This weekend marks the final shifts of the BaBar experiment and the final operations of the PEP-II collider. The last few months have been among the most personally exciting time of my life, a time in collider physics that I had been led to believe was long dead. Of course, […]
Physics
263 posts
An article in today’s NY Times, forwarded to me by a friend, notes that the LHC may face a threat other than the realities of a slipping schedule when building a one-of-a-kind, frontier physics experiment: the law. That’s right! THE LAW. [1] Specifically, a lawsuit brought in a Hawaiian court […]
It seems that every time WMAP releases a fresh analysis of its latest data, I learn something wholly new about the universe. Last week, WMAP released an analysis of five years of data [1]. The results are particularly interesting to me on one front – the cosmic neutrino background. On […]
Well, we went from the summer of nuts, to the winter of insane, to the fast-paced late-winter of WTF. I’ve been cutting non-essential things out of my life as a result, including this blog. Oh well – last to the table, first out the door. Today, however, I’ve been forcing […]
Bob Park is normally funny to read every Friday, either because you agree with him rabidly or because you don’t agree with him but you find his grouchiness lovable . This week, he’s just plain on target. Here are his opening paragraphs, verbatim: 1. HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS: SANK IN “THE GATHERING […]
One day ago, the unthinkable happened: Congress abandoned all signs of reason and passed an omnibus spending bill that gutted science in this nation. Much is clear, and much is not. What’s clear are the facts. The Office of Science was appropriated $4.05 billion, and then asked to apply a […]
This is an exciting time for the BaBar experiment. We have just completed our last shutdown between run periods, where we performed a series of maintenance tasks and small upgrades and the accelerator performed a series of engineering upgrades. This three month down-time was the last chance to make major […]
OK, maybe it’s a little much. But, I have to say that this collaboration meeting has been a real high when it comes to physics. Not only is BaBar in the first stages of Run 7, a solid 10-month run from now until next October, but there is so much […]
Today, as I was thinking more about my undergraduate experience in physics, I recalled that I had a photo of my advisor, Michael, floating around on my home computer. What made me think of it was the laugh I had when I first found the picture. In one of my […]
Today, some very painful news reached me. My father informed me of the death of my undergraduate mentor in physics, Dr. Michael Schmidt. After a long battle with cancer, he passed on November 18. Michael was one of the reasons I survived my time as an undergrad at Yale. Without […]
Sitting in the Kavli lounge, chatting with a friend of mine, I mentioned that I had finally gotten around to setting up a professional blog. He responded with, “What’s a professional blog?” Hmm. When I set the darn thing up, I didn’t really think about what it meant. Well, that’s […]
It’s collaboration meeting time again. When BaBarians last met in June, it was at SLAC. I split my time between plenary presentations, parallel sessions, chairing sessions, and (of course) hurrying to get the numbers needed to my own research presentations. It’s busy, but fun. This time around, BaBar is largely […]