Reason, when it comes down to it. Now, it is one thing for the side that is in favour of the motion to be a bit lame compared to the duo they are up against, but it is really unfortunate that Anne Widdecombe was put up as the defender of the church as she has been so utterly arrogant and unpleasant in every appearance I have ever heard or seen her in, Click to continue reading this post →

Time Bandit

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dining_at_vijs_3Well, that was not altogether terrible, I gather, but I was so tired and a little bit out of sorts* when I started giving the talk that I was running very slowly. So by time I got to the end (even though I hit my right pace later on) I was some 15 minutes over. Ugh. People seemed to like it, but I definitely need to whittle out a few of the more superfluous slides (which I’d always intended to) and strike the intended pace I wanted to hit earlier than 3/4 of the way through the talk. My reward (besides some nice remarks at the end of the talk that sort of made my day) was a visit to another excellent restaurant for dinner, with some good company. The extraordinarily good Vij’s. The hour’s wait for the food was perfectly fine given the nibbles they bring you while you wait, and the food itself once you get it. Here’s a shot or two of some of the excellent food just after its arrival, and the empty dishes and satisfied hosts just after polishing it all off: Click to continue reading this post →

Remote Office

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I’m in remote office mode again. I’ve to give two colloquia while visiting two physics departments in Vancouver area over the next two days. (Subject matter will be essentially the same as the one I gave a month ago.) So tonight, I’m eating dinner at the splendid restaurant Banana Leaf not far from my hotel while reviewing the slides of my presentations on my pda (my iTouch dining_at_banana_leaf– I dump lots of files I want to read on it using an application called filemagnet. Very useful. See here. In this case I’m looking at the pdf output from the keynote presentation software I use. ) I’m making a few notes on changes I’ll make when I get back to my hotel. I’m also reviewing a few other documents that were sent to me for response, and tying off various loose ends here and there before the evening ends.

I sometimes worry that it might be considered rude that I’m apparently doing a bit of work and so not fully paying attention to the food, but I’m not too worried, really. Once the actual food arrives I’ve been quite appreciative of it, giving it my full Click to continue reading this post →

Brian Cox on Colbert

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brian_cox_colbertPhysicist Brian Cox had a bit of fun on Colbert a few nights back*. At Stephen Colbert’s prompting he mentions the nonsense about time travel and the Higgs boson, (which I decided not to blog since it was so frustratingly idiotic and had no business in, for example the science section of a national newspaper not the least because it just serves to confuse readers with even more nonsense about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) than they already have been) and then has a blast (it seems) discussing the importance of Special Relativity, [tex]E=mc^2[/tex], and why you should care, which is the subject of his new book with Jeff Forshaw.

Unfortunately he seems, at one point, to fall into the usual (high-horsed physicist) pattern of dismissing another legitimate science endeavour (food science in this case) as not science, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was just a joke made in the heat of the moment. He’s too smart and likeable a guy, (and a very good public spokesperson for science education by all accounts and past appearances), to be quite so dismissive. Riffing fast and furious with Colbert will no doubt sometimes produce such slips.

By the way (and Brian does not get this wrong, but does not get the chance to say it, and I’m sure he knows it) people often get left with the impression from press releases about the LHC (see related posts below for lots of LHC background) and other Click to continue reading this post →

Halloween Decisions

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So, the West Hollywood Hallowe’en Carnaval is tomorrow! I went last year and had a great time, as you may recall from my post back then. It is rare to get an event here in LA where a truly large number of people turn out in significant numbers, and where at the same time they really make the effort to get fully involved with each other, with genuine connections between people – a real spirit of street revelry abounding. The stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard between La Cienega and Doheny ends actually fills up with people so much that at points it is like being on fifth avenue in Manhattan on Christmas Eve. How often do you get crowd density like that in LA?! The vast majority of people really made an effort to wear costumes of various sorts, some of them extremely creative, and there’s lots of random chatter between people on the streets about each other’s costumes and so forth. Quite excellent, overall.

fangtasticAnyway, I think I shall go again this year, with a few friends, and I’ll do a little costuming, I think. But to what extent? Many years ago I came to accept that Halloween stopped being only about dressing in scary costumes, and just became about fancy dress in general, so it gives me more scope, I suppose. I’ve been wondering if I should do something science themed, or perhaps a superhero of some sort. Following the tradition of reflecting a movie from the year, I’ve the absolutely perfect choice that combines the two, but I don’t think that even in Click to continue reading this post →

Looking Forward…

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new_books…to lots of happy reading soon! My new crop of shopping (click for larger view) includes three Octavia Butler novels, two Murakami novels (I think I’ve talked about both authors here before) and a science book by Garfinkle and Garfinkle (I’ve spoken about this excellent book here before) that is a gift for a friend. I actually tend to cluster authors from time to time, meaning that I read something of theirs and then consume several more of their pieces of work immediately after. I did that with Murakami a while back and it is time to come back to him and read some more. Then it’ll be a Butler cluster.

Now… just need to read them. I can’t wait…. but I must finish the astonishingly good Click to continue reading this post →

Blue Skies…

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I always like an excuse to look for blue skies, and to have others look too, even in the worst of times. I had a great reason to do it today.

Early this morning before sunrise I settled down to write my ten o’clock lecture for my Electricity and Magnetism class. On Tuesday I had ended with a computation that is the essence of the reason the sky is blue, which is a nice enough thing to talk about, but today I wanted to go more in depth on the whole thing, and show that you can in a few steps show that the blueness has a particular pattern to it. I wrote out the final equations in a few steps and looked at them for a moment or two and realized that with the sun rising at that very moment, it was the perfect situation to have! So I went outside to enjoy the beautiful Autumn day and the beauty there is in seeing an equation writ large in the sky – and it really was all there.

It is particularly at times like this that one remembers why it is that it is hard not to just love Physics! (I hope you’ll forgive my unashamed love of what I do.)

Here is the sky I saw, looking toward sunrise, and directly in the opposite direction:

sunrise_scattering_1 sunrise_scattering_2

Oh, you’re wondering what I am talking about..? Why is the sky blue? What pattern in the sky? Thanks for asking! There are two things I’m looking at. First, light from the Click to continue reading this post →

Ask a Nobel Laureate

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mather_youtubeHere’s a fun thing to get involved with. You can ask John Mather (2006 Physics Nobel Prize) a question on YouTube! Go and submit yours!

What might you ask him? Something about physics, or something else? Religion, art, politics? His favourite colour? If you consider asking a question, and whether you go ahead and ask it or not, feel free to mention in the comments what you might ask.

This is how to proceed (from NASA education)*:

Click to continue reading this post →