WOW! I’m speechless. NOVA has outdone itself. My father e-mailed me excitedly earlier tonight to heap praise on “Einstein’s Big Idea”. It was really a remarkable combination of drama, history, and science. I’ve always liked “Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens” for that reason, but this takes the damn cake. What […]
Physics
260 posts
In 1905, 100 years ago, Einstein experienced what we now call his “miracle year”, during which he published three seminal works in physics that opened the door to quantum mechanics and relativity. NOVA, the excellent PBS science program, celebrates this achievement with their program “Einstein’s Big Idea”:http://www.pbs.org/hplink/redir/wgbh/nova/einstein/, airing tonight on […]
Last week was a real killer. After I spent a tough but rewarding Monday at UCSF, it seemed I didn’t get a single minute to myself. Now that the professors in my group are back at MIT, I’m trying to make sure that the students are making progress and that […]
Today I had the *immense* pleasure of a day away from SLAC. Wait a second. That sounded all wrong. You see, the pleasure was not in the separation from my laboratory; the pleasure was the company I kept while away, and the work I got to do. I got into […]
My colleague “Caolionn O’Connell has written a PSA for physics”:http://qd.typepad.com/13/2005/09/public_service_.html. I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about that Prairie Home Companion skit about how being an English major teaches you the life skills you need to succeed. Then again, success in physics really does prepare you to solve […]
This labor day weekend, I am setting aside the sacrifices of my ancestors.These brave men and later, women, struggled to free themselves of the oppressive bonds of the industrial elite. The won their rights, they won their dignity, and for that we should be eternally grateful. But, here I am, […]
Sometimes, University of Maryland physicist Bob Park has an uncanny knack for hitting every week’s science and society issues right on their collective head. This week is an excellent example. “Just go and read all his comments”:http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn090205.html. From women’s health and the growingly arbitrary definition of “life”, to the irrefutable […]
This month’s issue of Physics Today contains an article entitled “Evolution Wars Show No Sign of Abating”:http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-8/p24.html. It’s free on the web, for all you non-subscribers (and I know there are just a few of you!). It’s a nice, but (as usual) scary, overview of this confusing mess into which […]
In this, the third in a series of short essays about the structure of our universe, I will introduce you to a mysterious and elusive particle, the neutrino. This essay will do the work of three, since there are three different kinds of neutrinos. Their histories are closely linked, so […]
August is a “dead month” for my collaboration, on a variety of levels. This is the standard European vacation season, so ~half of my collaboration is winking in and out of existence. This happens to be a month I **don’t** like to vacate, mostly because it’s quiet and I can […]
I’ve had the pleasure and the pain of being a BaBar reviewer for the past year on an analysis of the rare process b->sγ. This analysis has been in preparation for years, and believe it or not the analysts (and the review committee) worked on this thing pretty much continuously […]
This week was a very exciting week, both for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (“SLAC”:http://www.slac.stanford.edu), where I do my research, and for me personally. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, a member of the U.S. Cabinet and head of the U.S. Department of Energy, visited SLAC to learn more about the […]