Sidney Drell And Vera Rubin

We lost two incredible and important figures in physics during this holiday season.

Sidney Drell, the elementary particle theoretical physicist responsible for the Drell-Yan process, passed away on Dec. 21, 2016. As important as his work in physics, he was also a central figure in the effort of nuclear disarmament. His accomplishments and efforts are just too numerous to list here, and you should do yourself a favor and read about him. He has no doubt had a hand in shaping our world today.

We lost Vera Rubin on Christmas day. She was one of the first astronomers to make the Dark Matter detection, and someone whom I thought should have already been awarded the Nobel Prize. So this year, we lost two extremely strong women candidates for the Nobel prize, Rubin and Deborah Jin.

Zz.

Antihydrogen Looks Just Like Hydrogen

The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has measured the first ever 2s-1s transition in antihydrogen atoms, and it looks like the Standard Model and CPT symmetry are still correct!

Carrying out the whole procedure 11 times, the group found that on average just under 60% of antiatoms left the trap with the laser tuned to the 1s-2s transition, while no antiatoms (within the bounds of statistical error) dropped out when the laser was tuned to a different frequency or when it was switched off. The researchers say that the antiatoms underwent the transition at the expected frequency and therefore behaved no differently from normal hydrogen.

I'm sure there will be many more to come. The ability to store antihydrogen long enough to study it is a major accomplishment in itself.

Zz.

"Germany's Wildly Complex Fusion Reactor Is Actually Working" - Fake News?

Does qualify as "Fake news", or are they just being stupid?

I posted yesterday about the successful test of the Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator magnetic field. It definitely should deserve the media publicity, because the topology of the magnetic field is very complex and very crucial to how they intend to hold the plasma that they will generate. But this is simply just ONE STEP towards the operation of this machine. They still haven't achieve yet what they intend to do.

So it is with a bit of a dismay that I read news reports that somehow indicated that this "fusion reactor" is "actually working"! Now, I wouldn't have paid much attention had this come from some obscure site, but this one actually came from Popular Mechanics!

However, the stellerator design is still relatively untested, so a group of researchers spent the past year studying the W7-X reactor to ensure that it was working the way it was supposed to. They found an incredibly small error rate, less than 1 in 100,000, which the researchers characterized as "unprecedented accuracy."

This is good news for the W7-X reactor, which was intended as a proof-of-concept for the stellerator design. Now that the researchers know the accuracy of the reactor's magnetic fields, they can begin building new reactors that focus on efficiency.

I'm sorry, but if you don't know any better, you'd think that this darn thing is now working, and they're now going to design "new reactors" with better performance. 

Bullcrap!

How dense can one be to get this report wrong? The actual paper, which one can read freely online, clearly indicated that this was a test of the complicated magnetic field, not the actual working of the reactor.

I would not be surprised if this is nothing more than a wrong piece of information that got passed around. I see Science Alert having the same type of headlines in their report.

All of these are misleading, and worst still, they are misleading the public who do not have the awareness of what is going on. And this is sad because the public often relies on these type of news sources, and yet, they are being given, at best, a misleading information.

Zz.

Confirmation Of Wendelstein 7-X Magnetic Field

I mentioned a while back that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator was about to go on with their tests. One of the most novel aspect of this fusion machine is the complex topology of its magnetic field.

We now have a report that confirms the topology of this magnetic field, with an agreement of better than 1:100,000. The field lines that they saw as shown in Fig. 2 of the paper is astounding and science-fictiony!

Well done, people!

Zz.

What Is The Big Deal With This Math Problem?

For at least a year now, I've seen this math problem being floated about the various new websites. And I don't understand why it is such a big deal.

The problem involves a simple math problem that many students first learned in an intro algebra class:

Now, any child learning something like this would have to also learn about the SEQUENCE of operations that one has to perform to do this correctly. If you simply start to enter this into your calculator in order that it is written, you'll get the wrong answer.

And of course, you have to know that dividing by 1/3 is equivalent to multiplying by 3.

There are many mnemonic guides that one can use to know which one to perform first. In this case, you first perform the division, thus simplifying the equation into:

9 - 9 + 1 = ?

which will obviously leave you with the answer of 1.

This problem is getting rather a lot of publicity because it claims that a lot of people didn't get the right answer for something that seemingly looks very simple. My response to that is: Yeah, so?

When one learns this rule in school, one is given many similar problems of this type. This is not an unusual problem, and certainly something a lot of people will get wrong if they don't remember what the rule is. This is not surprising.

But why is it getting this much publicity?

Zz.

What So Spooky About Quantum Entanglemnt?

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but this question DOES keep popping up regularly on many websites and forums. And when a new article tries to explain this again, it bares repeating.

This article tries to explain what is so "spooky" about quantum entanglement. The "spookiness" comes from Einstein's description of quantum mechanics which he showed, via the EPR-type measurement, that information about a quantum property can be "transferred" instantaneously between entities across space.

You'll notice that in the article, the author had to go back and explain the concept of superposition of states. This is what makes this type of phenomenon different than the classical phenomenon.

Let’s go over the issue of entanglement to start. The experiment is normally done with photons: you pass a single quantum of light through a specialized material (e.g., a down-conversion crystal) which splits it into two photons. These photons will be entangled in a particular sense, where one has a spin, or internal angular momentum, of +1, and the other has a spin of -1. But you don’t know which is which. In fact, there are some experiments you can do where, if you had large numbers of these photons, you’d see a difference between:

• the statistical results if the spin was +1,
• the statistical results if the spin was -1,
• or the statistical results if the spin was undetermined.

If you had been following this blog for a while, this is the same attempt that I made to explain quantum entanglement before. This is because most people who are just trying to understand this only pay attention to the "entanglement" aspect of it, i.e. a property being "linked" over a distance, rather than actually understanding the superposition concept, which is actually more well-established. It is the presence of superposition, and the lack of classical realism on a system (before a measurement) that separates this from an ordinary classical conservation-of-quantity phenomenon.

Zz.

The APS In Hot Doo-Doo Over Trump Congratulatory Statement

OK, I missed this, and only now got wind of it.

The  APS issued a congratulatory statement to Donald Trump for winning the US Presidency election, along with urging him to invest in science and technology.

Unfortunately, that congratulatory message didn't go well with a lot of the members, and that message has now been taken down.

The statement smacked many readers as tone-deaf because of Trump’s antagonism to science, as evidenced by his statements suggesting that climate change is a hoax, endorsing online polls over statistically modeled ones and linking vaccines to autism.

According to Prescod-Weinstein, the slogan “Make America Great Again” is problematic because it presupposes that the United States was great when African-Americans were “more likely to be hanged from a tree than welcomed in the physics community” and when Nazi war criminals “became central to the American scientific establishment.”

“If APS’s leadership had any imagination — or concern for those of us who are being threatened by emboldened racists/transphobes/etc.,” she continued, “they would have said, ‘We urge President-elect Trump to finally actually make America great through the allocation of resources that will combat discrimination and hate in all their forms.’”

All I can say is that these next few years are going to be "interesting".

Zz.

Physics In "Doctor Strange"

Adam Frank, a physics professor at the University of Rochester, talks about being a consultant for the upcoming Marvel movie "Doctor Strange".

I suppose the biggest and most dicey issue that he had to deal with is how to deal with "consciousness", because as he stated, we actually do not have a concrete description of it. This is where many movies, and many pseudoscientists, allow themselves wide liberty at abusing the concept.

I will see "Doctor Strange" when it comes up, and I'll see for myself how the movie deals with this.

Zz.

Detecting Particles By Seeing Them Move Faster Than Light

No, this is not a topic on superluminal particles. Rather, it is an article on how we detect particles by using faster-than-light particles in a medium, i.e. by observing the Cherenkov radiation.

But photons only move at that perfect speed-of-light (c) if they’re in a vacuum, or the complete emptiness of space. Put one in a medium — like water, glass, or acrylic — and they’ll move at the speed of light in that medium, which is less than 299,792,458 m/s by quite a bit. Even air, which is pretty close to a vacuum, slows down light by 0.03% from its maximum possible speed. This isn’t that much, but it does mean something remarkable: these high-energy particles that come into the atmosphere are now moving faster than light in that medium, which means they emit a special type of radiation known as Cherenkov radiation.

The article listed several detectors that make use of this effect, but it is missing A LOT more. Practically all neutrino detectors use this principle (i.e. SuperKamiokande). Auger Observatory also looks out for these Cherenkov radiation.

But the part that I think should fascinate the layperson is when the speed of various things are listed, up to the most accurate decimal places:

It’s true that Einstein had it right all the way back in 1905: there is a maximum speed to anything in the Universe, and that speed is the speed of light in a vacuum (c), 299,792,458 m/s. Cosmic ray particles can go faster than anything on Earth, even at the LHC. Here’s a fun list of how fast various particles can go at a variety of accelerators, and from space:

• 980 GeV: fastest Fermilab proton, 0.99999954c, 299,792,320 m/s.
• 6.5 TeV: fastest LHC proton, 0.9999999896c, 299,792,455 m/s.
• 104.5 GeV: fastest LEP electron (fastest accelerator particle ever), 0.999999999988c, 299,792,457.9964 m/s.
• 5 x 10^19 GeV: highest energy cosmic rays ever (assumed to be protons), 0.99999999999999999999973c, 299,792,457.999999999999918 m/s.

 Just notice how much energy we had to put in to, say, the proton in going from 0.99999954c to 0.9999999896c. And then, notice how high of an energy cosmic rays have when compared to the LHC. If these types of collisional energy can create "catastrophic blackholes", we would be gone by now, thankyouverymuch!

Zz.

Nobel Prize Goes Vintage This Year

Wow. While deserving, I didn't see this one coming because I thought the ship had left the harbor a long time ago.

The Nobel committee decided to dig deep and went back in time to award the prize to 3 condensed matter physicists for work done in the early 70's. This year's prize goes to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz.

In the early 1970s, Kosterlitz and Thouless overturned the then-current theory that superconductivity could not occur in extremely thin layers.

 

"They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism -- phase transition -- that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures," explained the Foundation. 

 

Around a decade later, Haldane also studied matter that forms threads so thin they can be considered one-dimensional.

Any condensed matter student would have heard of the Haldane chain, and the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. These are textbooks concepts that are now widely used and accepted. It certainly took then long enough to decide to award the prize to these people.

I wonder if the Nobel committee is delaying the prize for the gravitational wave for another year to make sure it is verified, and to narrow down the people they award it to. Just like the award for the Higgs, there are several people, more than 3, that can easily deserve the prize.

Zz.

Dark Matter Biggest Challenge

A very nice article on Forbes' website on the latest challenge in understanding Dark Matter.

It boils down to on why in some cases, Dark Matter dominates, while in others, it seems that everything can be satisfactorily explained without using it. It is why we continue to study this and why we look for possible Dark Matter candidates.  There is still a lot of physics to be done here.

Zz.

10 Years Of Not Even Wrong

Physics World has a provocative article and podcast to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Peter Woit's devastating criticism of String Theory in his book "Not Even Wrong".

Not Even Wrong coincided with the publication of another book – The Trouble with Physics – that had a similar theme and tone, penned by Woit’s friend and renowned physicist Lee Smolin. Together, the two books put the theory and its practitioners under a critical spotlight and took string theory’s supposed inadequacies to task. The books sparked a sensation both in the string-theory community and in the wider media, which until then had heard only glowing reports of the theory’s successes. 

Interestingly enough, the few students that I've encountered who told me that they want to go into String Theory have never heard or were not aware of Woit's book. I can understand NOT WANTING to read it, but to not even be aware of it and what it is about sounds rather .... naive. This is a prominent physicist who produced a series of undeniable criticism of a particular field of study that you want to go into. Not only should you be aware of it, but you need to read it and figure it out.

It is still a great book to read even if it is 10 years old now.

Zz.

Without Direction, or Has No Prefered Direction?

This is why popular news coverage of science can often make subtle mistakes that might change the meaning of something.

This UPI news coverage talks about a recent publication in PRL that studied the CMB and found no large-scale anisotropy in our universe. What this means is that our universe, based on the CMB, is isotropic, i.e. the same in all direction, and that our universe has no detectable rotation.

However, instead of saying that, it keeps harping on the idea that the universe "has no direction". It has directions. In fact, it has infinite directions. It is just that it looks the same in all of these directions. Not having a preferred direction, or being isotropic, is not exactly the same as "having no direction".

If you read the APS Physics article accompanying this paper, you'll notice that such a phrase was never used.

I don't know. As a layperson, if you read that UPI news article, what impression does that leave you? Or am I making a mountain out of a mole hill here?

Zz.

Recap of ICHEP 2016

If you missed the recent brouhaha about the missing 750 GeV bump, here is the recap of ICHEP conference held recently in Chicago.

Zz.

We Lost Deborah Jin

Wow! I didn't see this one coming.

I just read the news that Deborah Jin, someone who I consider to be a leading candidate to win the Nobel Prize, has passed away on Sept. 15 after a battle with cancer. Her work on the ultra-cold Fermionic gasses was groundbreaking, and she should have been awarded the Nobel Prize a long time ago!

Nearly two decades ago, Jin and her then PhD student Brian DeMarco were the first researchers to observe quantum degeneracy in a sufficiently cooled gas of fermionic atoms. They were the first to demonstrate the creation and control of such an ultracold "Fermi gas", which has since provided us with new insights into superconductivity and other electronic effects in materials. You can read this 2002 feature written by Jin on "A Fermi gas of atoms"

CRAP! We have lost another good one, and well before her time! Deepest condolences to her family and friends.

Edit: Here's the press release from JILA about this.

Zz.

What Happen When A Law Professor Tries To Use The Physics Of Climate Change

Usually, something like this doesn't have a happy ending. This happened in a congressional hearing by Ronald Rotunda of Chapman University’s Fowler School of La.

But during the hearing, Rotunda picked an odd example of such a dissenter — Jerry Mitrovica, a Harvard geoscientist whose work has shown that when, in a warming world, you lose massive amounts of ice from Greenland or Antarctica, sea level actually plunges near these great ice sheets, but rises farther away from them. The reason is gravity: Ice sheets are so massive that they pull the ocean towards them, but as they lose mass, some of the ocean surges back across the globe.

We have covered this idea extensively in the past, including by interviewing Mitrovica. He has found, for instance, that if the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the United States would experience much worse sea level rise than many other parts of the world, simply because it is so distant from West Antarctica. “The peak areas are 30 to 35 percent higher,” Mitrovica told me last year.

But if Greenland melts, pretty much the opposite happens — the Southern hemisphere gets worse sea level rise. And if both melt together, they might partially offset one another.

Rotunda appears to have misinterpreted Mitrovica’s important insight as reflecting a contrarian perspective on climate change.

It is always a bad idea when a person, testifying as an "expert", does not understand the source that person is using, and then had the gall to tell a physicist questioning the conclusion to "read his article".

Zz.

Another Case Where Electrons "Attract" Each Other

This is from a couple of months ago (hey, I'm kinda slow nowadays!), but what the hey....

So we all know (at least, I hope we all do) that the basic mechanism in conventional superconductors is the formation of Cooper Pairs. This is where two electrons in the material form an attractive coupling, which simply means that two electrons attraction each other. Despite the Coulomb repulsion between the two electrons, this attraction is due to the fact that the electrons live in a sea of phonons (lattice vibrations) that are formed by the positive ions of the material (or crystal lattice). So these phonons are the "glue" that bind these electrons together. Without them, two isolated electrons do not attract one another, obviously.

Now it seems that a long-proposed alternative mechanism of electron attraction has been confirmed. This time, two electrons attract each other not due to phonons, but due  to the repulsion of other electrons surrounding them. This is significant, and different than the phononic mechanism because this time, it is purely electronic in nature.

The original theoretical idea of such mechanism was first proposed by William Little[1], and the first experiment indicating its validity has been shown by Hamo et al,[2]. Certainly, there is an impetus to show if such electronic coupling could be a mechanism that leads to superconductivity. So far, none has been found. The Hamo et al., experiment decided to not deal with such complexity and just try to investigate first if such coupling would occur in the first place. So they did a nano-scale engineering design to show such a thing.

Very, very clever!

The big hurdle next is to find a material that can exhibit a similar effect.

Zz.

[1] W.A. Little, Phys. Rev. 134, 1416 (1964),
[2] A. Hamo et al., Nature 535, 395 (2016).

The Difference Between Ghosts And Dark Matter

A rather interesting piece that I stumbled upon on the NPR website. The author is trying to explain why, since both ghosts and dark matter can't be "seen", why wouldn't scientists believe in ghosts while a large percentage of physicists believe in the existence of dark matter.

So how do physicists and astronomers get away with claiming the existence of cosmic ghosts (dark matter and dark energy) when they would probably roll their eyes at descriptions of the more terrestrial haunted-house kind?

The answer is data, its prevalence and its stability.

There are literally thousands of studies now of those rotating-too-fast galaxies out there — and they all get the same, quite noticeable result. In other words, data for the existence of dark matter is prevalent. It's not like you see the effect once in a while but then it disappears. The magnitude of the result — meaning its strength — also stays pretty consistent from one study to the next. The same holds true for studies of dark energy.

We need to make something VERY CLEAR here, especially for non-scientists. While we do not know exactly what this dark matter is made of, or we don't know what it is, we have already a very clear set of parameters of its CHARACTERISTICS. Based on what we have already observed and measured, there are QUANTITATIVE properties of these so-called dark matter.

This is important because of two reasons: (i) there are no such definitive behavior, characteristics, and quantitative description of "ghosts", and (ii) these quantitative properties allow us to make measurements and rule out unsuitable candidates that to not fit into what we already know.

This article is similar to the public science event that I attended several years ago in which Dan Hooper of Fermilab/UofC described the science of ghosts. Back then, he too included the possibility on whether ghosts can be made up of dark matter, and based on what we know about dark matter and what people have described what ghosts can do, he concluded that ghosts cannot be made up of dark matter.

So no. Ghosts and Dark Matter are not in the same league.

Zz.

Direct Measurement of the Density Matrix

It is often a source of irony. We teach, or learn, something by dealing with the simplest case first, devoid of complexities. Only after that do we start learning more complex situations.

Yet, in many cases, it is extremely difficult to duplicate, in practice, this simplest case. Quantum mechanics is one such example. While we learn about QM at the intro level by looking at the case of an infinite potential well, a finite potential well, 1-electron central force, etc... trying to actually get a clear experiment on this is actually quite difficult. This is because we have to isolate the system that we want to measure from the rest of the world, so that only the simplest, most fundamental parameters are involved in the experiment.

This is one such case. The experimenters claims to finally being able to directly measure the elements of a density matrix. Yet, if you have done any amount of QM, you would have seen this density matrix in your QM classes. I remember encountering it when I was using Merzbacher's text. So this is a classic, text-book item that we are all taught in school. Yet, it is not an easy thing to measure directly, till now. This is possible due to advancements in the so-called "weak measurement" that have previously produced Bohn's Pilot-Wave-like results.

Still, it is nice to know that what you learn in those textbooks are actually correct! :)

Zz.

Drilling In The Importance Of Units, Via A Banana Bread

For some odd reasons, intro physics students somehow can't get it into their heads the importance of having units in their answers whenever they are called for. And they also don't tend to see why carrying their units during a calculation can help them check if they are doing things correctly.

I've had constant issues with students not including units in their solutions. Even after I emphasize its importance, and even after I explain why it is important, I still constantly get answers, even in exams, of just a number without any units for length, speed, etc...

So one day, at the beginning of a new session, I decided to try something that I hope would be memorable to the students. I normally have between 10 to 20 students in a class. So on the first day of class, I baked a loaf of banana bread (I am actually a decent baker) and brought it to class. I cut the up into enough pieces for all the students, warning them that it has nuts and not gluten free, in case there are students with such allergies.

I let them enjoy the banana bread and then, I told them I baked it. They were impressed. Then I said that I'll give them the recipe if they want to bake this on their own. This is what I gave them:

• ¹⁄₂ butter
• 1 sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4 bananas, finely crushed
• 1 ¹⁄₂ flour
• 1 baking soda
• ¹⁄₂ salt
• ¹⁄₂ vanilla

I then included the rest of the instruction, but that is not relevant here.

Of course, within a minute, I had students telling me that this recipe is not complete and vague. "What is half butter and one sugar?" someone asked.

"Oh, you mean that you need the UNITS of measure for these ingredients to make the banana bread?" I innocently asked. "Does that mean that without knowing if these are 1/2 cup, or 1 teaspoon, or 1 tablespoon, these number really a vague and meaningless?" I continued.

That was when the students realized that they just had a lesson. The lesson here being that the need to know the units of measure is (i) necessary and that (ii) it isn't exclusive only to physics, and that we all have been using these units of measure everyday without realizing it. Without such units, a lot of things won't make sense.

I can't claim that this exercise was effective, but I did notice that I saw a significantly lower occurrences of missing units in the students homework and exams. The few times that this did occur, the only comment that I wrote next to the number with the missing units was "Banana bread!"


:)

Zz.

Spherical Tokamaks

Spherical tokamaks - can they beat out ITER to be the first to be a viable fusion generator?

This article describe the two separate efforts at using this technique in building such a facility, and it appears to not cost more than $10 billion and years of delay (yes, I'm looking at you, ITER!).

That's where the spherical tokamaks come in. The delightfully exotic term refers to a kind of device that can contain superheated plasma in powerful magnetic fields. These devices represent our species' best shot at generating those stellar temperatures we need to achieve nuclear fusion.

Right now, the two most advanced spherical tokamaks in the world are the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at PPPL, and the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the U.K.

At this stage, we need as many alternatives as we can afford. I'm glad we're not putting all our eggs in ITER, because I'm getting tired of it already.

Zz.

Brain Region Responsible For Understanding Physics?

A group of researchers seem to think that they have found the region of the brain responsible for "understanding physics".

With both sets of experiments, the researchers found that when the subjects tried predicting physical outcomes, activity was most responsive in the premotor cortex and supplementary motor region of the brain: an area described as the brain’s action-planning region.

“Our findings suggest that physical intuition and action planning are intimately linked in the brain,” said Fischer. “We believe this might be because infants learn physics models of the world as they hone their motor skills, handling objects to learn how they behave. Also, to reach out and grab something in the right place with the right amount of force, we need real-time physical understanding.”

But is this really "understanding physics", though?

Zz.

Who Will Host The Next LHC?

Nature has an interesting article on the issues surrounding the politics, funding, and physics in building the next giant particle collider beyond the LHC.

The Japanese are the front-runner to host the ILC, but the Chinese have their own plans on a circular electron-positron collider that can be upgraded to a future proton-proton collider.

And of course, all of these will require quite a bit of chump change to fund, and will be an international collaboration.

The climate in the US continues to be very sour in building anything like this.

Zz.

Could You Pass A-Level Physics Now?

This won't tell if you will pass it, since A-Level Physics consists of several papers, including essay questions. But it is still an interesting test, and you might make a careless mistake if you don't read the question carefully.

And yes, I did go through the test, and I got 13 out of 13 correct even though I guessed at one of them (I wasn't sure what "specific charge" meant and was too lazy to look it up). The quiz at the end asked if I was an actual physicist! :)

You're probably an actual physicist, aren't you?

Check it out. This is what those A-level kids had to contend with.

Zz.

Proton Radius Problem

John Timmer on Ars Technica has written a wonderful article on the "proton radius problem". The article gives a brief background on an earlier discovery, and then moves on to a new result on a deuterium atom.

This area is definitely a work-in-progress, and almost as exciting as the neutrino mass deficiency mystery from a many years ago.

Zz.

The Science of Sports

With the Olympics in full swing right now, the Perimeter Institute has released a series that discusses the physics behind various sports at the Games. Called The Physics of the Olympics, it covers a wide range of events.

Zz.

CP Violation in Neutrino Oscillation

It is always nice when non-science media carries physics news. Unfortunately, often times, the accuracy is lacking and, in many cases, gives misleading ideas. This is one such case.

It is reporting on the news about CP violation in neutrino oscillation from muon neutrinos and muon antineutrinos that was reported in last week's 2016 ICHEP.

At the T2K experiment, researchers looked for a difference between neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillations. Their findings, announced at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Chicago, suggest that there are — more muon neutrinos were found changing into electron neutrinos than muon antineutrinos changing into electron antineutrinos.

The researchers, who had expected to detect 23 electron neutrinos and seven electron antineutrinos, observed 32 electron neutrinos and 4 electron antineutrinos.
.
.
.

If confirmed with a greater level of certainty, this would point to a violation of charge-parity (CP) symmetry in neutrinos. CP symmetry tells us that a system remains unchanged even if two fundamental properties — charge and parity, which refers to a 180-degree flip in spatial configuration — are reversed. If a violation of CP symmetry is confirmed, it would not only hint at the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model — a theory of almost everything — it would also help us understand why the universe is completely devoid of antimatter.

There's nothing wrong with the report. However, it is inaccurate with regards to what it left out. If you don't know any better, you'd think that this is something new, and that this is the first instance of CP violation. This is not true. CP violation has been seen in other particle systems. So there is no longer a question on whether such violation exists. What is new here is that it is the first time it is observed in neutrino oscillation.

This is why science reporting is difficult. You need someone who has a wide breadth of knowledge in many fields to be able to not only report things accurately, but also give a full view of it. There's nothing inaccurate here in what was included. But the inaccuracy occurs on what was omitted, and therefore, not giving a general reader a more complete state of knowledge of the field.

Zz.

The 750-GeV Blip At LHC - It Came And Went

A lot of HEP were in a tizzy since last year over the unexpected peak in the data at 750 GeV. And now, early reports from the current meeting going on in Chicago are indicating that this might be just a statistical anomaly.

Sadly, it seems that the 750 GeV particle wasn’t meant to be. Physicists at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Chicago were due to reveal the latest data on the excess of photon pairs at 750 GeV later today, but a paper accidentally posted online last night by the CMS collaboration states that their new round of data found no extra photons. This suggests the earlier hints were just a statistical fluke.

“As data comes in, excesses tend to come and go,” says CMS researcher Nadja Strobbe at Fermilab, near Batavia, Illinois. Researchers from ATLAS are due to present their results later today, but rumours suggest they will announce that the 750 GeV bump is gone.

But the fun part is all the theory papers that came gushing out as soon as the possibility of this being real.

A week after the announcement, theorists had written over 100 possible explanations; today, there are over 500. Nearly all of these papers posit the existence of a particle with a mass of 750 GeV or higher whose decay created the extra photons. Because this particle would have been outside the standard model of particle physics, it could have forced a reconsideration of how particles and forces interact.

I've always been curious to ask many of the people who did similar things on what they have to say for themselves. They had just created an explanation for the existence of the unicorn.

This is not new. When the OPERA collaboration indicated a faster-than-light neutrino detection a few years ago, numerous theory papers came out for that as well, proposing a myriad of particles and new physics. This is all before this result was confirmed. And of course, we all know what happened with that one as well.

I guess that people would rather be FIRST to be correct rather than be cautious and not appear foolish. After all, how many of us would remember that such-and-such wrote a paper to explain something that never existed in the first place?

Zz.

Combining QM, SR, and HEP is "New"?

Often times, when science news is reported in the mass media, while the reporting might be somewhat accurate, the implications that it leaves behind, especially when read by someone not trained in that area, may lead to a horribly wrong idea. This might be the case here.

This news report is covering a paper out of the Princeton's Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) on a new theoretical model to explain a plasma physics phenomenon. Nothing wrong there. However, I have a lot of issues with this part of the report very early on:

Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a new way to explore some of the most extreme environments in the universe by combining three separate branches of physics: High energy physics (which describes charged particles traveling at or close to the speed of light), quantum mechanics (which describes the motion of subatomic particles), and Einstein’s theory of special relativity (which describes the propagation of matter and light at high speeds).

“People haven’t done this before,” Yuan Shi, a graduate student in the PPPL and lead author of a paper published July 29 in the journal Physical Review A, told Business Insider. “Nobody really wanted to cross the boundaries between the disciplines to see what other scientists are doing. The difficulty was mostly that there’s no communication between these fields.” 

Now, I'm sure that if you are a physics, or even a graduate student in physics, you can already spot something odd here. The existence of quantum field theory (QFT) is already evidence that Special Relativity (SR) has already been incorporated inside quantum mechanics (QM). And high energy physics (HEP) is a field that makes use of QFT!

But if you don't know that, then reading this news report will give you the impression that this isn't known till now, and that this is all new!

And the statement made that "People haven't done this before" with regards to crossing boundaries between disciplines in physics is blatantly false, especially with all the brouhaha surrounding the discovery of the Higgs within the the past couple of years. Anyone following the history of the Higgs field will have seen how the idea originated out of a condensed matter system, and how Phil Anderson, a condensed matter physicist and a Nobel laureate, was himself a strong candidate to be considered for the Nobel prize when the Higgs was finally discovered.

I know that press releases can sometime over-glorified the importance and significance of something. But there really is an important mission here to make sure that one is conveying a message that is clear and unambiguous to the audience that can easily be misled. What you mean may not be exactly what they understand!

Zz.

Photoemission Spectroscopy - Fundamental Aspects

I don't know if this is a chapter out of a book, or if this is a lecture material, or what, but it has a rather comprehensive coverage of photoionization, Auger, and photoemission in solids. I also don't know how long the document will be available (web links come and go, it seems). So if this is something you're interested in, it might be something you want to download.

At the very least, it has an extensive collection of references, ranging from Hertz's discovery of the photoelectric effect, to Einstein's photoelectric effect paper of 1905, all the way to Spicer's 3-step model and recent progress in ARPES.

Zz.

Landau's Nobel Prize in Physics

This is a fascinating article. It describes, using the Nobel prize archives, the process that led to Lev Landau's nomination and winning the Nobel Prize in physics. But more than that, it also describes the behind-the-scenes nominating process for the Nobel Prize.

I'm not sure if the process has change significantly since then, but I would imaging that many of the mechanism leading up to a nomination and winning the prize are similar.

Zz.

New Physics Beyond The Higgs?

Marcelo Gleiser has written a nice article on the curious 750 GeV bump coming from the LHC as announced last year. It is a very good article for the general public, especially on his condensed version of the analysis provided by PRL on the possible origin of this bump.

Still, there is an important point that I want to highlight that is not necessarily about this particular experiment, but rather about physicists and how physics is done. It is in this paragraph:

The exciting part of this is that the bump would be new, surprising physics, beyond expectations. There's nothing more interesting for a scientist than to have the unexpected show up, as if nature is trying to nudge us to look in a different direction.

If you have followed this blog for a considerable period of time, you would have read something similar in my many postings. This is especially true when I tried to debunk the erroneous claim of many crackpots who keep stressing that scientists are merely people who simply work within the box, and can't think outside of the box, or refuse to look for something new. This is of course, utterly dumb and false, because scientists, by definition, study things that are not known, not fully understood, etc. Otherwise, there will be no progression of knowledge the way we have seen it.

I'm going to keep harping this, because I continue to see nonsense like this being perpetuated in many different places.

Zz.

Stephen Hawking Doesn't Understand Donald Trump

When interviewed by Good Morning Britain, Stephen Hawking professed his lack of understanding of the popularity of Donald Trump in the US.

World-renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking may understand the many mysteries of the universe, but even he's having a hard time grasping Donald Trump's meteoric rise in popularity.

In an interview with ITV's “Good Morning Britain” today, Hawking called Trump a "demagogue" who seemed to attract the "lowest common denominator."

I would go even lower than that, all the way back to single-cell amoeba! :)

Zz.

The Curse Of Being A Physicist

When do you speak up in a social setting and set someone straight?

I think I've mentioned a few times on here of being in a social setting, and then being found out that I'm a physicist. Most of the time, this was a good thing, because I get curious questions about what was on the news related to physics (the LHC was a major story for months).

But what if you hear something, and clearly it wasn't quite right. Do you speak up and possibly might cause an embarrassment to the other person?

I attended the annual Members Night at the Adler Planetarium last night here in Chicago. It was a very enjoyable evening. Their new show that is about to open on "Planet Nine" was very, VERY informative and entertaining. I highly recommend it. We got to be among the first to see it before it is opened to the public.

Well, anyway, towards the end of the evening, before we left, we decided to walk around the back of the facility and visit the Doane Observatory. The telescope was looking at Jupiter which was prominent in the night sky last night. There was a line, so we waited in the line for our turn.

As we progressed up, I and my companions heard these two gentlemen chatting away with the visitors, and then to each other about their enthusiasm about astronomy and science, etc. This is always good to know, especially at an event like this. As I got closer to them, it turned out that they were either volunteers, or were working for Adler Planetarium, because they were wearing either name tags or something. One of them identified himself as an astronomer, which wasn't surprising considering the event and the location.

But then, things got a bit sour, at least for me. In trying to pump up their enthusiasm about astronomy and science, they started quoting Carl Sagan's famous phrase that we are all made up of star stuff. This wasn't the bad part, but then they took it further by claiming that hydrogen is the "lego blocks" of the universe, and that everything can be thought of as being built out of hydrogen. One of them started giving an example by saying that you take two hydrogen and put them together, and you get helium!

OK, by then, I was no longer amused by these two guys, and was tempted to say something. I wanted to say that hydrogen is not the "lego blocks" of our universe, not if the Standard Model of Particle Physics has anything to say about that. And secondly, you don't get helium when you put two hydrogen atoms together. After all, where will the extra 2 neutrons in helium come from?

But I stopped myself from saying anything. These people were working pretty hard for  this event, they were trying to show their enthusiasm about the subject matter, and we were surrounded by other people, the general public, who obviously were also interested in this topic. Anything that I would have said to correct these two men would not have looked good, at least that was my assessment at that moment. It might easily led to an awkward, embarrassing moment.

I get that when we try to talk to the public about science, we might overextend ourselves. I used to give tours and participated in outreach programs, so I've been in this type of situation before. While I tried to make sure everything I say was accurate, there were always possibilities that someone in the audience may know more about something I said and may find certain aspects of it not entirely accurate. I get that.

So that was why I didn't say anything to these two gentlemen. I think that what they just told to the people who were within ear shot of them were wrong. Maybe their enthusiasms made them forget some basic facts. That might be forgivable. Still, it is obvious that I'm still thinking about this the next morning, and second guessing if maybe I should have told them quietly that what they said wasn't quite right. Maybe it might stop them from saying it out loud next time?

On the other hand, how many of these people who heard what was said actually (i) understood it and (ii) remembered it?

Zz.

Still No Sterile Neutrinos

IceCube has not found any indication of the presence of sterile neutrinos after looking for it for 2 years, at least not in the energy range that it was expected.

In the latest research, the IceCube collaboration performed independent analysis on two sets of data from the observatory, looking for sterile neutrinos in the energy range between approximately 320 GeV and 20 TeV. If present, light sterile neutrinos with a mass of around 1 eV/C² would cause a significant disappearance in the total number of muon neutrinos that are produced by cosmic-ray showers in the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere and then travel through the Earth to reach IceCube. The first set of data included more than 20,000 muon-neutrino events detected between 2011 and 2012, while the second covered almost 22,000 events observed between 2009 and 2010. 

I think there are other facilities that are looking for them as well. But this result certainly excludes a large portion of the "search area".

Zz.

Grandfather Paradox - Resolved?

This Minute Physics video claims to have "resolved" the infamous grandfather paradox. Well, OK, they don't actually say that, but they basically indicated why this might be a never-ending loop.



Still, let's think about it this way instead. During your grandfather's time, presumably, ALL the atoms or energy that will make you are already there, only they are all not together to form you. This only happens later on. But they are all there!

But here you come along from another time, popping into existence in your grandfather's time. Aren't you violating conservation of energy by adding MORE energy to the universe that are not accounted for? Now, unless there is a quid pro quo, where an equal amount of energy in your grandfather's time was siphoned to the future where you came from, this violation of conservation of energy is hard to explain away, especially if you invoke Noether's theorem.

I haven't come across a popular account of this issue.

Zz.

"... in America today, the only thing more terrifying than foreigners is…math...."

OK, I'm going to get a bit political here, but with some math! So if this is not something you care to read, skip this.

I've been accused many times of being an "elitist", as if giving someone a label like that is a sufficient argument against what I had presented (it isn't!). But you see, it is hard not to be an "elitist" when you read something like this.

Prominent Guido Menzio, who is Italian, was pulled out of a plane because his seatmate thought he was writing something suspicious while they waited for their plane to take off. She couldn't understand the letters and probably it was "Arabic" or something (what if it is?), and since Menzio looks suspiciously "foreign", she reported him to the crew.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or some other terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

You can't make this up! But what hits home is what Menzio said later in the news article, and what the article writer ended with.

Rising xenophobia stoked by the presidential campaign, he suggested, may soon make things worse for people who happen to look a little other-ish.

“What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia? It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of [Donald] Trump’s voting base,” he wrote.

In this true parable of 2016 I see another worrisome lesson, albeit one also possibly relevant to Trump’s appeal: That in America today, the only thing more terrifying than foreigners is…math.

During this summer months, many of us travel to conferences all over the place. So, if you look remotely exotic, have a slightly darker skin, don't risk it by doing math on an airplane. That ignorant passenger sitting next to you just might rat on you! If by being an "elitist" means that I can recognize the difference between "math" and "arabic", then I'd rather be an elitist than someone who is proud of his/her aggressive ignorance.

How's that? Are you still with me?

Zz.

Scanning Probe Microscopy

The Physical Review is marking the 35th Anniversary of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and 30 years of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) with free access to notable papers from the Physical Review journals in these two experimental techniques.

So check them out!

Zz.

Walter Kohn

Walter Kohn, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has passed away on April 19.

He is considered as the father of Density Functional Theory (DFT). If you have done any computational chemistry or band structure calculation in solid state physics, you will have seen DFT in one form or another. It has become an indispensable technique to be able to accurately arrive at a theoretical description of many systems.

Zz.

ITER Is Getting More Expensive And More Delayed

This news report details the cost overruns and the more-and-a-decade delay of ITER.

ITER chief Bernard Bigot said the experimental fusion reactor under construction in Cadarache, France, would not see the first test of its super-heated plasma before 2025 and its first full-power fusion not before 2035.

The biggest lesson from this is how NOT to run a major international collaboration. Any more large science projects like this, and the politicians and the public will understandably be reluctant to support science projects of that scale. The rest of us will suffer for it.

Zz.

LHC Knocked Out By A Weasel?

You can't make these things up!

CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle accelerator located near Geneva, Switzerland, lost power Friday. Engineers who were investigating the outage made a grisly discovery -- the charred remains of a weasel, CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier told CNN.
If you are a weasel kind, be forewarned! Don't mess around at CERN!

Zz.

Online Students - Are They As Good?

This is essentially a follow-up to my post on Education Technology.

So, after doing this for a while and trying to put two-and-two together, I'm having a bit of skepticism about online learning and education. I know it is in-fashion right now, and maybe in many other subjects, this is effective. But I don't see it for physics.

I've mentioned earlier on why students who undergo online learning via the online interface that they use often lack problem-solving techniques, which I consider as important as understanding the material itself. However, in this post, I also being to question if they actually know what we THINK they know. Let me explain.

My students do their homework assignment "online", as I've mentioned before. They have to complete this each week. I get to see how they perform, both individually, and as a group. I know what questions they got right, and what they got wrong. So I can follow up by going over questions that most students have problems with.

But here's the thing. Most students seem to be doing rather well if I simply base this on the online homework scores. In fact, just by looking at the HW statistics, they understand 3/4 of the material rather well. But do they?

I decided to do some in-class evaluation. I give them short, basic questions that cover the material from the previous week, something they did in their homework. And the result is mind-boggling. Many of them can't answer the simplest, most basic question. And I let them open their text and notes to answer these questions. Remember, these are the topics that they had just answered in the HW the previous week that were way more difficult than my in-class questions.

For example, a HW question may ask for the magnitude and direction of the electric field at a particular location due to 2 or more charges located at some distance away. So for my in-class question, I have a charge Q sitting at the origin of a cartesian coordinate, and I ask for the E-field at a distance, say 3 cm away. And then I say that if I put a charge q at that location, what is the force acting on it that charge? Simple, no? And they could look at their notes and text to solve this.

If the students could manage to solve the more difficult HW problem, the question I asked should be a breeze! So why did more than half of the class gave me answers as if they had never seen this material before?

This happened consistently. I will ask a very basic question that is way simpler than one of their HW question, and I get puzzling answers. There appears to be a huge disconnect between what they did in the online HW, and their actual knowledge of the very same material that they should have used to solve those HW problems. They performance in completing the online HW has no correlation to their understanding of the material.

All of this becomes painfully obvious during the final exam, where they have to sit for it in class, and write down the solution to the questions the old-fashion way. The majority of the students crashed-and-burned. Even when the questions were similar to the very same ones they solved in their HW, some did not even know how to start! And yes, they were allowed to look at their notes, texts, and their old HW during the finals.

So what are the reasons for this? Why is there such a disconnect between their performance online, and what they actually can do? While there might be a number of reasons for this, the only one that I find most plausible is that they had some form of assistance in completing their online work. This assistance may be in the form of (i) previously-done HW from another source and/or (ii) another person who is more knowledgeable or had taken the course before. The online performance that I see often does not accurately reflect the level of knowledge the students actually have.

So this led me into thinking about all these online courses that many schools are beginning to offer. Some even offer entire degree that you can get via online courses. I am well-aware of the conveniences of these forms of learning, and for the right students, this may be useful. However, I question the quality of knowledge of the students, on average, that went through an online course or degree. If my haunch is correct, how does one know that the work that has been done online was done purely by that student? Sure, you can randomize the questions and insert new things in there, but there is still the question on whether the student had an external assistance, be it partially or entirely.

I asked on here a long time ago if anyone have had any experience with students in physics who went through an online program, either partially or for an entire degree program. I haven't had any responses, which might indicate that it is still not very common. I certainly haven't encountered any physics graduate students that went through an online program.

Like I said, maybe this type of learning works well in many different areas. But I don't see how it is effective for physics, or any STEM subject area. Anyone knows how Arizona State University does it?

Zz.

Debunking Three Baseball Myths

A nice article on the debunking of 3 baseball myths using physics. I'm not that aware of the first two, but that last one, "Swing down on the ball to hit farther" has always been something I thought was unrealistic. Doing that makes it more difficult to get a perfect contact, because the timing has to be just right.

This is no different than a serve in tennis, and why hitting the ball at its highest point during a serve gives you a better chance at getting at the racket's sweet spot.

Zz.

"Fart Detector" Wins Chinese Physics Prize

OK, there are many aspects this story.

When I first read the title, I honestly read it as "Fast detector", which is reasonable, because fast detectors are useful. But when I read it again, I did a double take. So of course, I had to open the link to the story and figure out what this is.

Turns out that that wasn't the original intent of this detector. Rather, it is trying to sniff any odor in a moving air and to locate the source. Of course, the media, even in China, took it to its most obvious "application" such as sniffing (pun intended) the source of a fart. Question is, what do you do when you find the culprit? Is it unlawful in China for someone to fart in public? Do you shame this individual for such an act?

Finally, it turns out that the prize given is the "Pineapple" prize because "...the fruit which in China is said to be so ugly that only the brave and curious would explore its delicious interior..."

Whaaaaaat????!!!!

I guess this is another example of beauty in the eye of the beholder. I had never, even a second, consider the pineapple to be an "ugly" fruit. In fact, if you've been in to Hawaii or the tropics (especially in South East Asia where the fruit is abundant), it is considered to be beautiful enough to be used as decorations!

In any case, I don't think this research work is "useless" to even qualify for an Ig Nobel prize.

Zz.

Education Technology - Is It All Good?

First of all, I'm sure I'm a dinosaur as far as education technology is concerned. I come from an old school where HW assignments are done on paper, and students submit them to a TA or instructor to have them graded. Or a situation where students do their quizzes or exams by writing them on paper and submit them after completion.

I'm still not used to an education system where students do their HW online, and even do their weekly quizzes and exams online. I'm sure there are many different systems and ways of doing this. However, I still see two things from the students perspective: (i) it is tedious to draw a sketch, which is often needed in tackling physics problems, and (ii) it is tedious to write mathematical equations.

Because of this, a lot of online exercises often simply ask you to enter just a number, or pick from a multiple choice of solutions. This is what I often deal with right now with students' homework assignment. Oh sure, I have the option of assigning my own HW questions if I wish, but the majority of the instructors opt for the former, and I need to be consistent with others.

So what problems do I see with this education methodology? First of all, you do not get to see how the students approach the problem. All you see are answers, and if they get them right, or wrong. You don't know if the students don't know where to start, or if they simply make some silly math error along the way. You cannot diagnose if they have a serious problem or not in understanding the material.

Secondly, despite my strong recommendations that they actually write down and work out the problem till they get the answer, and then enter that answer online, most students simply scribbled out their work to get an answer and once they are done, the scribble is either discarded, or they can't comprehend what they did when they go back to it later on. They do not have a clear detail on what they did, be it right or wrong, that they can learn from later on. So how exactly do they revise for their exams?

Seeing and understanding how problems are solved, and learning from mistakes, are the most effective means of understanding a topic and being able to solve problems. I think I kept most, if not all, of my upper/graduate-level physics class homework assignments (they are somewhere in boxes in the basement). So I don't know how the new generation of students learn and more importantly, RETAIN the stuff that they had learned and done.

The consequence from all of these is that, when they had to sit down for an exam, where they had to write down all the work, many students crashed! Despite being shown how to properly solve problems in class (I did numerous examples), many students still can't properly sketch out a problem (some didn't even bother to do one), and it was jaw-dropping how many still start off their work by writing in just numbers in an "equation", without first writing the symbolic form.

I've been trying to remedy that in subsequent classes that I taught. I have weekly written quizzes to get the students into the habit of solving problems properly, etc. But I think most of them already have the mindset of doing things online, because many of their other classes adopt this method of education. So my way of doing things are more of the "ancient" method of education. I continue to let then do HW assignments online just so they cover the same type of material as students in other similar classes, but I'm insisting that they do their quizzes the old fashion way.

I'm not a techno-phobia. In fact, I posted a blog entry on the easiest way to do lab notebooks using tablets. But in this case, technology may be a hindrance to learning. It may work in many other subject areas, but I somehow don't see it working in physics and mathematics (and maybe the rest of the STEM subjects). These are often not a plug-and-chug subject areas, and it is not conducive to online interface.

Zz.

Has Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Lost It?

Or did he ever had it in the first place?

My attention was brought to this via Hamish's blog at Physics World. He pointed out the sharp critique against Nye in Sabine Hossenfelder's "Back Reaction" blog entry. It all stemmed from Nye's video answering a question regarding quantum entanglement, where it appears that Nye got tangled in it himself.

You may read the criticism yourself (be warned, there are some "colorful" language being used in there).

I think that while Nye has done quite a bit in the media to popularize science, I often find his off-script or unscripted responses a bit suspect at times. This is another one such example. It is my impression that he knows the pop-science version of science, but not the intimate detail. Of course, you often do not need the intimate detail when dealing with the general public, which is why he could manage to do this for this long. But when confronted with something that requires a bit more in-depth knowledge, especially in physics, this is where he trips.

I don't know why he doesn't consult an expert when he responded to this person in this video clip. After all, I'm sure it isn't "live", and he could have easily checked if what he was saying was accurate, or nonsensical. Unfortunately, he went into the realm of nonsensical, and he didn't even realize it.

Zz.

Solve QM Particle-In-A-Box Problem Using Code

Rhett Allain shows you how to solve the standard 1D infinite square well problem using numerical method.

I know he is using this as a simple illustration, but it is more useful, especially to physics students, if he solves this for a finite square well.

But still, for the general public, this might be complicated enough. I wonder if someone with just computer coding but little physics can code this successfully. If you fall under this category, let me know how you did if you took up this task.

Zz.

Simple Physics?

I'm all for explaining things in simple terms that the general public can understand. I do that frequently, especially when I'm doing an outreach project or hosting visitors to the facility.

So when I read a review of this book, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff In Simple Words by Randall Munroe, it sounds like something that can be recommended to a lot of people who are curious about how various things around them work.

However, this author, and the reviewer of this book, fall into the same cliche trap that is one of my pet peeve.

There’s a nice quote attributed to the physicist Ernest Rutherford (or is it Einstein?): “If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, it is probably not very good physics.” There are variations of the theme, such as, “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother”. In essence, keep it as simple as possible.

I had already addressed the fallacy of this statement (and yes, I am challenging Rutherford or Einstein if they actually said such a silly thing). I have plenty of evidence to point to the contrary. I wish people who keep repeating this would actually read my counter point, but hey, what are the odds?

Zz.

Professional Climate for LGBT Physicists

Many different issues have been discussed regarding challenges faced by women and minorities in physics. Unfortunately, very little effort has been dedicated to the challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender physicists. And yes, there ARE LGBT physicists, even if you are not aware of their existence.

The APS, to their credit, has taken steps to address this. This study is the first such report to discover the state of the profession and how LGBT physicists fare in the current climate.

In the general membership survey demographic question (sent to a random sample of society members), just 2.5 percent of total respondents identified as LGBT over all, and 14 percent preferred not to provide such information. But U.S. respondents were twice as likely (3 percent) to answer as non-U.S. respondents. Respondents between 18 and 25 years of age were significantly more likely than the overall population to identify as LGBT, at 16 percent, suggesting a generational shift in comfort disclosing their status (just 6 percent of respondents in that age group declined to provide an answer).

Committee members found that LGBT physicists face uneven protection and support for legislation and policies, both in the U.S. and abroad. Some 50 percent of survey respondents rated their campus or workplace policies as “highly supportive” or “supportive,” while 30 percent characterized them as “uneven,” “lacking” or “discriminatory.” Only 40 percent of transgender respondents said their workplaces were supportive to some degree.

I personally have not observed any hostility towards LGBT physicists or even LGBT personnel in my professional career. Of course, the environment where I worked (US National Labs and Universities) already have policies strictly prohibiting discrimination and harassment against such group. I am sure others in various situations, such as private industries, will have a different atmosphere to deal with, So this study is definitely needed to have a snapshot of the situation at this point in time.

Zz.

In Praise Of APS March Meeting

The APS March Meeting is the LARGEST yearly gathering of physicists in the world. Yet, as Chad Orzel has stated, it is hardly covered by the media.

In this article, Orzel writes why this is so, and why the media and the public should pay more attention to this gathering.

As with lots of things, though, the primary reason for the difference is probably money. Which, in a way, goes back to the irony noted above. Particle physics as a discipline puts a lot more effort into popularization because they have to in order to get funding. Fundamental physics experiments produce some spin-off benefits, but those are second-order effects, difficult to predict and harder to monetize.

Condensed matter research, on the other hand, leads to a more direct payoff, and thus comes with a more secure funding stream. You don’t have to work all that hard to convince wealthy industrialists that it’s worthwhile to spend money on developing new materials that will lead to new and improved commercial products. The funding stream for the field is a little more secure, thanks to the more direct path to applications, and thus there’s less need to make the effort to explain a complicated subject. Which then feeds back into the first two reasons.

This is kind of a shame, because when you dig into it, a lot of what goes on in condensed matter is just as amazing as what you see in particle physics. In fact, a lot of effort goes into creating analogues of exotic systems. And if you look at it the right way, there’s some quantum magic in the most basic aspects of the ways solid objects come together.

Certainly, the sexiness of the topic makes a big difference. But as I've stated many times on here, physics isn't just the LHC and the Big Bang. It is also your iPhone and your MRI. And it is about time the public is more aware of this.

Zz.

"That Physics Show" Opens Off-Broadway

I mentioned this a while back. It is certainly an ambitious and daring move, to do a stage presentation of nothing but a series of physics demonstration. Would this get an audience, much less, a paying audience?

In any case, "That Physics Show" has opened off-Broadway in NY City.

That Physics Show officially opens March 9 for an open-ended run at the Elektra Theater Off-Broadway. The show, which began previews February 26, features "scientific magic" by physics demonstrator David Maiullo.

A regular on The Weather Channel, Maiullo brings more than 20 years of experience teaching physics at Rutgers University. The show is directed and produced by Eric Krebs. 

However, an early review of it hasn't been too enthusiastic.

Maiullo is not a natural performer, but once he starts igniting hydrogen balloons, smashing beer cans with ping pong balls, dunking fresh flowers into a deep freeze, and using a bowling ball as a pendulum, you don’t mind.

But that’s the extent of the “show” in “That Physics Show.” Maiullo pretends that his his geeky explosions and frenetic motion are meant to demonstrate several of the laws of physics, but he moves between the displays so quickly that he doesn’t end up connecting any dots.

We will have to see how successful this is. I'm more interested in finding out if people actually LEARNED anything from seeing this show. It is hard to produce an entertainment but also trying to teach people something new.

Zz.

Did Physicists Failed To Explain Clearly To The Public About The LIGO Discovery?

OK, this came out of left-field, because I didn't read the Nature Physics editorial.

This is a Physics Today comment on an editorial that appeared in Nature Physics regarding the recent LIGO discovery of gravitational wave. In it, the Nature Physics editors seem to indicate that physicists have failed to clearly convey to the public what gravitational wave is and how the discovery was made.

In “a triumph of ingenuity and perseverance,” exulted the thumbnail summary atop a 1 March Nature Physics editorial, physicists “have finally detected gravitational waves.” The summary continued: “And now we need to explain them to the general public.” The editors charged that the public’s response was largely summed up in this Daily Mash satire headline: “Scientists completely fail to explain ‘gravitational waves.’” The editorial declared that physicists “should learn to explain the physics of these spectacular events to non-physicists.”

But that is where things get rather interesting and puzzling at the same time. You see, as the Physics Today comment indicated, there has been NO evidence that physicists have failed to clearly convey this discovery to the public. What Nature Physics editors have used as their "evidence", which is from the Daily Mash, is actually a satirical piece, very much like The Onion here in the US. The Physics Today comment brought up its own evidence on how this discovery has been covered and explained many different times and many different ways by a number of prominent physicists appearing in several media forms.

So, not only did Nature Physics editorial not able cite a single, valid evidence to back their claim, but there are clearly evidence to the contrary! For a "science" journal, this is a serious lapse, because the very basic method of having evidence to support one's claim is fundamental to having a valid idea or conclusion.

I'd like to hear Nature Physics response to this charge.

Zz.

Socio-Economic Impact of the LHC

This is an interesting analysis of the impact of the LHC, especially in terms of economics.

I think many politicians and the general public do not realize that even for something that is built to study something that appears to be esoteric and no direct and immediate application, there can be immediate benefits socially and economically.

That is why I continue to be surprised and appalled that the US continue to not "care" about their loss in having any kind of high-energy physics particle collider on their soil anymore. This is especially puzzling in light of the fact that other parts of the world are seriously pursuing having such experiments within their borders, even if it is under an international collaboration. Certainly China is pursuing having such facilities, and Japan just announced the start of an electron-positron collider. As far as I'm aware of, Japan is the leading contender for hosting the International Linear Collider (ILC), something that Fermilab has also been pursuing.

But with the devastating budget issues in the US, this is looking to be very bleak. People seem to only see the money being spent on such facilities, without realizing the significant impact not only on the intellectual aspect of it, but the economic impacts, both short-term and long-term. An analysis done in this preprint may not make it to the people who hold the power, but it is certainly there to be seen.

Zz.

Physics First

It is interesting that something  like this that has been pushed for for years, can still make the news.

A middle school in New Jersey has revised its curriculum and puts physics first, ahead of biology and chemistry, for students taking science classes.

Egg Harbor City is part of a movement to rethink how science is taught. Instead of taking biology, chemistry, then maybe physics in high school, students will take algebra-based physics first, at the same time they take algebra, then take biology and chemistry.

That's radical, dudes!

Or is it? Anyone who has followed the field of physics education would have remembered way back in the end of the last century and into this one of this effort to put physics first, championed by Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman.

Of course, it is easier said than done. The ability to do this is very much tied to the ability of the teachers that conduct these classes. I believe that there were extensive training programs for these teachers in trying to implement this concept, and I don't know to what extent this is continuing, or even if this concept is even practiced anywhere else.

I've always told my students that out of the three science subjects, which are physics, chemistry, and biology, physics is the one they are most familiar with and should come naturally to them. Of  course, they look at me as if I said something outrageous, because everyone has the impression that physics is the most difficult out of the three sciences. I tell them that they are already familiar with the workings of physics, that the concept of mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity, etc. are something they use everyday and even take for granted.

I tell them that they already have some QUALITATIVE idea of physics. What we do teach in physics classes is a way to describe these familiar phenomena QUANTITATIVELY. This is where we go beyond "What goes up, must come down" and add "where and when it will come down". That is physics. The mathematical description of many of these familiar events is what separate a pedestrian understanding of something and a physics description of it.

But these events and phenomena are familiar things. In chemistry and biology, you have to deal with things that are not often common, everyday encounters. Maybe if you cook everyday, then chemistry is indirectly something you commonly do. But still, you deal also with a lot of thermodynamics and mechanics. Physics is something you deal with every day and almost every second of the day. You are just not aware of it.

So it should be familiar, not foreign. And putting it first is logical, because it is that familiar.

Zz.

A Tale Of A Particle With Two Names

Physics Focus this week has a brief but fascinating history of the J/Psi particle and its discovery that led to it having two different names.

When two separate groups, using different types of accelerators, get practically the same result, it is difficult not to be convinced by something like that. Ah, but back then, way back in the 70's, the US had several high energy physics colliders like this where multiple facilities were producing results.

Now, the US has none, not even one (RHIC and CEBAF are nuclear physics facilities/colliders).

Zz.

If The Laws Of Physics Don't Apply....

"... what would the law of physics say about such-and-such?"

I've heard of many dumb and stupid things online over the many, MANY years I've been on the 'net (since 1989, if you have to ask!), but somehow, this one caught my eyes more than others.

I'm not going to point out where I recently read it, but this issue is not about physics, but rather with how irrational certain things are, and how irrational people can be without realizing it. If you are in the US and being immersed in the General Election fever, I'm sure you'll understand this. But it doesn't lessen the impact and the surprise for me, because many of these things are so obviously ridiculous. But yet, the people who muttered them don't seem to care how foolish they sounded.

BTW, when this person in question was told that since he is discarding the laws of physics in the first place, why not make up any kind of rules that he wants? And guess what? He didn't want to. He still wanted a "rational" explanation on how physics would explain something that doesn't follow the laws of physics.

Precious!

Zz.

LIGO Discovery And The Nobel Prize

Inevitably, the discussion that follows after the LIGO announcement of the detection of gravitational wave is the Nobel Prize. If there is a sure thing with regard to the Nobel Prize, is that this discovery will get someone this prize.

But just like the issue surrounding the discovery of the Higgs, the question comes up on who should deserve the prize for this discovery. Just like the Higgs, thousands of people were responsible in the work, both theorists and experimentalist. And typically, the Nobel committee will give the award to the individuals who either headed the collaboration, or made the most significant contribution to the physics that led to the discovery.

This news article lists the three most likely individuals who might be the front-runner for the Nobel Prize for this LIGO discovery.

"I think that most of the community would agree that the three pioneers of what became LIGO would be Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ronald Drever," the head of one of LIGO's observatories in Hanford, Washington, Fred Raab, told Business Insider.

Weiss — who is a professor at MIT's Department of Physics — and Drever — now retired — are both experimentalists who made significant contributions to the concept, design, funding, and eventual construction of LIGO.

On the other hand, Thorne is a theorist, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at CalTech. Together with his students, Thorne conducted much of the work on what the detection of a gravitational wave would actually look like and how to identify that signal within the data

Unfortunately, Ronald Drever is in poor health, and the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. They may also have missed the deadline for this year's Nobel prize.

The news article discuss on whether the Nobel prize should increase the number of recipient from the maximum of 3 for each prize (outside of the Peace price). I think the change should be more on awarding the prize to deceased individuals. So what if that person is dead? If he/she did make a major enough contribution to warrant a prize, then it should be done. This is especially true for many women scientists who never received their recognition while they were alive back when women were not encouraged or had severe restrictions on their careers as scientists. Posthumous awards can correct these injustices.

Zz.

LIGO Reports Detection of Gravitational Wave

LIGO has officially acknowledged of the detection of gravitational wave.

Now, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters on February 11, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo collaborations announce the detection of just such a black hole merger — knocking out two scientific firsts at once: the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of the merger of so-called binary black holes. The detection heralds a new era of astronomy — using gravitational waves to “listen in” on the universe.

In the early morning hours of September 14, 2015 — just a few days after the newly upgraded LIGO began taking data — a strong signal, consistent with merging black holes, appeared simultaneously in LIGO's two observatories, located in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana.

Notice that this is the FIRST time I'm even mentioning this here, considering that for the past 2 weeks, at least, the rumors about this have been flying around all over the place.

Looks like if this is confirmed, we know in which area the next Nobel prize will be awarded to.

There is also a sigh of relief, because we have been searching for this darn thing for years, if not decades. It is another aspect of General Relativity that is finally detected.

Zz.