This morning, I awoke a bit later than usual, went through the morning routine, paid some extra attention to the cats, and then hit the road for Davis, CA. I came here today to give a seminar, just as I had been doing through my 8-state trek in September and October. This was particularly exciting for me, though, since it was from Davis that many of the ideas flowed which became a core part of our program to secure the world’s largest sample of Upsilon(3S) and Upsilon(2S) mesons. Ideas regarding low mass dark matter and a low mass Higgs boson were cornerstones of the proposal to take that data, and it was a personal pleasure to be able to come here to share just the tip of the spear of our physics results.
It was a beautiful day here in Davis. I’ve only been here a few times, and only once to the campus, but the sky was blue, the wind was perky, and the temperature was a pleasant autumn cool all day long. I had the chance to learn about some of the neutrino and dark matter physics going on here, attend an “LHC lunch” on current activities and news in the LHC and CMS, and then I got to share the bottomonium physics results from BaBar. I had a great day, and I benefitted from the week’s rest I got between the end of my big tour and this trip up to Davis. I felt much less like a near-zombie than I did in those last few days of my big tour.
What I like about Davis is that you can get around, and it doesn’t feel like an intimidating place. You go from big campus to great downtown in just a few minutes by foot, and by bike or car it’s even faster. Biking here looks like fun – it seems to easy to integrate commuting and exercise in a place like this, something I last got to do in Madison, WI and at CERN in Geneva.
It was a long day. Freeman Dyson gave a public lecture tonight, as part of a Centennial celebration here at Davis. I attended it, a talk about the individual versus the group and Dyson’s thoughts on this regarding the law, language, and evolution. Having never seen Dyson speak before, but knowing of his role in the unification of QED many decades ago, I didn’t know what to expect. Even for a man at his age, he has an energy and a clarity that I don’t see in many of my own peers. He read from text he’d prepared, but he was dynamic and he had a great sense of humor. This turned an evening of uncharted expectations into a thought-provoking nad exciting evening, topped off by dinner with some of the Davis physics department members I met during the day.
This also made for a long day, albeit a rewarding one. Tomorrow, I’ll hit the road and head back to home (to take care of those cats!) before going to SLAC.
