The following are statements from Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, juxtaposed with images of the scientific evidence. See how long you can keep your brain from hemorrhaging. These statements were made at the Colorado Energy Summit on Monday, Feb. 6. “We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have […]
physics
High temperatures in Texas have been above 100 for over a month. When we park our car to go shopping, there is rarely any tree shade in which to place the car. As a result, the car is left in the direct glare of the sun, with windows closed (since […]
I’ve been neglecting the science and journal aspects of this blog for some time. The reasons are good – I have been focusing on the things that have been demanding my time since the Christmas break. Mainly, faculty job search-related activities, ramping up for this year’s lobbying trip to Washington […]
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 […]
I don’t have a lot of time to say too much – in fact, I’ve planned a rather informative look back on my seminar trip that I’ll write later – but I can say this: what an incredible month this has been. I have learned a terrific amount about over […]
For many years, I have felt daunted by the quantum structure of nature. Don’t get me wrong – I studied it in lab class and I read a lot about it in my textbooks. It’s one thing to repeat an old experiment, or read a book; it’s quite another to […]
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure and privelege of presenting BaBar’s recent work on the bottomonium system to an audience at the MIT Lab for Nuclear Science Colloquium. This was my first colloquium, and I’m told it went quite well. I got some great questions afterward, which I intend to […]
This is going to be a stressful week. Deadlines for my research are starting to approach, and this coming weekend I fly to Italy for the last of the Elba BaBar collaboration meetings. Every four years, BaBar has convened in the spring in Elba to discuss the work that is […]
As I mentioned earlier today, the rumor is that in the next day the LIBRA experiment will release its first follow-on results to the DAMA experiment. Why is this such news? Let’s review. In 2000, the DAMA experiment published an observation of an annual modulation signal which they interpreted as […]
Today and tomorrow are the last scheduled shifts for the Babar experiment. I have the pleasure of being on shift as the Liaison yet again, sitting in the main accelerator control room and passing information between Babar and the accelerator operators. Jodi came with me and baked a bunch of […]
Since the big one, there have been few bangs as spectacular. In our frigid modern universe, two are still quite phenomenal. The first are gamma ray bursts, intense explosions that occur all the time and are largely believed to be the result of a massive rotating star experiencing a total […]
A friend of mine recently sent me a summary of a relevant portion of H.R. 2641, the FY2008 House Energy and Water Appropriations bill. In the more common tongue, this is the budget proposal from Congress for the Department of Energy, an agency that funds much of the U.S. basic […]