Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
August 14, 2012
"New Particle Physics at the LHC and Its Connection to Dark Matter" is the name of the current workshop at the Aspen Center for Physics running through Sep 9th.
I'm hanging out for the first few days and the first presentation is on "what has the LHC Higgs done to supersymmetry"?
So, basic point is…
August 14, 2012
Choose what the VLT observes - public vote on a science target one night this autumn
Ralph Cicerone Public Lecture - Contemporary Climate Change as Seen through Data - video of Ralph Cicerone lecture on Climate Change at the Aspen Center for Physics this summer
Cliff at Asymptotia summarises…
August 9, 2012
Last talk of the LHC Shows the Way workshop, with the most provocative title.
Entries in this post may or may not be mangled misrepresentations of stuff the speaker made up just to be provocative...
Starting point: there is something at ~ 125 GeV and it is consistent with a boson, possibly a…
August 9, 2012
The LHC Shows the Way workshop is about to end, and the slow live blog limps along with a presentation on the composite Higgs.
A model for having a light (~ 100 GeV ) scalar, is to have a composite Higgs instead of the alternative of either a true supersymmetric model or a light dilaton scalar.
As…
August 8, 2012
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey just released their largest 3-D data set, positions and redshifts, as part of their 9th data release.
Here is the fly through.
Awesome, eh?
August 7, 2012
More random topics that crossed my path:
bureaucratic entropy: "...In 1987, except at private research universities, where administrators outnumbered tenure-track faculty, colleges had approximately as many tenure-track faculty as full-time administrators. By 2008 there were more than twice as…
August 7, 2012
Back at the LHC Shows the Way workshop at the Aspen Center for Physics - more discussion of Higgs alternatives and peculiar branching ratios.
No, the branching ratios for the different decay modes of the 125 GeV boson that is putatively the Higgs are not anomalous at a statistically significant…
August 6, 2012
This spring, the Hubble outreach office started a Hubble Treasure Hunt
The challenge was to browse through the Hubble raw data archives, and look for undiscovered images, ones that had not been published and were interesting or beautiful.
There are a lot of Hubble images.
The finalists for the…
August 2, 2012
Large Fluctuations and Collective Behavior in Solids is an overlapping workshop going on in parallel with the LHC stuff at the Aspen Center for Physics, while down the road the Republican Governors' meet at the Aspen Institute and Romney is down the valley while his peeps meet with the super PACs…
August 2, 2012
In which we ask, what would you do if you could change your own personal history?
A Kind of Magic! - No, that is not a non-Higgs boson, it is the Astronomy Magazine competition to win a signed copy of Brian May's PhD thesis in astronomy.
"To enter the contest, submit a short essay (200 to 500 words…
August 2, 2012
Back at the LHC Shows the Way workshop and slow live blogging of the discussion, with random asides for other stuff...
Astronomy Magazine has a contest - win Brian May's PhD thesis! - now separate post with added bonus question
Today:
fake Higgs - are there some new bosons which are not Higgs,…
July 31, 2012
$3 million each for 9 theorists from Yuri Milner Foundation Fundamental Physics Prize
IAS big winner.
Milner Prize: Guth (MIT), Linde (Stanford); Arkani-Hamed, Maldacena, Seiberg and Witten (IAS); Kitaev (Caltech); Kontsevich (IASS); and, Sen (Chandra Institute).
String theory, inflation and…
July 31, 2012
Continuing lazy live blog of the LHC Shows the Way workshop, with random interludes of alternative considerations, including the more esoteric aspects of German finance...
Patio session (informal presentation of in-progress results on blackboard, outside) - didn't catch speaker's name, got here a…
July 26, 2012
LHC Shows the Way workshop: general colloquium reviewing the LHC and the Higgs discovery.
Kyle Cramner from NYU: "We discovered the goddamned particle"
More slow live blog.
Cute opening video of LHC construction.
Factoid: kinetic energy of LHC beam is about that of a jumbo jet at cruise speed…
July 26, 2012
The LHC Shows the Way workshop rolls on, looking at the implications of the Higgs at 125-126 GeV for supersymmetry.
I live blog, slowly.
Where are the sparticles.
Coloured supersymmetric partners, the quark and gluon supersymmetric partners, must be massive - greater than ~ 1,000 GeV
in some…
July 24, 2012
For reasons too complicated to explain, I am at The LHC Show the Way workshop at the Aspen Center for Physics.
This is a three week workshop on the latest results from the LHC, to be followed by a four week workshop on new physics from the LHC and possible connections to dark matter.
The kickoff…
July 24, 2012
This week I was treated to an impressive illustration of the power of modern security technology.
I was passing through Reagan National Airport, having been deflected from my previous schedule (which had originally included a stay at the hotel complex in Aurora, CO last thursday night -…
July 10, 2012
Massive Reductions in Force announced at NRAO with additional major cutback at operations and facilities.
Forwarded without comment:
"Dear Colleagues,
This message is to inform you of actions NRAO is implementing to address an expected (non-ALMA) FY 2013 budget deficit of approximately $3M for our…
July 9, 2012
time for all new linkedy links here at the new digs
Quantum Frontiers - a new blog from the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, with kickoff by John Preskill hisself.
Question of the day: explain quantum mechanics in five words
My attempt: Probability Amplitudes, Observables don't…
July 7, 2012
In which we remind people of the Ten Commandments of the God Particle.
Now with added footnotes.
I I am the Higgs. Thou shalt have no other Higgs before me.1
II Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,…
July 4, 2012
In the beginning there was light.
Sort of.
When energies were high enough, particles were effectively massless and the universe was a nice seething mess of particle/anti-particle creation and annihilation.
As the universe cools, a symmtery, the Electroweak symmetry breaks, a field condenses out,…
June 29, 2012
It is another hot and sultry friday, and that means it is time for the iPod iChing!
Oh, Mighty iPod One, what may come in the near term of our endless quest to seek Extraterrestrial Intelligence?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: Peter and Wolf: The Story Begins - Prokoviev
The…
June 24, 2012
Why do we need to spend any more effort on extra-solar planets?
We found some, they're there. Lumps of rocks, gasballs. We're done, right?
This, loosely paraphrased, was a serious question I got last week.
The context was a question of why I was spending serious effort on exoplanet research,…
June 24, 2012
"Name one thing robots can't do in space that humans can!" was the challenge from a speaker at a meeting I attended many years ago.
"Have babies!" was the loud and prompt reply from a grad student friend of mine at the back, thereby winning the argument to great applause.
It is important to…
June 24, 2012
David Brin has a new novel out, Existence
Brin is on a book tour at independent book stores on the west coast and was in the Bay Area saturday, where he spoke at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, having stopped by at SETIcon II earlier.
David Brin
The book is nice and chunky, and is a medium future…
June 23, 2012
SETIcon feels like a curious mix of an AAS annual meeting and a science fiction WorldCon.
Unfortunately, this extends to the concept of the parallel session.
So, it is necessary to pick and choose.
So, "Asteroids: Junkpiles or Resources?" - Yes.
"Hubble 3D" - I really want to see Frank Summers'…
June 23, 2012
Seen in the exihibition room at SETIcon
Yes, that is what you think it is:
Romulan Ale from Rocket Fizz
From Real Art
June 22, 2012
We know now that there are planets out there.
Lots and lots of planets.
We are still pinning down the exact incidence over all stellar populations, and we are barely at the point where we can directly confirm the presence of terrestrial planets, but if parameter space is smooth and the universe…
June 22, 2012
The SETI Institute is sponsoring the Second Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Conference at the San Jose Santa Clara Convention Center this weekend.
The Conference is an unusual blend of hard science, science fiction and media: with Geoff Marcy, Alex Filippenko and Debra Fischer, among…