A press release from Harvard caught my eye last week, announcing results from Markus Greiner’s group that were, according to the release, published in Science. The press release seems to have gotten the date wrong, though– the article didn’t appear in Science last week. It is, however, available on the arxiv, so you get the… Continue reading Watching Individual Atoms Make a Phase Transition
Category: Experiment
Dropping Bose Condensates for Fun and Science
An experiment in Germany has generated a good deal of publicity by dropping their Bose-Einstein Cendensate (BEC) apparatus from a 146 meter tower. This wasn’t an act of frustration by an enraged graduate student (anybody who has worked with BEC has probably fantasized about throwing at least part of their apparatus down a deep hole),… Continue reading Dropping Bose Condensates for Fun and Science
The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
The Virtuosi has quickly become a staple of the daily Links Dumps here, but the recent series of posts on experimental physics deserve greater prominence, so here they are: Life as an Experimenter- Day One Life as an Experimenter- Day Two Life as an Experimenter- Day Three Life as an Experimenter- Reflections The individual day… Continue reading The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
Everything Is Better With Experimental Physicists
In my write-up about the Hidden Dimensions panel, I mentioned in passing that: I also would’ve liked to see an experimental physicist up there, to provide a little more grounding about what the actual problems are, and how you might hope to look for something. But then, I always think there should be more experimental… Continue reading Everything Is Better With Experimental Physicists
Table-Top X-Ray Lasers
I mentioned in a previous post that one of the cool talks I saw at DAMOP had to do with generation of coherent X-Ray beams using ultra-fast lasers. What’s particualrly cool about this work is that it doesn’t require gigantic accelerators or nuclear explosions to produce a laser-like beam of x-rays– it’s all done with… Continue reading Table-Top X-Ray Lasers
Relativity on a Human Scale
While I mostly restricted myself to watching invited talks at DAMOP last week, I did check out a few ten-minute talks, one of which ended up being just about the coolest thing I saw at the meeting. Specifically, the Friday afternoon talk on observing relativity with atomic clocks by Chin-Wen Chou of the Time and… Continue reading Relativity on a Human Scale
Anatomy of a Conference: DAMOP Day 2– The Rise of Precision Measurement
Since I sort of implied a series in the previous post, and I have no better ideas, here’s a look at Thursday’s DAMOP program:
My Wednesday at DAMOP
I was pretty sedentary on Wednesday, going to only two sessions, and staying for most of the talks in each. I spent most of the initial prize session getting my bearings in the conference areas, and talking to people I know from my NIST days. In the 10:30 block, I went to the session on… Continue reading My Wednesday at DAMOP
Anatomy of a Conference: DAMOP Day 1
The conference I’m at this week is the annual meeting of the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society (which this year is joint with the Canadian version, the Division of Atomic and Molecular Physics and Photon Interactions, or “DAMPΦ.” The Greek letter is a recent addition– as recently as… Continue reading Anatomy of a Conference: DAMOP Day 1
Evil Squirrels from Extra Dimensions
It’s been a very long day, so I’m lying on the couch watching “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN. They’re having a boring conversation about baseball, and I’m just drifting off into a pleasant doze when: “Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!“ I jolt awake. “What are you barking at?!?” I yell at the… Continue reading Evil Squirrels from Extra Dimensions