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: Physics
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
How to Teach Physics to Your Brazilian Dog
As I was heading out with SteelyKid to do some shopping, I noticed that the mail had arrived, including a large book mailer from my agent. I was a little puzzled as to what that could be, but left it for my return. Where I was pleased to open the envelope and find: That’s a… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Brazilian Dog
Cathedral-Building in Science
Tommaso Dorigo has an interesting post spinning off a description of the Hidden Dimensions program at the World Science Festival (don’t bother with the comments to Tommaso’s post, though). He quotes a bit in which Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru both admitted that they don’t expect to see experimental evidence of extra dimensions in their… Continue reading Cathedral-Building in Science
I Need a Pointless (But Cool) Graphic
At last weekend’s Hidden Dimensions event, Brian Greene had a graphic of a Calabi-Yau object (it wasn’t this one, but it’s the same idea). He put this up several times, but never actually explained what the hell it was supposed to show. It just looked kind of cool. Last week’s Through the Wormhole program segment… Continue reading I Need a Pointless (But Cool) Graphic
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Signing Saturday
There was a nice story in the Schenectady Gazette about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I’d love to link to it, but the Gazette paywalls everything, so all you really get is the story title, unless you subscribe. And if you subscribe to the Gazette, you don’t really need me to tell you… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Signing Saturday
Graduation Day 2010
A grey and dreary day here in Schenectady for the 216th Commencement at Union College. This is probably healthier for the graduates than the years when it’s sunny and hot and people pass out in their seats, but it isn’t the most pleasant send-off. Then again, my own college graduation was a grey and dismal… Continue reading Graduation Day 2010
Through the Wormhole
The Science Channel debuted a new show last night, Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, with the premier apparently designed by committee to piss off as many Internet types as possible. The overall theme was “Is there a creator?” and it featured physicist-turned-Anglican-priest John Polkinghorne talking about fine-tuning but no atheist rebuttal. It spent a… Continue reading Through the Wormhole
I Need to Work on My Sound Bites
One of the questions asked of Neil deGrasse Tyson at the WSF thing last week was “When did you change from a mild-mannered astrophysicist to a rock-star scientist?” (or something close to that phrasing). In his answer, he said that after his first tv interview was edited down to a three-second shot of him wiggling… Continue reading I Need to Work on My Sound Bites