The big physics story at the moment is probably the new measurement of the size of the proton, which is reported in this Nature paper (which does not seem to be on the arxiv, alas). This is kind of a hybrid of nuclear and atomic physics, as it’s a spectroscopic measurement of a quasi-atom involving… Continue reading Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought
Tag: physics
Photons: Still Bosons
Last week, Dmitry Budker’s group at Berkeley published a paper in Physical Review Letters (also free on the arxiv) with the somewhat drab title “Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einsten Statistics for Photons.” Honestly, I probably wouldn’t’ve noticed it, even though this is the sort of precision AMO test of physics that I love, had it not… Continue reading Photons: Still Bosons
The Physics of the Imbecile: Chopra Interviews Kaku
I don’t remember who pointed me at this transcript of Deepak Chopra interviewing Michio Kaku, but if I remember who it was, I fully intend to hate them. DC: Is our conversation affecting something in another galaxy right now? MK: In principle. What we’re talking about right is affecting another galaxy far, far beyond the… Continue reading The Physics of the Imbecile: Chopra Interviews Kaku
Watching Individual Atoms Make a Phase Transition
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
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
Exploring Hidden Dimensions at the World Science Festival
Since I was going to be down here anyway to sign books at the World Science Festival Street Fair, Kate and I decided to catch one of the Saturday events at the Festival. It was hard to choose, but we opted for the program on Hidden Dimensions: Exploring Hyperspace (Live coverage was here, but the… Continue reading Exploring Hidden Dimensions at the World Science Festival
The Limits of Rohirrim Vision
Over at Tor.com, Kate has a Lord of the Rings re-read post about the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, which includes a shout-out to me that I missed because I was driving to NYC: Ãomer is “scarely a mile” away when the standard unfurls and is clearly seen to bear the White Tree, Seven Stars,… Continue reading The Limits of Rohirrim Vision
Bath-Time Fluid Dynamics
SteelyKid’s every-so-often bath was last night, and as always, she was fascinated by scooping up water in a hexagonal cup thing that’s part of one of her bath toys, and watching it drain out. Which is completely understandable– not just because she’s a baby, but because there’s a bunch of physics at work, here. I… Continue reading Bath-Time Fluid Dynamics
Bohemian Mechanical Rhapsody
Blame Bryan O’Sullivan for this– after his comment about misreading “Bohmian Mechanics” as “Bohemian Mechanics,” I couldn’t get this silly idea out of my head. And this is the result. I like to think that this was Brian May‘s first draft (he does have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, after all), before Freddie Mercury got hold… Continue reading Bohemian Mechanical Rhapsody
Quick Impressions of Bohmian Mechanics
I get asked my opinion of Bohmian mechanics a fair bit, despite the fact that I know very little about it. This came up again recently, so I got some suggested reading from Matt Leifer, on the grounds that I ought to learn something about it if I’m going to keep being asked about it.… Continue reading Quick Impressions of Bohmian Mechanics