Several Fellowships - Hamburg, Germany, written 2 days ago, Closing date: 15 Oct 2008

LHC beam particles observed by a detector, written 1 week ago, One of the other three LHC experiments, LHCb, had the honor of observing the first beam particles!  The diagram in my August 24 post shows the parts of the LHC that have seen beam so far, which includes LHCb (on the red line).  All fou...

Find out what US candidates think about science issues, written 2 days ago, Top US science and engineering networking and lobbyist groups have joined forces to create a questionnaire for elected officials and candidates to assess their views on the nation's most prominent science issues.

Cosmology, astronomy, Einstein & relativity, and quantum mechanics for everyone. All views are presented, including my own :)

a nation of winers, written 11 hours ago, Thomas Jefferson may well have been America's first great wine connoisseur, according to a 2007 article in The New Yorker about the growing epidemic of wine fraud. See, Jefferson spent several years as Minister to France from 1785 until the...

Interna II, written 10 hours ago, While my wife is busy with all kinds of last-minute preparations for the conference tomorrow, I've spent the weekend unpacking the last bunch of boxes. Normal life hopefully will resume soon, including an occasional contribution to our blog...In the meantime, just d...

No Z' below 1 TeV, written 16 hours ago, New heavy bosons are predicted by several models of physics beyond the standard model. In particular, heavy versions of the Z° boson, called generically Z' but sometimes distinguished by greek subscripts (, , etc.), might constitute the quickest route to a d...

Two new Mersenne primes & Mersenne's 420th birthday, written 1 hour ago, Marin Mersenne was born on September 8th, 1588, which is exactly 420 years ago. Exactly one week ago, on September 1st, we also celebrated the 360th anniversary of his death. Together with the two new numbers announced belo...

Common sense, written 6 days ago, Just because something can happen does not mean that it will. For example, the wind can blow a stack of papers off a desk into a disorganized pile on the floor but it can also pick up a disorganized stack of papers and organized them on a desk. However, common sense...

I am a PhD candidate conducting a study of the X-ray spectral variability of AGN. This blog is a collection of brief tutorials on AGN, burblings on journal articles, and descriptions of underlying physics.

GE-Hitachi to miss Turkey bid deadline, written 9 hours ago, It is the second firm to go public with concerns about Turkey's nuclear plans GE-Hitachi is the second firm which will not meet the Sept 24 deadline for bids for a new nuclear power plant in Turkey. Bloomberg wire service reported Sept 4 t...

Isotope shortage could delay cancer treatments, written 9 hours ago, Nature News: Technical glitches at a Dutch nuclear reactor that produces medical isotopes could lead to rationing of medical tests and treatments across Europe. The High Flux Reactor in Petten is the world's second-largest manufact...

100% of your daily required physics

Back Home…, written 2 days ago, Tomorrow I return home to Seattle. First time on American soil in about 8 months and first time back in Seattle in a little less than a year. I wonder if they still have an office for me at UW? There are some things I'm defiantly looking forward to - like Bell Town ...

LHC Roundup, written 3 days ago, The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC is still set for next Wednesday, and the media is already full of LHC stories, with a lot more to come next week. Events are being organized all over the world to celebrate the day, including a 1:30 am pajama party at ...

Physics, computation, philosophy of mind.

Gravity : An Emergent Perspective, written 3 days ago,

Decommissioning SciBooNE, written 3 days ago, We have just done something on SciBooNE that has become somewhat rare in the field these days: we turned off the detector intentionally! On 18 August 2008, the SciBooNE neutrino beam data run offically ended at 08:00 in the morning (CDT). It seems like o...

Short Note: OPV Lifetime, written 3 weeks ago, Another brief note from the SPIE conference. Right now, the results of an organic photovoltaics lifetime workshop are being presented. Information and roadmap are summarised on a free wiki page. Add to Connotea

Groups and Matrix Fun, written 2 weeks ago, In the process of working through Introduction to Elementary Particles (Griffiths), this summer, I've been trying most of the end-of-chapter exercises. Some are reminders of things I did a while ago, others are a different take on something I did fairly re...