Panta Rhei

CERN Trip

2009-06-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

I'm heading to Geneva this weekend, and I will try to bring some pictures and stories back with me.

Erdos Number

2009-06-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was talking with some mathematicians the other day about the Erdos Number, and about its namesake, Paul Erdos.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to hand out with mathematicians of your own and pick up stories of their mathematical lore, I will fill you in. Erdos was a Hungarian mathematician (1913 - 1996, Wikipedia), famous for the tremendous number of papers he collaborated on with colleagues.

The concept of the Erdos number is simpole: how many collaborators is someone away from someone who collaborated with Erdos. It's like calculating degrees from Kevin Bacon, only replace movies with academic papers, and actors with mathematicians.

What I didn't know was how interesting of a chracter Erdos was. He spent a large part of his career living out of a suitcase, travelling from university city to university city, staying with colleagues whereever he went. He would arrive at the doorstep of a colleague, announce 'My brain is open', and then get to work.

One thing to note is that Erdos wished to treat mathematics, a field that is often seen as being full of awkward and solitary characters, as a social process. Though there may be times when an individual produces some extraordinary work, most progress in mathetmatics, as in physics and other sciences, comes from discussing and arguing over ideas with others. And isn't that most of the fun of it anyway?

PhotoBlog

2009-05-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with the layout a little bit, and will probably continue to do so until I settle on something.

I think I've decided to add a bit of a photoblog aspect. This will allow me to keep posting even during the busy times, when I won't have the time to really write anything. This probably won't really get started up until I get back to the States and have access to my camera, but there might be some pictures before then.

Housing

2009-05-27T02:05:00.000-07:00

Exams start tomorrow, finally. Nothing to do but read and revise.

At the same time as all this, I must face the first real challenge of graduate school (other than getting in, of course), and that is finding housing. Thanks to the interweb, this isn't too difficult, but it is time consuming. Searching through craigslist and local Madison housing sites in search of that cozy, little home-to-be. There are many things to consider when choosing a place to live: price, roommates, distance from campus/grocery store/coffee. As annoying as it can get looking through so many different housing ads, it provides a good break from studying.

Planck Satellite

2009-05-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

I apologize that I have made very few comments on the life of a physics student so far. I imagine that that will be the case until I start my degree in the fall. Currently I am still working away at revising for my exams, which remain two weeks away.

That said, I will make some brief comments about something physics related. Earlier today occurred the successful launch of the Herschel and Planck satellites, new experiments from the European Space Agency.

Europeans launch space telescope duo

Herschel is an infrared telescope, though I don't know too much about it. I only know slightly more about Planck, since its mission is related to what I did my essay on a couple of weeks ago. It will be measuring the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and is an improvement upon WMAP. One of the interesting aspects of the CMB temperature anisotropies is that they are very close to Gaussian, and any detection of non-Gaussianity has important implications for the evolution of the early universe. In particular, most models of inflation (the period of rapid acceleration in the early universe) predict an almost Gaussian anisotropy distribution. Planck's ability to place restrictions on the level of non-Gaussianity, or to provide evidence for it, will provide cosmologists with a tool to distinguish between different inflationary theories.

I could say more, but will keep my first foray into scientific descriptions brief. I hope it was readable. In the future I'll attempt to be more comprehensive (as well as more comprehensible).

Neutrinos

2009-05-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Gall
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids through a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

-John Updike-

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

-Paul Dirac-

CERN

2009-05-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

It turns out that I have a friend from my undergraduate days (a PhD student now) who is going to be to working at CERN this summer. Being as I'm on this side of the pond anyway, there's a chance that I might take a quick trip out to Geneva after exams.

The LHC had the last replacement magnet put into the tunnel on the 30th of April, but the machine isn't scheduled to start running until the fall. I'm not sure exactly the work that my friend is going to be doing, but I'm sure that, with the kind of place that CERN is and the kind of people it's full of, he will have a very instructive 10 weeks. I'm looking forward to catching up with him, and at the same time marveling at the amazing display of engineering and scientific ingenuity that is the LHC. I hope as well that I'll get the chance to meet some other young physicists from around the world and get their take on things.

Physics and Poetry

2009-05-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

One of the running themes of this blog, most likely, will be considering the relationship between art and science, and the idea that these two areas often have difficulty finding common ground. Some artists think that by analyzing and dissecting nature, scientists remove the beauty and mystery that surround it. For example, from Walt Whitman,

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

And scientists, in turn, contend that poets and artists are ignoring entirely a different kind of beauty that can be found within nature. For example, Richard Feynamn says

"...far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

I, unsurprisingly, side with Feynman. There's a certain type of beauty that comes with understanding. That said, it's possible sometimes to get caught up in the formality of it all, and forget to just 'look up in perfect silence'.

Where do I aim to get with these considerations? Oh, nowhere in particular really. I just think it's interesting.

Finished!

2009-04-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

My Part III essay has been finished and turned in. Well, 'finished'. I'm really no good at finishing essays; let's just say that they asymptotically approach a completed work. Thank God for deadlines.

To commemorate this, here is a quote, purportedly by Einstein. It's appropriate for more reasons than just the fact that it was a cosmology essay.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one."
-Albert Einstein-

A Disclaimer

2009-04-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Though I have set up this site as a way to discuss topics of interest and importance to a physics grad student, I have to admit that I am a little hesitant to actually discuss physics itself. I feel that I will undoubtedly say something wrong, after which a thousand PhDs who have a far better sense of things than I do will come down on me (ignoring, for a moment, that there are currently zerovisitors to this site).

But then I remember that I am a physics student, and any student afraid of getting something wrong will not progress very far. Therefore, when it comes to physics, I will explain things the way they appear to me, and think myself fortunate if someone thinks enough of it to correct me.

On the Layout

2009-04-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

At some point soon I will adjust the layout of the blog to make it more readable and visually appealing. I can't promise when that will happen, but rest assured that it will.

For now, just a quote. Quotes from physicists will probably be a regular part of this site (as well as quotes from non-physicists concerning physics). Some days I may have my own comments, most days most likely not.

From http://www.brainyquote.com

"There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world."
-Paul Dirac-

The current situation

2009-04-25T04:05:00.000-07:00

To let you know what the status is, and what I'm going to be preoccupying myself with in the months leading up to grad school:

I am currently enrolled in the Part III Maths (Theoretical Physics) program at the University of Cambridge, entering the final term. As part of finishing this up, I am writing an essay on cosmological inflation, due May 1st, and preparing for five exams, end of May/start of June.

At the end of June I will fly home, and then start making general preparations for the move to Madison. This will, of course, include finding an apartment, settling in, and all the essential running around that comes with moving to a new place and starting school.

Consequently, over the next few months there will most likely not be much on here concerning the life of a new graduate student, but I will try to find ways of entertaining nonetheless.

A little bit about me.

2009-04-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am a 23 year old physics student, about to start my physics PhD at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The purpose of this blog is to relate a little bit of what it's like, transitioning from the world of studies into the world of research, documenting the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll lifestyle that we have all come to associate with being a physicist.

At the same time, I want to put forward of few of my ideas of what I think about physics, and science in general, and how these relate to the world. I aim to do this in a number of ways, including talking about policy, art, community, etc.

This is the inital focus of the blog, but of course I'll let it take off in whatever direction it feels like running. So, like Mr. Rogers, I invite you all in to switch your shoes from the outside pair to the inside pair, and we'll see where our imagination takes us.

Start

2009-04-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

I am once again beginning a blog, one that I hope will be maintained more permanently than my previous attempts.

I will post more in a couple of days about myself and the blog's purpose. I could do so now, but I think spreading things out a little bit will help me practice getting into the habit of posting.

Links

2009-02-06T03:02:00.000-08:00

Links

About

2009-02-06T02:59:00.000-08:00

About