I pretty much kicked ass today. I win at reaserch! hooray!

I have discovered, when research is stressful, that it is incredibly soothing for me to sit down and read through early bits in Analysis, Manifolds, and Physics. And that I can then happily go over and do bits on the work I am avoiding.

Also: graviolis are the tastiest particle!

Paraphrased from John in group meeting today, after drawing some space-time diagrams:

"It's visualizing space that I have trouble with now. It's just assumed that up is time. So how do you picture a three-dimensional star?"

Fun physics article of the day: The Physics of `Now' by James B. Hartle, the author of a nice undergraduate GR text. It doesn't assume much physics background, but it's pretty technical in tone.

Quote: "Could we construct a robot that would remember the future?"

Richard Price has an article up on the arXiv that seems pretty relevant to some earlier discussion on my blog. He looks at the question of what happens to ordinary matter as the universe expands - what the effect is on bound systems like atoms, galaxies, and humans - and answers it at the level of undergraduate physics. Might be worth reading even if you don't dig the full-on math. (The short answer: If it is tightly bound enough, there are some transient effects but ultimately the expansion leaves the system unaffected. If not, it expands at the same rate of expansion as the overall universe. 'Tightly bound' means that the forces keeping the system together are strong)

It is reassuring, given the bit of floundering I did faced with this question, that such a brilliant physicist needed to think seriously in order to answer it :)

For physics interested people, this article at Cosmic Variance on string theory was quite interesting to me. Particularly the talk of how quantum field theory doesn't really have "particles" as fundamental stuff, but as a type of thing that can be observed. So replacing them with strings has confusing ramifications for the underlying theory. Now that I actually know a little bit about quantum field theory, I think I may actually be ready to look at what string theory is, and this is kind of exciting. I have wonderedd how the stringiness actually translates mathematically - some additional degree of freedom, with boundary condition? Where exactly do you put that in? Is thinking of it as a string really the best way? The hints in the article about how distance measures come out were also tantalizing.

Of course, I also am interested in learning about the roads to unification that start in gravity, which I lean to because of my personal fondness for general relativity as a beautiful theory. The exciting thing on this side is with knowledge of quantum field thoery I now have an impression of where those roads are aiming.

That is the difficulty of understanding such grandiose things as unifying theories, there are already such richnesses in the things they are unifying that I could easily wander in the seperate forests forever without having the hubris to attempt to weave all the trees together (to mix a nonsensical metaphor... i think i need more coffee.)

Ben and I duke it out in comments from the last post here. Perhaps some others who have been following along have something to add? (This may be getting a tad technical for non-physicists).

Darn, I have already used the slippery jello analogy for sewing silk. It would also be most apt for trying to picture in my head objects moving apart by the inflation of space itself between them, and what that means for light moving itself through that expanding space, stretching as it goes, and how that differs from light moving between two objects moving apart for other reasons.

Unrelated side note: When dancing naked in your hallway for extended periods of time, always remember to check that the front door is fully, fully closed.

It's not so much the 10 minute practice talk that sucked, but the 20 minutes of (admittedly helpful and goodnatured) critique by the attendees afterwards.

And the waiting around for 4 hours on an (apparantly) sunny friday afternoon for your advisor to have some free time to continue his portion pf the critique.

Oh well, at least I got some work done on my code. If by "work done" I mean "new things broken".

I am so very tired.

But! There is wine at home. Yay!

Went to a Friday Fish Fry with some physicists & Uwe, and afterward we headed over to the Jazz Estate afterwards while Uwe went across to visit Cory the Bike Fixer for a while. I think it is probably rare for five people to walk into a bar early on a Friday night and soon realize that everyone there - all of us, the other patron (happened to be a fellow grad student), and the bartender - all hold degrees in physics.

The hilarity that ensued, though perhaps funnier when drunk, nearly had me falling off the stool in laughter.

"Seth says there's no such things as a computer experiement unless you toss it off a cliff."
"That's not true. You could also set it on fire."

"You're just a collection of fucking bound state wavefunction superpositions."
"Oh yeah? I challenge you! Come over here and walk right through me!"

It was fun hanging out with Mike, who I hadn't seen much of since he got married last year. And Uwe had a good time with us, which was happifying because I like when he enjoys joining my social life. He got to start talking bottom bracket geometry with Seth and kept up with our geek level. And I managed to get smashed and still be home by 11!

So I'm back from my first "real" research conference, an intensive 2 day conference-room meeting with 7 participants. It's a bit intimidating being on the bottom of the heirarchy - only one other student present, and he wasn't quite as directly involved. And the other "senior" prof there is a pretty big name in physics, too.

I have a bit of an ego issue when it comes to physics, where I tend to alternate between thinking that I'm a freakin' genius and that i'm a totally useless idiot. The first day went really well, I felt comfortable with the material, and phase A started to come into effect. I almost got giddy - I was here with some totally brilliant people and I was holding my own. Unfortnately, that made me a little less timid in what I jumped in about. And so the second day, I said a few things spontaneously which thinking over them again later were kind of going in the wrong direction. It freaked me out to start saying stuff, have everyone turn to look, and realize that what I was going to say was totally insipid. Or worse to jump up and write something on the board and realize that's not really what they were talking about. Cue mental kicking and worrying I've made a total fool of myself in front of a bunch of important people, to the point that I had to restrain myself from thumping my head against the airplane tray 5 or 6 times on the flight home.

The car accident Saturday evening probably didn't help my nerves, either.

And now, a little later, I've settled down a bit, and I think on the whole I did pretty good. Nobody shot down the off-key stuff outright, and at least it was tangentially realated. I think I get a little bit of leeway as I'm pretty new to research. And I think on the whole I made a pretty good impression. It was great to find that I genuinely like the people we're working with, and they are very kind and inspiring.

And holeee crap I have a lot of new stuff to work on now!