As many commenters will be quick to tell you, this is a physics blog and we should stay away from politics, about which we are hopelessly naive. But I have the keys to the blog, so I can occasionally quote myself. March 2007:

The fact that Rudy Giuliani is currently leading in Republican polls, and that smart people occasionally opine that he could win the election or even be a good President, is a source of unlimited amazement to me…

If Rudy Giuliani wins the 2008 general election, I promise to never again make a political prediction in public for the rest of my life.

Whew, that was a close one!

Heck, I may do nothing but politics from now on. If Mark Penn and Bob Shrum can pull down millions as Democratic consultants, why not me?

Best quote from that comment thread: “Fred Thompson isn’t inspiring anyone? Once again, Sean Carroll erroneously invokes pluralis majestatis.”

I got this letter in the mail the other day:

I Don’t know if you Exist But I Do! I bo not Agree with your Articl and I Do not Beleave that “MOMBO-JOMBO” if you do … Well! it’s Disturbing thought But I know How to Deal with it! I will Not let the Wolb Disiper under My Nose But if you Do I cant say I’m sorry!

Sincerely

a ten year old who knows a little more than some Pepeol!

George Wing

ps. some peopl Have a little to Much time.

In response, of course, to the NYT story about Boltzmann’s Brain. George’s father Michael, a high-school science teacher, was moved to send it along (and gave me permission to post it), suggesting that “maybe it is really a Boltzmann brain speaking.”

To which I can only respond: awesome. A fourth-grader reads an article in the Science Times, and is so moved by outrage that he pens a stern missive to the scientists quoted? It’s not very often that you have a chance to inspire a young mind like that, even if you do inspire him to berate you.

Of course, George did fall into a slight trap with respect to the logic underlying the article. But that’s okay — he’s only ten years old, and there are plenty of grownups with Ph.D.’s in physics who fell into the same trap! The trap is to imagine, despite explicit disclaimers to the contrary, that the Boltzmann’s Brain argument goes something like this:

• Certain cosmological scenarios predict that it’s more likely for a brain like yours or mine to arise as a random fluctuation, rather than through orderly evolution.
• Isn’t that cool????

That’s really not the argument that anyone is trying to make. Rather, it goes like this:

• Certain cosmological scenarios predict that it’s more likely for a brain like yours or mine to arise as a random fluctuation, rather than through orderly evolution.
• Our brains aren’t like that.
• Therefore, those scenarios are not correct.

It’s kind of an old-fashioned argument. Take a theory, use it to make a prediction, the prediction isn’t correct, and therefore the theory has been falsified! Rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but it works for me.

Other critics are uncharitable for different reasons. For example Don Walton, founder and president of Time For Truth Ministeries:

I believe the accusation leveled against the Apostle Paul by Festus in Acts 26:24 — “much learning is making you mad” — is most apropos for today’s cosmologists.

Hey, question my existence and suggest that I have too much time on my hands, fine — I can deal with that. But comparing me to Saint Paul? That is a low blow, sir. And somewhat unprecedented.

When you’re ten years old, you don’t have to be right — you should be curious and passionate, and George definitely is on the right track. I look forward to recruiting him to grad school some day. For the grownups I have less hope.

Physics Central is sponsoring a contest with a Super Bowl tie-in — a prize for the best video “that demonstrates some aspect of physics in football.” (Is there such a thing? Need you even ask?) Just load it up to YouTube with the tag “nanobowl,” but hurry — the deadline is this Sunday, February 3rd.

The winner will receive (seriously) a nanoscale trophy, visible only with an electron microscope! Oh yes, and the winner will also receive $1,000. In normal-sized money.

Now that late January is upon us, a wave of graduate school admissions letters is soon to come crashing down upon undergraduates throughout the land. The process can be immensely frustrating to a student, as one often has little idea as to what magic ingredient is determining whether one is admitted or rejected from different schools. Having been involved in graduate admissions decisions for much of the last decade, I therefore thought I’d give a summary of how it’s done at UW Astronomy, so students can get a sense of where in the process their application might potentially go astray. My take will be different from other schools and other departments whose admissions committees may emphasize different strengths, but at least it’s one data point where few are available.

Details below the fold. Enter if you dare!
Continue reading ‘The Other Side of Graduate Admissions’

… unless you have a white board to doodle on.

Jennifer has the scoop. If you look closely, you’ll see not only bits about entropy and Einstein’s equation (twice), but some hurricanes, stem cells, allusion to a recent blog post, and a clever design for a lunar lander.

Every day is better with a little Nina Simone.

Simone affected an imperturbable demeanor onstage, but she had an eventful life. She gave her first classical piano recital at age ten and later trained at Julliard, but started playing jazz and blues to earn a living at a time when black women pianists were not highly sought-after in the world of classical music. In the 1960’s she became active in the civil rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King and recording protest songs such as Mississippi Goddam. Her struggles with bipolar disorder were kept secret until after her death in 2003. Her music brought together influences from jazz, classical, and soul. And she could rock out when the occasion required.

Given that no one seems to have told Seattle about the housing bubble or economic downturn, developers are throwing up Hip! New! Condos! all over the metropolitan area. The most heavily advertised are those just north of downtown, in the South Lake Union area, largely because this area is underdeveloped, awash in biotech firms, and the future site of the new Amazon headquarters. Given the neighborhood’s demographic, the new condos are naturally targeting high-tech urban professionals who can afford $500K for a one-bedroom loft.

Now, if you were marketing condos to someone working in “high-tech”, would you then name your condo development this?

Carbon-fifty-WHA!?!?! Carbon 12, or Carbon 13, now that I’d consider, but 56????? There’s no “56″ anywhere in the address, or even in the stupid phone number. It’s not at the intersection of 7th and 8th (it’s near 9th, but 56 isn’t even divisible by 9). A bit of web research finally reveals that there are 56 units in the building, but that’s hardly reason enough for forcing residents to sound like scientifically illiterate ignoramuses every time they give their address: “Where should you pick me up? Oh, just outside of Carbon-mumble-mumble-mumble….”

I just can’t wait till they sell all the darn things, because the ads make me flinch.

For a long time I was reluctant to joint the many other sciencey blogs that had integrated equations by providing support for LaTeX, the technical typesetting system that nearly every physicist and mathematician uses. Possible reasons for this attitude include:

1. We felt it was important to remain accessible to a wide range of readership, and feared that the appearance of equations would put people off (and tempt us into being unnecessarily technical).
2. It sounded like work.

You can decide for yourself which is more true. The good thing is, there is no wrong answer!

But right now I am uninspired to blog because my brain is preoccupied with real science stuff. So I thought of posting about some of the fun ideas in quantum mechanics I’ve been learning about. But there’s really no way to do it without equations. So for that reason, and in belated honor of Donald Knuth’s birthday, I went and installed the LatexRenderer plugin. (Amazingly, InMotion Hosting already had LaTeX installed on our server. Yay for them!)

So now it’s easy to include equations; they should even be available in comments. All you have to do is type [tex], then your LaTeX commands, then [/tex]. So for example

[tex]R_{\mu\nu}-\frac{1}{2}Rg_{\mu\nu}=8\pi G T_{\mu\nu}[/tex]

should produce

.

Note the forward slash in the closing [/tex]! TeX-like commands use backslashes, but html-like commands use forward slashes.

There are a million online tutorials; try this list of commands to get you started. Use comments to this post to try it out. (Sadly, no preview, so be careful, and this post will remain open for playing around.) One thing I’ve noticed: don’t use linebreaks within the formulas, just put everything on the same line. And use “\displaystyle” if you want the look of a set-off (rather than in-line) equation.

But now I should get back to work. So to keep you thinking, here are a couple of equations from the stuff I’m thinking about and hopefully will explain soon:

Kind of beautiful, in an austere way, don’t you think?

Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel Corporation, doesn’t mince words. In a scathing op-ed piece in the SF Chronicle, he describes the high-tech industry view of the dreadful state of funding for basic science research in 2008, due to the last-minute earmarking by the congressional appropriations committees.

“At a time when the rest of the world is increasing its emphasis on math and science education (the most recent international tests - NAEP and PISA - show U.S. kids to be below average) and increasing their budgets for basic engineering and physical science research, Congress is telling the world these areas are not important to our future.”

Mr. Barrett, thank you!

I do so love the internet. Anyone who has gone to pick someone up at the airport knows that planes don’t always land at their scheduled times. So nowadays, of course, you can check the web page for the appropriate airline and find out whether the plane is delayed or on time.

But you know what would be even better? If you could call up a Google map that showed the flight plan and current location of the plane.

And now you can! At least, for Delta flights. Do any other airlines do this? And if not, why not?

Wait, I answered my own question, using — you guessed it — the internet. Just go to Flightstats.com (obviously), where they will apparently give you a map of whatever flight you want. And if you’re bored, you can just pick a random flight! And then you will be, if not less bored, at least somewhat bemused.