Bat in wind tunnel.
Super slow-mo bat videos, from biologists Dan Riskin and Sharon Swartz, here at Brown. Some discussion of the science behind it here at Carl Zimmer's blog.
We're so close to understanding how they turn back into vampires.
The New York Times has an article about Wall Street Physicists today.Emanuel Derman expected to feel a letdown when he left particle physics for a job on Wall Street in 1985.
After all, for almost 20 years, as a graduate student at Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow at institutions like Oxford and the University of Colorado, he had been a spear carrier in the quest to unify the forces of nature and establish the elusive and Einsteinian “theory of everything,” hobnobbing with Nobel laureates and other distinguished thinkers. How could managing money compare?
But the letdown never happened. Instead he fell in love with a corner of finance that dealt with stock options.
“Options theory is kind of deep in some way. It was very elegant; it had the quality of physics,” Dr. Derman explained recently with a tinge of wistfulness.
I've always found it funny that the people who quit academia and go into finance are viewed from within physics sort of like sell-outs or quitters or as unsuccessful in some way. At least by the people I talk to, as sort of an undercurrent in the conversation. And yet, by any reasonable standard, the vast majority of society doesn't care about science at all, and cares a lot more about the ability to buy yachts.
Let's hope Conan keeps up the bizarre, science-based tirades, like this one from Feb 5th, when he's in LA. (His previous interest in Penning traps is well documented)
In celebration of New Year's Eve Eve, I give you my list of holidays in order of expectation/payoff ratio:
An annoying girl in my morning math class was drinking out of a pint-sized half-and-half carton today. One of the types with the plastic screw top.
There are two possibilities here, and I don't know which is worse. Either she was drinking cream, as advertised (at least having the good sense to cut it with milk). Or she finished using the container and said to herself "Now this thing would be perfect for storing liquids in! I should wash it out, refill it with a commonly accepted beverage, and take it with me to use in public."
This is only the latest in the string of extremely weird dietary choices my friend and I have spotted among students of this class. Last week a different girl was consuming what appeared to be individually wrapped balls of dough with jelly on the inside. We spent much of class debating the meaning of this item. Before that, there was someone chowing down on gray, pencil-sized sticks of something out of a crinkly wrapper. There is only one class left, and I'm hoping to see a candy apple or a gigantic turkey drumstick.
I was perusing the website that lists R.I. criminal offenses some time ago (who doesn't) and came across this anachronistic gem:§ 11-12-2 Challenging or accepting challenge to duel. – Every person who shall challenge another to fight a duel with any dangerous weapon, to the hazard of life, and every person who shall accept a challenge to fight such duel, although no duel be fought, shall be imprisoned not exceeding seven (7) years nor less than one year.
Here is what I must know about this:
a) When was the last time someone was prosecuted under this law?
b) How hard would it be to get locked up for it? Not actually engaging in one, but simply invoking the challenge? If stood within earshot of a police officer and said to a friend, loudly and clearly and without laughing, "I hereby challenge you to a duel of honor! Pistols at dawn upon the Statehouse lawn, with hazard of life. I demand satisfaction!" and the friend said "I accept!"...would we be arrested?
(This is comprehensive and fascinating by the way: Wikipedia - List of Duels. Who doesn't love a good list?)
It is well known among astronomers that Brian May, the guitarist from Queen has a PhD in astrophysics. The interesting part is that he was a graduate student at the time Queen took off, nearly finished with his dissertation, only to return a few years ago and complete his degree. He had published in Nature, and MNRAS on topics of interplanetary dust, but the lure of worldwide rock & roll fame overtook him, as it does many a prospective astronomer.
Sure, they may spend 30 years touring the world, earning millions of dollars and adoring fans, but they always come back for the radial velocities of dust clouds. That's where the real action is. (Fewer groupies though...)
NPR's Day to Day - Queen's Brian May Rocks an Astrophysics Rhapsody
Back in September 2007 I found an interesting map of ancestry survey results, showing that a large swath of braindead Appalachians considered their ethnic background to be "American." Since it's 7% of people overall, but actually the most common response in those areas, it seems likely that most of those 7% are localized to that part of the country.
As you can see, it's very pronounced-- prompting me to disdainfully write:This is a convenient map of stupidity, provided by the U.S. Census. The "Americans" live in the off-white counties, which trace a predictable outline. Predictable if you are a contemptuous New England elitist. Apparently knowing what the word "ancestry" means is enough to make you an elitist.
Evidently, calling a large fraction of the U.S. stupid wasn't such an overstatement. The NYTimes made this handy map of the way the voting changed from 4 years ago, county-by-county and it shows basically what you would expect: since President-Elect Obama (I've been saying that way more than necessary) won by a solid margin, you'd expect to see a large gains by him everywhere on the map, as indeed there are...everywhere except among people who don't understand the meaning of the word 'ancestry'. These are the places where either (a) the last 4 years have somehow improved their opinion of the Republican party, (b) people were blown away by John McCain's ideas and campaigning abilities, (c) people noticed there was something a little...how shall I put this-- "black" about this Barack Obama character. Whichever it is, I don't feel too bad calling them morons.
Hmm, Maybe it isn't that dramatic...
Oh wait. Yes it is.
Conclusion: In this election -- Contemptuous New England Elitists 1, People Lacking Basic Vocabulary 0.
In August 2006 I made a solemn vow:
This is the cosmic microwave background presented in the best known way of conveying scientific information: printed on a beach ball. Talk about an inflationary universe!
...A few years ago WMAP secretly distributed them to cosmologists. Needless to say, the early universe printed on a inflatable ball is something that I have decided I must have. For some reason, despite not being for sale, the ball seems to have its own web site...I pledge now to the internet, ultimate keeper of pledges made to no one in particular, that I will acquire this ball. I am not sure how yet, but I swear to do whatever it takes--breaking into someone's office, posing as an elementary school, sending threatening letters to beach ball manufacturers. whatever.
I am now free to disclose that I have triumphed over the forces allied against me-- the beach ball website that mysteriously refuses to sell it, the people who said I would never amount to anything, the journals that keep rejecting my groundbreaking work on the anisotropy of CMB beach ball distribution, everyone. I have, indeed, obtained the ball:
I can't go into the specifics of where it came from, but let's just say that a certain physics department who could never appreciate it as much as I do had a habit of carelessly leaving it in a usually unlocked room full of other neglected items, which I thoughtfully did them the favor of not stealing. And that I have waited until now to announce to the world because the institution that department belongs to, due to some bureaucratic stuff, took until a year after I had finished to send me my master's degree. Having gotten it in the mail a couple of months ago, I am now free, statute-of-limitations-wise, to reveal the success of Operation CMB Ball Freedom. It is hanging from the ceiling of my apartment, daily inspiring me to contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos. Mission accomplished.
Now a beach ball of the Neutrino Background pattern, that would be something...
I have no desire to comment on the turn-on of the LHC and the "controversy" over whether we are all going to die. But to fulfil my community service as a guy who occasionally writes about science, I am honor-bound to do so. Plus I need to vent my frustration at basically anyone acting as though it is somehow an unsettled question. My buddy Dave put it best when mock-reporting that the LHC had, as feared, created a dragon. Depending on your tolerance for watching dead-horse beatings I have given you 3 options, reader.
Long Attention Span: If you are interested in a description of why anyone who seriously thinks there is some danger in turning on the collider, or that doing so somehow amounts to "recreating the big bang," is a complete moron read Backreaction's smack-down.
Medium Attention Span: This is one is just me yelling at you: Black holes would only be created in the case that an extrodinarily unlikely theory, that the universe has LARGE extra-dimensions turns out to be true. Something that is totally speculative and which we have NEVER seen any evidence for. On top of this, the particulars of this theory would have to be just right, which, as far as we can tell from other types of measurements, they are not. If all of this extremely disfavored junk turned out to be true, EVEN THEN they would evaporate in a femptosecond due to Hawking radiation. If they didn't, WHICH THEY WOULD SO THERE IS NO POINT IN EVEN WRITING THIS PART, they would be smaller than the nucleus of an atom and travelling at almost the speed of light, so they would never even interact with any normal particles to swallow them up, and would simply fly off into space never to return. And if any of this were possible, it would be happening all the time ALREADY because the cosmic rays bombarding the Earth are equivilent to the collisions that are going to take place, as far as this black hole nonsense is concerned. See how every part of that explaination is rendered moot by the preceding section? Ignoring that many layers of unequivical denounciation for this retarded black hole catastrophe concept means that you should lose the right to ever benefit from science in any way. And if anyone even thinks about uttering the phrase "but anything can happen" I will personally reach through your computer screen and punch you in the eye.
Low Attention Span: Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the Earth Yet?
From McSweeney's:Physical Theories as Women
0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.
1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.
2. Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.
3. Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she's really interesting and people you don't know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she's pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you've broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.
...
6. Cosmology is the girl that doesn't really date, but has lots of hot friends. Some people date cosmology just to hang out with her friends.
...
Soil physics is the lady you meet at the bus station. She's 45 with dingy teeth, glue-on nails, and 3 kids. She yells at one of them not to turn over the trash can, but he does it anyway. As you pass by, she asks if you know how to get gum out of hair. You keep walking.
A harrowing vision of a very different world...where scientists are treated like celebrities.
Still, I would watch it if I were these people. Witten can be pretty sensitive about his shoes, they don't want to get a smack down in his next single PhysRev Letter: E. Witten, T. Shakur, "Hyperdimensional manifold collapse of motherfuckers who talk shit about my footwear" PRL 101 (2008)
Yes, not only is Tupak coming out with new albums every few months, he is also publishing. People are pretty much just remixing his old papers at this point, but that "Feat. T. Shakur" byline in your list of authors still helps you get played. I hear his next article is going to drop in ApJ this winter.
