Physics
ksharpe | July 11, 2008The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings of 2008 are over, but we'll be archiving the video interviews that the ScienceBlogs.de team conducted in Lindau with a variety of laureates. Here, Nobelist Johann Deisenhofer (Chemistry, 1988) discusses the work that led to his prize: the discovery of the 3-D structure of a photosynthetic reaction center.
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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, and Brian Josephson.
pontiff | July 10, 2008There are many paths to take if you are interested in doing fundamental physics research in hopes of discovering the secrets of the universe (awkward phrasing there: this makes the universe is like the Bush administration, I guess?) Here are my three favorite ways to do fundamental theoretical physics.
Do it yourself. This is the traditional method. Of course you have to be more than a bit delusional to think you might actually be able to contribute some positive net effect, but such long odds don't seem to influence many people's choice of this method.
Build a computer to do it for you.…
ksharpe | July 10, 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. On camera here: Jack Steinberger, winner of the Prize in Physics, 1988.
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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, and Brian Josephson.
drorzel | July 10, 2008I'm currently revising the book chapter based on the original "Bunnies Made of Cheese" post, which deals with virtual particles and Quantum Electro-Dynamics. The best proof of the power of QED is the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, where experiment and theory agree to something like thirteen decimal places.
In double-checking things this morning, I find that the Gabrielse group has released yet another improved measurement of the electron g-factor since the last draft of this chapter. I've updated the current draft accordingly, and continue to be amazed by the…
ksharpe | July 9, 2008The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings of 2008 are over, but we'll be archiving the video interviews that the ScienceBlogs.de team conducted in Lindau with a variety of laureates. On camera here: Brian D. Josephson, winner of the Prize in Physics, 1973.
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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 and Riccardo Giacconi.
drorzel | July 8, 2008As a sort of palate-cleanser after the quantum chicanery discussed in the previous post, let me recommend Donald Simanek's Museum of Unworkable Devices, a wonderful collection of failed ideas for perpetual motion machines, including explanations of why they don't work.
I'm tempted to turn a couple of these into exam questions, the next time I teach mechanics...
jstemwedel | July 8, 2008
I had my kids with me at my office and needed to keep them occupied for a small chunk of time while I attended to business.
The younger offspring immediately called dibs on the "Celebrating Chemistry" markerboard.
The elder offspring, creeping up on 9 years old, asked plaintively, "What can I do?"
I scanned my office bookshelves. Given that I am trying to minimize the number of frustrating parent-teacher conferences in the coming school year, I passed right by the Nietzsche. After a moment's hesitation, I pulled down my copy of David Z. Albert's Quantum Mechanics and Experience.…
drorzel | July 8, 2008The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book is currently envisioned as a look at the misuse of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using the "Search Inside This Book" feature to locate good manglings of quantum theory in the service of quackery. I feel vaguely dirty.
I also spent some time on the web page of Bob Park's favorite shills, BlackLight Power, which provides another example of the appropriation of quantum concepts for…
terrasig | July 3, 2008Well, you readers here really know how to draw attention to an issue. We're not a high-traffic blog but those of you who read regularly are quite thoughtful, insightful, and, now, influential.
Our little post the other day on the application of the ideal gas law in discussing the NPR/StoryCorps segment on the exploding bra of a now-94-year-old woman caught the attention of StoryCorps Senior Producer, Michael Garofalo. Mr Garofalo wished to respond to our post and several commenters who noted that the exploding bra story was the stuff of urban legend, such that snopes.com traced back to a…
ksharpe | July 3, 2008From June 29th through July 4th, 25 Nobel laureates and over 550 young scientists from all over the world are gathering in Lindau, Germany, at the 58th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. This year's meeting is dedicated to physics.
Beatrice Lugger, managing editor of ScienceBlogs.de, is in Lindau and will be sending her impressions of the meeting daily through July 4.
ScienceBlogs.de is also running a German-language blog covering the meetings. We are airing short videos in English, of Nobelists at Lindau on the ScienceBlogs homepage, and archiving them at Page 3.14. Here are the first, second…
ksharpe | July 3, 2008The ScienceBlogs.de team caught up with Nobel Prize winner Douglas Osheroff (physics, 1996) in Lindau. In the video, he talks about the discovery superfluidity in helium-3—the work that led to his Nobel honor.
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Onsite Coverage
THE 2008 MEETINGS OF NOBEL LAUREATES IN LINDAU
Courtesy of scienceblogs.de | More Coverage
pontiff | July 1, 2008One of the subjects of great debate in physics goes under the moniker of "the arrow of time." The basic debate here is (very) roughly to try to understand why time goes it's merry way seemingly in one direction, especially given that the many of the laws of physics appear to behave the same going backwards as forwards in time. But aren't we forgetting our most basic science when we debate at great philosophical lengths about the arrow of time? Aren't we forgetting about...experiment? Here, for your pleasure, then, are some of my personal observations about the direction of time which I've…
terrasig | June 29, 2008If you didn't catch NPR's StoryCorps feature this week, you missed a charming doozy:
As a young woman, Betty Jenkins received a gift from her mother that was meant to attract the attention of young men. But as Jenkins, who is now 94, tells her niece, the attention she got wasn't the kind she was expecting.
"I was very skinny, and I didn't have any curves. I guess my mother got kind of worried, because she didn't think I had enough boyfriends," Jenkins said.
The gift was an inflatable bra that was designed to enhance its wearer's figure. A straw-like tube was used to inflate pads in the cups.…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2008tags: Unified Field Theory, humor, poetry, physics, Tim Joseph
Einstein's last blackboard notes in his office shortly before his death in 1955.
Seeking the Unified Field Theory consumed his last years.
A friend sent this amusing little story of why we do not have a "Unified Theory of everything" in physics (which is one of its goals) and why we likely never will. I've actually seen it before, but have been unable to find the original author to attribute it to.
Unified Field Theory
In the beginning there was Aristotle,
And objects at rest tended to remain at rest,
And objects in motion…
drorzel | June 27, 2008Over at Science After Sunclipse, Blake has a very long post about the limitations of science blogs. Brian at Laelaps responds, and Tom at Swans On Tea agrees.
You might be wondering whether I have an opinion on this. Since I'm going to be talking about it at a workshop in September (first talk, no less...), I better have some opinions..
The original post is very long, but can probably best be summarized by the following paragraph:
My thesis is that it's not yet possible to get a science education from reading science blogs, and a major reason for this is because bloggers don't have the…
drorzel | June 26, 2008A few days ago, some colleagues and I were discussing the year that just ended, and the curriculum in general, and the frequent lament about needing to repeat ourselves came up. Due to some quirks of our calendar, we have a lot of students taking courses out of sequence, and as a result, have to teach the same mathematical techniques in multiple classes.
On top of that, though, the students tend to say that any given technique is entirely new to them, even when they've already seen it. When that part came up, one of my colleagues said "Well, of course they do that-- I did that when I was an…
pontiff | June 25, 2008No, no, I'm not leaving academia (yet :) Pfffffft! That's the sound of me thumbing my nose at the world.) But recently I was thinking about about people who get a Ph.D. in, say, physics, or are a new postdoc, and then are faced with what to do next. As Peter Rhode, writes in a post today (or whatever day it is in the upside down part of the world) entitled "Farewell physics":
The academic system has some serious problems. Most notably in my opinion, there is very limited scope for promotion. For every permanent position there are countless postdocs competing for that position. It simply…
pontiff | June 24, 2008So you really think the LHC is going to swallow up the Earth by creating a black hole or a quacking duck with X-ray super powers? Why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Not to be confused with other famous black hole bets.
drorzel | June 24, 2008I'm deep in book revisions at the moment, which largely accounts for the relative blog silence. This is expected to continue for a while yet, broken by the occasional post when something comes up that is irritating enough to push me to write about it. Such as, well, now.
In the chapter on the Copenhagen Interpretation, I spend some time laying out the basic principles of quantum mechanics, and mention the Schrödinger equation. I noted in passing that the name is taken from "the Austrian physicist and noted cad Erwin Schrödinger." Kate questioned whether this was really appropriate, but I left…
pontiff | June 21, 2008rpenner passes on some of the latest news on the black hole lawsuit against the LHC:
Update: The trial has been scheduled for June 2009....
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4830&view=findpost&p=349304
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4830&view=findpost&p=349685
and
Update: LHC Saftey Assessment Group releases two papers.
http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf
http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/CERN-PH-TH_2008-025.pdf
Update 6/23: Oh noes! The Optimizer wants to kill us all!