For Fun

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

A.C. Clarke, 1917 - 2008.


here an obituary

Another installment of physics-related stories from around the web that will tickle your fancy.

First: I'm glad Intel is thinking about how cosmic rays cause bit errors in RAM, plus this is really cool.

Cosmic ray detector on a chip

The mnemonic I learned in middle school for the categories in the electromagnetic spectrum is Raging Martians Invaded ROY G. BIV Using X-rays and Gamma rays.
 
I always thought the last two pieces were silly--what's the point in making up a mnemonic if it's identical to the thing you're trying to memorize? Additionally, the "Invaded" part makes it sound like the Raging Martians are performing an unwanted medical procedure. I like the "Raging Martians" bit, though.
 
I've recently come to prefer
Raging Martians Insulted ROY G. BIV, Urge Xenophobic Giraffes.

This is another story about lunar eclipses and the thrill of scientific discovery. As you might know there was quite a buzz about yesterday’s total lunar eclipse, the last one until 2011 or so. I felt a little indifferent to it. After all, what's the deal with an eclipse? Maybe during the Ming dynasty you could attain glory and celebrity status if you were able to predict one, but we've known for a while that it's just the earth sneaking in between the moon and sun, and even your local news weather guy could tell you up to the minute when it'll occur.

The total lunar eclipse last night was awesome! I missed the point where the moon was completely in the deepest part of the Earth's shadow, but it was still way cool.

I was surprised at what the eclipse looked like; I had expected something a bit more like Ragnarok.

I've realized that the bar is the most unexpected networking place. When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them nuclear physics.  70% of people say "Oh" and suddenly realize they left their keys in their car right next to their brain.  But the rest ask me about it and I start sounding like a lab brochure, explaining what we do, why it's great, and what outreach opportunities we have.

Yesterday, a couple of astrophysics grad students and I went on a mini road trip to Ann Arbor to see two string quartets perform (both as individual quartets and as an octet). It turns out that the composer of one of the octets studied astronomy at Yale before becoming a composer. Brian May got his Ph.D. in astrophysics as well, although he took a long hiatus in the middle of it to be a rock star. Maybe the question I should have asked is rather, what is it about astrophysics people and music?
 

Happy 2-to-the-first/2-to-the-second/2-to-the-third day! Today is 02/04/08. The last time this happened was 01/01/01. It'll happen again next time on 03/09/27 and on 04/16/64, by which time I will be eighty years old. I don't think I'll live to see May twenty-fifth, 2125, though. This is a once-a-millennium deal; it stops being possible to continue the series after that, unless someone reorganizes the calendar so 36 days in a month are possible. By that time, we'll probably be using stardates, anyway.

This evening, I went to a performance of the MSU Symphony Orchestra to hear some real music. They played "Overture to Oberon" by Carl Maria von Weber, "Concerto for Flute and Orchestra" by James Willey (a new piece), and "Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major" by Serge Prokofiev. I went mostly to hear a flute played well (I've almost forgotten what that sounds like, which means I sound extra wacky when I play, as infrequently as that is) and to hear the Prokofiev piece.