Xe is lonely.
—
Enoch shrugs modestly. “Where I grew up, memorizing the digits of pi was the closest thing we had to entertainment.”
-Cryptopnomicon
Sir Francis Bacon wasn’t a Lord
Q: What would Sir Francis Bacon‘s name be if he had become a Lord?
A: Lord Lard.
—
Riddle me this,
just do a little extra.
Do Lazy States,
imply invariant spectra?
-paraphrasing a referee report
Talks, Talks and more Talks
This past few months have been intense for me. A lot of exciting collaborations are developing, a lot of interesting breakthroughs in several projects, and a lot of traveling. Here is a summary of the talks I have given:
- Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Physics Department, The University of Texas at Austin:
Quantum coherent resources for exciton transport
- Institute of Applied Physics and Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, University of Hamburg:
Quantum coherence in photosynthetic exciton transport
- Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Lab:
Dynamical Maps with System-Environment Correlations
Decoherence Rate and System-Environment Correlations
Quantum coherence in photosynthetic exciton transport
Each of those visits have been very productive, and hopefully all will lead to collaborations.
—
Kids were very different then. They didn’t have their
heads filled with all this Cartesian Dualism…
-Monty Python on Nostalgia
The Chemistry of Thanksgiving Dinner
A video from the American Chemical Society:
Thanksgiving and Chemistry: What’s the connection? from ACS Pressroom on Vimeo.
—
Every battle, reputations are on the line in Kitchen Stadium, where master chefs pit their artistic creations against each other. What inspiration does today’s challenger bring? And how will the Iron Chef fight back? The heat will be on!
-Iron Chef
People Do Science
Have you ever wondered how is science done? Why do people do it? What is the output? What is success, what is failure? Check out this wonderful one hour long documentary, Naturally Obsessed.
It follows a group of graduate students in a molecular biology laboratory. Independent of the details of their science, the focus is on where the people (grad students) doing it: their backgrounds, their personal lives, and their emotions in the laboratory. This is a vivid and clear exposition of the human aspect of doing science, without Hollywood drama, without heroic altruism. Science is enough drama on its own. Highly recommended.
—
Lisa: You should really listen to him. He’s a man of science, and you can barely read.
Homer: Bah, science. Has science ever kissed a woman, or won the Super Bowl, or put a man on the moon? Here’s what I think of your precious science. (Goes full speed into a blood vein. Submarine begins to go out of control) Help me science!
Photos from Cool Science Facilities
Cutting edge science facilities, most of the time, look way cooler than science fiction. If you want to see some really stunning pictures you might want to start with this list of 5 facilities. Also, Popular Science has this incredible gallery of badass lab pictures. Finally, I would like to contribute my own picture from the Very Large Array, inspired by the movie Contact:
—
O would that we could turn back to our base
now that we realize what our space-ship is:
a little bubble in the glass of Godhead.
-Aniara
The Voice of God, Zeno and Bohmian Mechanics
A title doesn’t get more philosophical and mystical in a non-philosophical and non-mystical and technical paper than in this one:
Zeno Paradox for Bohmian Trajectories: The Unfolding of the Metatron by Maurice de Gosson, Basil Hiley
Some definitions not provided in the paper that might help unpack the references made in the title:
Metratron – angel in the religions of the Abrahamic tradition, many times depicted as the Voice of God.
Zeno Paradox – philosophical argument for “a watched pot never boils”, a physical phenomena in quantum mechanics.
Bohmian trajectories – a school on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, related to pilot waves theory.
However, I must stress this paper is not about philosophy or angels, it just a clever title.
—
God bless those pagans.
-Homer
Royal Society Podcast
The Royal Society has a podcast! Both in Audio and Video versions.
Each podcast is well produced and features a famous scientist or popularizer giving a short but entertaining lecture, or a scholar discussing the history behind some famous member of the Society. I love them!
—
it comes first to fluidity, then to orbiculation, then fixation, so to angulization, then crystallization, from thence to germination or ebullition, then vegetation, then plantanimation, perfect animation, sensation local motion, and the like
-Gimcrack, making fun of Robert Hooke
Yakawow! Deconstructing science-news articles
—
it comes first to fluidity, then to orbiculation, then fixation, so to angulization, then crystallization, from thence to germination or ebullition, then vegetation, then plantanimation, perfect animation, sensation local motion, and the like
-Gimcrack, making fun of Robert Hooke
Decoherence Benasque (2)
Quantum Coherence and Decoherence 2010 at Benasque will be over tomorrow. It is a shame, the environment in this conference is very productive and has lead to many interesting discussion. I feel if I stayed a bit longer we would be able to finish some results.
I highly recommend this conference, and I think other conferences could learn a few things from the productive and laid-back atmosphere here.
Minus Two Fish 