Well, the opening talk is done. GPB has seen what they call “glimpses” of frame dragging, a critical prediction of GR. However, clearly not all experimental effects are understood. Looks like they are planning for a December final analysis…
APS begins! We start with the first results from GPB. This probe orbits earth and makes a critical test of general relativity.
After a delay in Denver, a race to catch my Charlotte flight, and then a half-our delay before we were first to take off, I finally arrive in Jacksonville. It’s quite nice here. As with most American cities, there seems to be this strange intermingling of poverty and development. A […]
Airlines have us by the genitals. We pay hundreds of dollars to sit well within accepted standards of personal space, pay $5 more for crappy food, and breathe dry, recycled air. Then the unthinkable happens: they try to sell us a credit card? That’s right. Sitting here, two hours into […]
On my morning flight to Denver, I caught up on some Science Friday podcasts. The one on the Chevy Volt reminded me how crappy American innovation has become. The GM spokeswoman proudly touted that their best offered vehicle will (later this year) be a Saturn Hybrid that gets 28/35 MPG […]
The American Physical Society meeting begins on Saturday morning, and I’m getting ready to hop a super-early flight tomorrow to get to Jacksonville at a reasonable hour. It’s a trade-off, one with which any cross-country business traveler is well acquainted. I intend to keep a record of my adventures at […]
Blinding. It’s a word that is used in funny ways in science. “We performed a blind analysis.” “We blinded the data until we had finished our background studies.” “We fit for the background, extrapolating into the blind region.” “Blind” is used as a verb, adjective, noun, and just about every […]
When I was working at Stanford the other day, something happened which hasn’t happened at SLAC in a long time. Well, to be fair, it hasn’t happened in my office building in a long time. People argued about physics in the hallways, at white boards, over espresso. I hadn’t realized […]
Today, I decided to work from the third floor of the Varian physics building. None of my MIT colleagues are around SLAC, and the office building where I work gets a little lonely between collaboration meetings. Nonetheless, I have no lack of work to do and I find getting away […]
NPR is featuring several stories about the LHC on their programming today. For starters, check out this report from “Morning Edition”, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9433495 Tonight, on “All Things Considered”, they will continue their coverage. Exciting! I like that the report covers all the possibilities, including the possibility that nothing will be found […]
Last year, right-wing pundit and flapping head Ann Coulter published a book entitled “Godless”. In it, she raised yet again the tired accusations that all Democrats are godless politicians, hell-bent (is that the right phrase?) on creating a society that crushes religion out of every private life. Sigh. Of course, […]
There are rumors in the particle physics community: MiniBooNE is releasing its results this week. A lot of people are muttering about it, with both hope and concern. MiniBooNE, the “miniature” version of the Booster Neutrino Experiment (BOONE), is a neutrino experiment based at Fermilab. It takes the low-energy protons […]