Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion. // In this week’s Nature physics theory an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.

”What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of physics theory, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’

The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.

The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminium turned transparent.

Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period – an estimated 40 femtoseconds – it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.

Professor Wark added: ‘What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminium into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser. For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon: it’s almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light!’

- via physorg

Song of the moment: “Shiny Happy People” by B-52’s

Today was a good day, even though it really didn’t start that way.

I woke up (I use the term loosely, considering I basically tossed and turned all goddamn night) right before my alarm went off at 6, pissed at everything. I was tired, cranky, and wanted to go anywhere other than work.

But, being the responsible adult I am (oh right), I dragged my ass over to the hellhole that is The Lab. And guess what? I did some stamping and some packaging and spent a good portion of the day sitting around and fucking waiting for my boss to come up with some menial task for me to do. Yes, this is truly employment worthy of my mental abilities and energy. To top it all off, they don’t even want me to come in tomorrow, because they don’t think they’ll have enough work for me. Which, though I don’t get paid, doesn’t really hurt my feelings. At all.

On the way to work, I realized my iPod was shorting out strangely. Horrified, I knew what was happening: the other half of my headphone jack was crapping out. Prior experience told me that my remaining headphone had anywhere from 2 days to 3 weeks left before it said goodbye to the cruel world and left me cut off from my music.

Needless to say, I was upset by this little turn of events.

After work, I wandered over the Wal-Mart way, having made the decision to forgo buying a 360 when I return to EL in favor of replacing my beloved iPod. And it was here I was faced with a ridiculous choice: do I spend less money (always a good thing) for a measly 8GB of space, or do I fork over the extra cash for 120GB? Yes, these were my options. Too little space for all of my music or way too fucking much.

In the middle of my deliberations, I got a call from Squeaks. It was nice to hear from him, but the most important part of the call occurred when he handed the phone over to his girlfriend. Despite my previous aversion to living with Amanda, she tossed an offer on the table that made me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs. She found a studio apartment close to campus for under $500 a month. Split between the two of us, that’s a meager $250 monthly. How can I turn that down?

So, it looks like I might have one major item off my August checklist. That’s an enormous relief.

Armed with that information, I threw caution to the wind and bought the megasuperdeluxe 120GB iPod beast. What? I miss having all my music at my fingertips all the time. So, Karla 3.0 is only 1/3 full, with tons of wiggle room to feed my music addiction. Joy.

Plus, I think I’ve conned my brother into going with me to the Heart Mountain relocation camp tomorrow. I’ve always wanted to head up there, but I never have. I’m determined to correct that.

So, to recap, I got tomorrow off, got a fancy new tech toy, have an apartment for next year, and get to go on an adventure tomorrow. Life is pretty okay right now, I must say. Now, to get back to rebuilding all my damn playlists… I’m only on the letter “B” under artists. This could take a while…

Bonus link of the day: Watch out, world. What if all our perceptions of time are completely wrong? Take that, physics theory!

It is conference season again. The big one coming up now is Lepton/Photon ‘09 (and yes, I will deeptalk it when it is done!). The run-up to a conference like this is a huge amount of work. The analyzers who are trying to submit analysis are all furiously putting finishing touches on the experiment. And everyone else in the collaboration is busy reviewing these analyses to make sure they don’t have mistakes!

I’m on one of the review boards. It is a lot of work – we regularly  get analysis notes that are more than 100 pages in length. As you can imagine, going over them with a fine-tooth comb is a lot of work. And Tevatron analyses are now getting extremely sophisticated. They have to in order to extract every last bit of value from the data rolling out of Fermilab.

I’m used to reading these by now. But I’m always impressed when I listen to other fellow reviewers at how often I miss things. So this time around I’m trying something new to organize my thoughts, comments, etc. A mind map. I’ve used this stuff in the past and found it most useful for organizing a brain-storming session. I’ve never tried to do something this detailed or careful with it before.

It turns out getting a mind map up with questions for the review the first time isn’t that hard:

The real test will come when I incorporate people’s answers back into this. Anyone else tried to do something like this before?

As far as the software I’m actually using. I once tried out MindManager from MindJet. I loved it because it was well integrated with my tablet (i.e. I could use my pen to think, which seems to be how my mind works). It does way more than I ever needed – and I didn’t like the price tag so much, either. So I’ve been using FreeMind – free and java based and not really well integrated with Windows, but it works.

Raman spectroscopy for soft matter applications
QC 463 P5 R36 2009

Quantum tunnelling in enzyme-catalysed reactions
QC 176.8 T8 Q83 2009

Quantum theory of the optical and electronic properties of semiconductors
QC 611.6 O6 H44 2009

Theory and design of charged particle beams
QC 793.3 B4 R45 2008

What’s the matter?: readings in physics theory
QC 7.5 W53 2007

Nanoscopic materials: size-dependent phenomena
QC 176.8 N35 R63 2006

The light fantastic: a modern introduction to classical and quantum optics
QC 355.3 K46 2008

• An Introduction to Stochastic PDEs. (arXiv:0907.4178v1 [math.PR])
• Holonomy loops, spectral triples and quantum gravity
• How Far Are We from the Quantum Theory of Gravity?. (arXiv:0907.4238v1 [gr-qc])
• Improved and Perfect Actions in Discrete Gravity. (arXiv:0907.4323v1 [gr-qc]), Regge calculus from a new angle. (arXiv:0907.4325v1 [gr-qc])
• Generalized instantons in N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory and spinorial geometry. (arXiv:0907.4174v1 [hep-th])
• “Poincaré’s legacies” now published

• Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished?
• Influences on Peer Review: Authors as Reviewers
• If a screening test is 90% accurate, and your result comes back positive, what are the chances it is a false positive?
• JANE: Journal and Author Name Estimator
• fabricate: The better “make” — finds dependencies automatically for any language

I don’t feel good being done. It may be that I was working 10-12 hours minumum every day on my thesis for the past three weeks. However, I know it isn’t great or even good. Two sections I’m happy with, one I’m tepid towards, and two sections are just not good in my opinion. Unfortunately, the analysis was one of the not good sections. Writing that was remarkably difficult, even though I’d say I fair very well when writing like lab reports.

I sent it to my advisor, because well, I’m stuck on how to make my thesis great. I don’t like doing that, because I feel like it reflects poorly on me and I don’t want to disappoint my advisor or make him think I didn’t take my time. I have really tried. My life basically had stopped for my thesis, and I had put a lot of thought into understanding everything in it.

Let’s hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I had the privilege of attending the Science Chicago’s Science Saturday tour From Sidewalks to Skyscrapers at Portland Cement and CTL group a few weeks ago.  At the tour, I had a conversation with Mr. Larry Novak, a structural engineer on such buildings as the Trump Tower and the Burj Dubai, and he gave me the idea for this cool Life’s a Lab Challenge.  Ironically, later that day, I had a high temperature of 103.5ºF, and I was sick in bed with the flu for the next week.

The Scoop

Temperature is a measure of how hot or coldness something is.  Hot, cold, lukewarm, chilly, sizzling, and freezing are all words that we use to describe temperature. Heating something makes its temperature go up, while cooling something makes its temperature go down.  Everything is made of tiny particles called molecules, and these molecules are always moving.  The faster the molecules move, the hotter it is; and the more you heat something, the faster the molecules move.  Temperature is a measure of how fast the molecules in something are moving.  Temperature is measured in degrees on the Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin scales.

To see for yourself how temperature works, put hot water in one clear cup, and cold water in another.  Drop food coloring into the middle of each cup, and observe the water molecules move the food coloring around.

The Challenge

The Life’s a Lab Challenge this week is to find the best way to cool off this summer, or the best way to get wet!  Use your imagination and lots of science!  Send us your emails, photos, and/or videos by Sunday August 1st, 2009 at 6:00pm and you may be this week’s cool winner!

Stay Cool!

-Heather