Physics
drorzel | August 5, 2008(This is the first in a planned series of posts writing up each of the scientific papers on which I am an author. A short description and a link to a PDF of the paper can be found at the archived Optical Control page.)
The essence of the optical control paper is contained in this one figure:
"Very pretty," you're thinking, "But what does it mean?"
The graph shows the increase or decrease in the ionizing collision rate for a sample of xenon atoms (well, two different samples, of different isotopes, but they behave exactly the same) at a temperature of 100 microkelvin or so due to the…
drorzel | August 4, 2008I've been slacking a bit, lately, in terms of putting science-related content on the blog. Up until last week, most of my physics-explaining energy was going into working on the book, and on top of that, I've been a little preoccupied with planning for the arrival of FutureBaby.
I'd like to push things back in the direction of actual science blogging, so I'm going to implement an idea I had a while back: I'm going to go back through the papers in my CV, and write them up for ResearchBlogging.org.
This offers a couple of nice benefits from my perspective. First of all, I already know what's in…
drorzel | August 4, 2008Last week, I was asked my expectations about the LHC, and offered my half-assed guess. If you prefer your speculation from people with relevant knowledge of the subject, Sean Carroll weighs in with his oddly-precise guesses.
On a related, less theoretical note, Tomasso Dorigo posted a summary of the constraints on the Higgs boson mass last week, which serves to illustrate why people are so anxious to see it-- given what we know about other particles, it really ought to have been detected by now-- the most likely predicted mass has already been excluded, and they're pushing out toward the edge…
pontiff | August 1, 2008A result of much quantum coolness out today: arXiv:0807.4935 (scirate): "Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels" by Graeme Smith and Jon Yard. Strange things they are going on when we try to use our quantum cell phones, it seems. Quantum cell phones, what the hell? Read on...
You know the situation. You're standing in line to get your morning coffee and bagel, and you get a call from your boss: "Hey Pontiff Dude, what's your bank account number? I need to have it so that I can deposit this large bonus into your account and if I don't do this within a few seconds, you won't get…
pontiff | August 1, 2008A new Scienceblog: Built on Facts. Sweet, more physicists:
Matt Springer is a graduate student of physics at Texas A&M university. He is also an occasional writer and tinkerer, and he is probably too curious for his own good.
It's a good think he's not a cat, eh?
drorzel | August 1, 2008The Borg assimilates another quality blogger: Built On Facts is joining ScienceBlogs. If you haven't been reading Matt's blog, it's one of the best basic physics blogs around, with math and everything.
It'll be good to have another non-philatelic scientist around. Update your blogrolls accordingly.
drorzel | July 31, 2008"The Internet is silly!"
I turn around from the computer. "Yes it is," I say to the dog, "But what, specifically, makes you say that?"
"All these posts about physics theories. Comparing them to women and men and stupid wizards, and relationships. It's silly."
"Yes, well, it does seem to be the diversion of the moment."
"Anyway, they've got it all wrong. Physics theories are like my toys."
"oh, god..." I was afraid of this.
"Go on, name a theory, and I'll tell you how it's like my toys."
"Do I have to?"
"Yes! Go on, name a theory!"
"Fine. Classical mechanics."
"Oh, that's easy. Classical…
drorzel | July 30, 2008Over at Backreaction, Bee has a nice post about uncertainty, in the technical sense, not the quantum sense. The context is news stories about science, which typically do a terrible job of handling the uncertainties and caveats that are an essential part of science.
Properly dealing with uncertainty is one of the hardest parts of science. Which is why I'm particularly impressed by people who spend their whole careers measuring nothing but uncertainties-- looking for an electric dipole moment for the electron, or parity non-conservation, or Lorentz violation, or any of a bunch of other things…
pontiff | July 29, 2008Physical Theories as Men, a tit for tat response to Physical Theories as Women. Go ahead, you know you want to click on both of them.
drorzel | July 29, 2008In the Reader Request Thread, Ian asks:
I'd like to hear what you think we'll learn (if anything!) when the LHC comes online next month.
Well, that sort of depends on the time scale. I'm not a big accelerator guy, but my sense from reading the blogs of people who are is that we're not likely to learn anything at all this year, other than the answer to the question "do the components of the LHC work?" They've got a few weeks of preliminaries before they start any particles going through, and then a whole bunch of sanity checks and calibration tests to do, and a scheduled shut-down in December…
drorzel | July 29, 2008I tagged this for del.icio.us, but on reflection, it deserves better than to be buried in a links dump. It's so rare that the New York Times notices physics that doesn't cost billions of dollars, that Kenneth Chang's article on glass deserves its own post.
Peter G. Wolynes, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, thinks he essentially solved the glass problem two decades ago based on ideas of what glass would look like if cooled infinitely slowly. "I think we have a very good constructive theory of that these days," Dr. Wolynes said. "Many people tell me this is…
pontiff | July 28, 2008In attempt to keep my reading more current, I'm going to try to post the top rated arXiv papers on SciRate each week and hopefully add about the papers. Let's see how long I can keep it up (bets?)
0807.2668 (7 scites) "Mixing doubly stochastic quantum channels with the completely depolarizing channel" by John Watrous.
QP says: A large variety of open quantum system evolutions are describable using the superoperator formalism. A superoperator is a linear map from a space of linear operators to another space of linear operators. The ones we care most about in quantum computing are the…
drorzel | July 28, 2008Last week's Reader Request Thread produced a bunch of good suggestions, some of which I'll be responding to this week as I put the last touches on the book draft and send it off. We'll start with a good physics question from Moshe:
So, what do you think about graphene? the next big thing, or just the latest fad?
Doug might be a better person to answer this, as it's a little closer to his field. It's unquestionably the latest fad, the question is whether it's a fad with legs or not.
Graphene, for those not up on the subject, is basically just carbon in one-atom-thick sheets. It's two-…
drorzel | July 27, 2008Richard Reeves is probably best known for writing biographies of American Presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan), so it's a little strange to see him turn his hand to scientific biography. This is part of Norton's "Great Discoveries" series (which inexplicably lacks a web page-- get with the 21st century, already), though, so incongruous author-subject pairing is part of the point.
Some time back, there was a "meme" that went through the science side of blogdom asking people to post about their favorite historical scientist. I didn't contribute, mostly because I didn't really have a favorite…
jstemwedel | July 25, 2008Go to Cosmic Variance at once to read Julianne Dalcanton's musings on why spherical jerks (not the word she uses) are preferable to the asymmetric ones:
No one is surprised when a known, calibrated asshole acts up. We all just adjust the gain on our emotional response and carry on. I've been quite fond of many assholes through the years, and when I look back, the one trait they shared was that while they may have been ornery, they were at least predictable.
Go read the whole thing to explore the topology of the muppethuggers she's been having to deal with lately.
ksharpe | July 21, 2008The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings of 2008 are over, but we are archiving the video interviews that the ScienceBlogs.de team conducted in Lindau with a variety of laureates. Interviewed here is Nobelist Theodor Hänsch, winner of the 2005 Prize in Physics.
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Onsite Coverage
THE 2008 MEETINGS OF NOBEL LAUREATES IN LINDAU
Courtesy of scienceblogs.de | More Coverage
The previous videos in the series include interviews with Nobelists Douglas Osheroff, Riccardo Giacconi, Brian Josephson, Johann Deisenhofer, Hartmut Michel, and Peter Grünberg.
drorzel | July 18, 2008On a happier note than the previous post, the American Physical Society has launched a new publication, called simply "Physics." The goal is "to highlight exceptional papers within the body of excellent research that the American Physical Society publishes each year in all of the Physical Review journals."
The first issue features a really good piece by Steve Rolston on ultra-cold plasmas (full disclosure: Steve was my supervisor at NIST, and I was an author on the first ultra-cold plasma paper, so I'm inclined to like this stuff), and Steve Lamoreaux on Casimir forces. If they can maintain…
ksharpe | July 18, 2008The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings of 2008 are over, but we are archiving the video interviews that the ScienceBlogs.de team conducted in Lindau with a variety of laureates. Interviewed here is Nobelist Peter Grünberg, winner of the 2007 Prize in Physics.
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Onsite Coverage
THE 2008 MEETINGS OF NOBEL LAUREATES IN LINDAU
Courtesy of scienceblogs.de | More Coverage
The previous videos in the series include interviews with Nobelists Douglas Osheroff, Riccardo Giacconi, Brian Josephson, Johann Deisenhofer, and Hartmut Michel.
pontiff | July 17, 2008Rumors have been spreading that Stephen Hawking might be considering moving to the Perimeter Institute. These rumors have been officially denied. The real story here, however is not about Hawking relocating, but whether Stephen Hawking has turned into an experimental physicist and is testing the black hole information paradox by throwing himself into the Blackberry hole. I mean, if Hawking can visit for one month, and then escape from the Perimeter Institute, then I think we can conclude that the unitarity of quantum theory is safe. However, if Hawking get's sucked in, I myself will worry…
ksharpe | July 14, 2008The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings of 2008 are over, but we are archiving the video interviews that the ScienceBlogs.de team conducted in Lindau with a variety of laureates. Interviewed here is Nobelist Hartmut Michel, who shared with Johann Deisenhofer the 1988 Prize in Chemistry.
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Onsite Coverage
THE 2008 MEETINGS OF NOBEL LAUREATES IN LINDAU
Courtesy of scienceblogs.de | More Coverage
The previous videos in the series include interviews with Nobelists Douglas Osheroff, Riccardo Giacconi, Brian Josephson, and Johann Deisenhofer.