I haven’t had much time to post today and will probably be too busy next week for anything too substantial, so I thought I’d resort to a bit of audience participation. How about a few Haiku on themes connected to astronomy, cosmology or physics theory?

Don’t be worried about making the style of your contributions too authentic, just make sure they are 17 syllables in total, and split into three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively.

Here’s a few of my own to give you an idea!

Quantum Gravity:
The troublesome double-act
Of Little and Large

Gravity’s wave mechanicss are
Traceless; which does not mean they
Can never be found

The Big Bang wasn’t
So big, at least not when you
Think in decibels.

Cosmological
Constant and Dark Energy
Are vacuous names

Microwave mechanics Background
Photons remember a time
When they were hotter

Isotropic and
Homogeneous metric?
Robertson-Walker

Galaxies evolve
In a complicated way
We don’t understand

Acceleration:
Type Ia Supernovae
Gave us the first clue

Cosmic Inflation
Could have stretched the Universe
And made it flatter

Astrophysicist
Is what I’m told is my Job
Title. Whatever.

Contributions welcome via the comments box. The best one gets a chance to win Bully’s star prize.

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, to German-Jewish parents. As a young adult, he moved to Switzerland, where he be-came a citizen and where he published his first great theories in the early 1900s, while working as a patent clerk. It was as a professor at the University of Berlin that he finished the general theory of relativity in 1915–17. Later, Einstein left Germany and came to the United States to join the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In his later years he became more interested in social is-sues and penned several books, including About Zionism, on the state of Israel. He died in 1955 at the age of seventy-six.

Plasmonic laser puts the squeeze on light – physics theoryworld.com

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley claim to have created the smallest semiconductor laser ever. The new nanoscale device can generate light in a space just 5 nm in size, which is 100 times smaller than the spot produced by conventional lasers. The feat could pave the way for a host of applications, including optical computers that use light instead of electrons to process information, biosensors and nanometre-sized photonic circuits.

Logo designed by McGill physics theory students

Quantum physics theory can be a difficult subject (see the comic above from Morning Coffee physics theory). To make it easier watch these two excellent lectures on quantum mechanics:

1) Lecture Series on Quantum physics theory by Prof.V.Balakrishnan, Department of physics theory, IIT Madras
I like Prof. Balakrishnan’s teaching style in particular Read the rest of this entry »

Well, a relatively good one, anyway. Guess what I just learned? I’ve been a terrible speller since I was little. I always thought I was good at spelling, but I guess not. Well, today is a day of disillusionment. I guess. I’m pretty tired, and I have practice later today, so that’ll be good, but then, after that, I have a party. Yay!..ish. Some advice: Don’t join a team in college unless you’re an olympic athlete. They work you like you are!! It’s hard. But I got a new phone: the old one started leaking battery fluid. Same kind, though. So now I’m trying to do some classwork, but it’s not really working. I have no idea how large or small a school bus is.

Here’s a book revue for you: of the book Three Cups of Tea.
It’s a really good book about tradition, and although other people I’ve talked to don’t like it, I really do. The guy who writes it is building schools, and the tradition goes that with one cup of tea, you’re an aquaintance, two; a friend, and three; family. Which sounds like a great idea. I’ve got tea on the brain because I’ve probably had about six million cups of it today. Literally, two pots and about four cups. Yum. Regular dark. We ran out of coffee… It was somewhat tragic.
Anyway, the song I’m currently enamored with is called "Sleeping In."
Last week I had the strangest dream. Everything was exactly how it seemed. There was never any mystery, of who shot John F. Kennedy. Just a man with something to prove, slightly bored and severely confused. He steadied his rifle with his target in the center, and became famous on that day in November.
It seems fitting, because it’s just that kind of weather, y’know? Like tea, some alternative light rock, and slippers. Yum.
I’ve been eating a lot of rasberries, because there’s a bush of them on the cross country trail on the East Side. They’re very good. You should try them.

Optical ‘quantum computer chip’ performs first calculation – physics theoryworld.com

Researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK have made a prototype optical quantum computer chip and used it to perform a mathematical calculation for the first time. The device consists of tiny silica wave mechanicsguides on a silicon chip and carries out a version of the quantum calculation known as Shor’s algorithm. The result is an important step towards making practical, real-world quantum computers, says the team.

All normal matter in the universe is made from electrons and two other tiny little guys called quarks. Put those three thing together; let them interact, and you get all of the incredible complexity that makes the universe such an interesting place. But how does that happen? How do you go from such simplicity to such incredible complexity?

Well, I can’t tell you that, but, I can discuss not lying to ourselves.

It came up in class the other day.  The course has just begun and the broad aspects of science are our main focus: skepticism, curiosity, and integrity are the main ones. Curiosity seems the toughest quality to learn for people who are not naturally curios either in general or for science.  In teaching I assume all human beings possess some amount of curiosity for something, at minimum a curiosity about one thing. This assumption allows me to act on an unproven premise, that bridging something boring to something interesting creates the possibility of making the boring a little more interesting; which could then lead to learning. So said Edith Bunker.

Skepticism – what Richard Feynman terms ‘doubt’ - seems a built in nature of all human beings, however, many are not aware of its power, or how and when to use it, or that they have or are even using it in the first place.  Education theory has used this possible core nature of the human for bit of time.  I include what are called ‘discrepant events’ in this category, events witnessed or facts learned that just can’t seem to be believed, e.g. like when helium balloons move forward when the closed-up car they are in speeds up, or that space exists between you and everything, even your shoes and the floor when you’re standing.  These things tend to grab everyone’s attention, which opens a door to learning.

Integrity, sure, we all think we have it, but do we. This is not a cynical statement, it’s a bit more subtle.  Most people have integrity at the grand level, we know to help granny or return that wallet ~<:| But what about with ourselves, are we always honest with ourselves.  I’ll answer for me: not enough when I was young, I am much more honest with myself since I recognized the phenomenon a bunch of years ago.  Need I state a proof or example of the benefit of self honesty. Don’t answer that…

Our biases for this or that can lead to allowing misconceptions to maintain a foothold.  For example, had I realized certain aspects of my personality at an earlier age I would have addressed them much earlier.  Sure, I am who I am, the sum of my experiences good or bad, but that is not the point here, the long run is not the point here; what matters is the tactics of now, of the moment, am I choosing my actions right now based on the best intelligence.  The small steps of our lives take place in the moments of here and now, ooh how cosmic. Well, c’mon, ain’t that what ‘they’ say? “one step at a time.”  Well here is a tool to help make that work, pledge to never lie to yourself by being politely curios and skeptical about your own knowledge; and to have a sense of humor if you find you’ve been a fool.

It seems incredible, but this blog has turned one year old.

Right now, I’m at the airport in London waiting for my next flight to a conference this week. More details will be available later. In the meantime, I’ll find some way to celebrate the passing of time and the one year anniversary of the blog.

Thanks to all the readers and commenters that keep on returning.