At String School

anbu costume

2009-04-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

I am looking for someone in canada willing to sell a female anbu costume......and maybe how much they go for heheh

2007-07-31T10:30:00.001-07:00

Yes, do you believe? He is back to ABCDEF another time, marks them on a four lines copy book. Drawing cautiously “G” Clef on the lines, which is one of his ever favorite music sign! He loves to draw them again…

He joined “Saraswathy” 15 years back in Calicut, to learn guitar, like many other things he discontinued… he then re-join five years back in another class, like last time he stopped. But he still wanna play “Hotel California” on his Spanish Guitar… He still wanna perform like Eric Clapton… so he re-entered in another class from today!

He forget the name of treble notes…he forget how to read the value of the notes…he can’t play 4 crotchet notes any more….he misplaced open string exercises….his fingers cant located on the right frets now….and after two hours of practice on the strings… his fingers starts getting pain…

The week of a maybe not so typical grad student

2007-03-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how the "working week" of a (maybe not so) typical grad student looks like? I'll give you mine as a case study.

MONDAY

Vowed to get up early to do some research. Eventually got to the VUB at noon. Rest of the afternoon spent grading lab reports due the following day. Finished the day lamenting the fact that no research was done.

TUESDAY

Spent most of the day (this being from 8am to 5pm) in the lab TA'ing. Figured the lack of a lunch break would at least help keep calorie intake down. Came home at 8pm exhausted, wondering if this how people with a real job feel everyday. Happy to be a grad after all

WEDNESDAY

Planned on going to two seminars. Got an idea while shaving. Spent most of the day at home working it out. Extatic by the end of the day due to marginal progression of research. Depressed 20 minutes later at the idea of how slowly it is going and how much I still have left to learn before I can say anything meaningful about it. Dinner with friends who convinced me to go to the local bar for a party.

THURSDAY

Came to the conclusion that two hours sleep is not enough, and that women + emotions + lots alcohol = bad combination. Most of the afternoon spent giving and getting a pep talk to/from a good friend, who came to the same conclusion (only substitute men for women in her case). Evening spent playing World of Warcraft

FRIDAY (today as it were)

Got up, thinking what needed to be done for the second year lab I need to teach this afternoon. Got the impression that a blog update was overdue.

At least the weekend will be fun (I hope). A friend of mine has a job as a stewardess for a train company that organises ski trains to Austria. She managed to secure a place for me on this weekend's train, so we'll do a quick citytrip to Innsbruck.

Cheers,

Dimi

Network meeting

2007-02-28T06:16:00.000-08:00

No seminars today, because of a meeting of our European Network in Ghent.

I'm up at this ghastly hour but looking at the agenda it will be worth it. A quick view of the topics

Recent results from the CDF experiment, by Gilles De Lentdecker

Search for neutrino point sources, by Amanda by Bruny Baret

Is String Theory predictive?, by Frederik Denef

Dark Matter in galaxies, by Athnassoula

Classification of 2-Higgs models

Getting ready for the LHC : Commissioning the theoretical tools, by Fabio Maltoni

Getting ready for the LHC : racker commissioning and jets in CMS, by Dorian Kcira

Sounds like fun doesn't it?

D.

First lab went well

2007-02-08T15:44:00.001-08:00

Hehe...

Tuesday I had my first lab session with the 1st year industrial engineering students. It was quite the education, the way of doing things is very different at a Hogeschool compared to a University. Not better or worse, just different. My partner in crime (i.e. the other TA) Paul is a great guy to work with and has helped me immensely and the students were nice enough. All in all a good experience.

The lab is your average "basic physics lab for engineering freshmen" dealing with things like determining the resonant frequency of a spring, viscosity measurements, specific heat measurements, etc... It had been a while since I'd done these things, but in the end it all came back to be.

In less exiting news, there is a stack of lab reports that await me, in urgent need of grading. Better get on it then.

Tata,

D.

First lab went well

2007-02-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

Microsoft OS X aka Windows Vista

2007-01-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista, Microsoft's long overdue new operating system has hit the stores in Belgian. In the old days a new Windows was a big event for me. I still fondly remember the 3.1 -> Win95 and the Win98 -> XP transitions. But this time it's seems hard to be enthousiastic. After reading or hearing several reviews they all seem to offer the same conclusion : for windows users it will introduce a good operating system, but there's nothing there for a mac user that OS X doesn't already offer. The most hilarious review came from the news program Terzake, where the reviewer was showing us the new functions of Vista. While he had to admit they were handy and nice, he almost always had to add "this is something Mac OS X offers for quite a while".

So will I be getting Vista? I'm running a OS X/XP dual boot on my Macbook Pro but I don't think I'll be getting Vista unless some application absolutely forces me. The main reason for having XP is running games anyway, all serious work is done on the Mac side of things ;-)

Little bump = Higgs?

2007-01-29T07:14:00.000-08:00

Sigh. I'm out of the blogosphere for a week or so and what happens? The Tevatron finds an anomalous signal that might be the higgs! Cosmic Variance has an new blogger, John Conway, who works at Fermilab so he's the right person to explain to us what might be going on.

A new blog in town, Resonaances, is being started up by someone at CERN. It's something I'll be keeping a close watch on. CERN is going to be the place to be for particle physics once the LHC starts running...

Speaking of CERN, String School @ CERN took place a week or two ago. You'd think that it would be just the thing for me, right? We'll I'd agree with you, but due to some oversight I had no idea it was coming, so I wasn't able to go. A real shame, because CERN is great place to be. The video lectures have been put online so at least I can see what's been said.

If you're wondering who I work with, last year's edition featured a few lectures by Ben Craps on String Big Bang models. He's a great guy, I TA'd his EM and QM course this semester and he was very nice to work with. Speaking of which, I need to be going. The QM final is today so I need to go and keep an eye on those pesky undergrads taking it ;-)

Tata,

D.

Warped passages

2007-01-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

I've just picked up Warped Passages by Lisa Randall. I've always meant to since seeing her at a panel discussion at last year's Solvay Conference, but you know how these things go. Anyway, I've got it now and I will be able to tell you what I think of it after a few bustrips (1h commute to the university...).

The nice thing about it at first glance is that she looks at extra dimensions from a very different perspective. She distinguishes between the string theorists, who are interested in it because their favourite theory demands them, and model builders like herself who just wonder how (any number of) extra dimensions can solve problems in particle physics.

And with that short notice, the weekend begins...

Solvay Colloquium

2006-12-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

I'm seriously considering going to this colloquium today :

Clifford M. Will (McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences,
Washington University, St. Louis, USA)

Title: "The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment"

Abstract : " We review the experimental evidence for Einstein's general relativity. Tests of the Einstein Equivalence Principle support the postulates of curved spacetime, while solar-system experiments strongly confirm weak-field general relativity. We describe the status of the recently concluded Gravity Probe B gyroscope experiment. Binary pulsars provide tests of gravitational-wave damping and of strong-field general relativity. Recently operational laser interferometric gravitational-wave observatories, and a future space interferometer, may provide new tests via the properties of gravitational waves."

I've often wondered what Gravity Probe B will tell us about gravitation. If you want an introduction to the experiment, you can find it at Stanford's site at http://einstein.stanford.edu/

If I actually get there, I'll let you know how it went.

-Dimi

UPDATE : The talk was very good, an rather interesting too. Appartently the gravitational community has been comparing general relativity with experiment since the 60's, and has been ruling out many alternate theories as a consequence. A very good review can been found here.

In addition, the gravity probe B results will be unveiled mid january. The speaker is part of a NASA advisory board, so he already has an idea, but as he put it "if I tell you now, I'd have to kill you".

The next couple of days

2006-11-28T21:49:00.000-08:00

If you're wondering what I'm up to the next few days...

I'm leaving the house in a few minutes to meet up with a few people at party. The theme for tonight is that the special "Duvel" beer will be available at only €1. People who know their Belgian beers will realise that this is very good news indeed :-)

Tomorrow I'm having a meeting with the other TA's about one of my classes to check on our progress. A friend of mine (and the TA for my freshman physics course long, long ago...) is defending his PhD thesis, and I'll be trying to attend. I'm not sure what it's about yet, but I vaguely remember it's something about using B-tagging to detect heavy higgses at the LHC. Should be fun.

I was wondering to wear shorts tonight. Its still 16°C here, and we're almost december...

Tata,

D.

Progress report

2006-11-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

This week there was some progress on the research front. Arjan, a post-doc at my lab was kind enough to show me a little trick to figure out what all the Lorentz-invariant contractions of the Riemann-tensor are for a given order. I basically reduces the problem to solving a kind of Sudoko puzzle, not unlike the Cartan root system for Lie algebra's.

Remember my search for good differential geometry tests? The Cambridge lecture notes were very helpful, but there's always more isn't there. A math professor at my university suggested the following book (no, I haven't taken over Lubos' obsession with Amazon adds, it's just the only place I could find it).

http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Physics-Introduction-Second/dp/0521539277

The aforementioned math professor is studying it himself. It's good to see people from the math department taking an interest in the link between mathematics and physics, something that's rather close to my heart. I think I'll ask my dad to bring it with him when he gets back to Belgium, since it appears to be alot cheaper and more easily available in the States.

-Dimi

Looking for a soulmate? Start blogging!

2006-11-18T19:32:00.000-08:00

An interesting thing has happened.

Sean Carrol, one of the bloggers at Cosmic Variance, is engaged to be married to Jennifer Ouellette of that other well-known blog, Cocktail Party Physics. You can read their respective stories on the linked blogs.

How strange this blogging thing can be. Not only has it unexpectedly transformed the way science is popularised or influenced tenureship, it is now becoming a major influence on the blogger's personal life. I wonder how common this phenomenon will become. As an aspiring scientist I firmly believe in the scientific method, so any charming ladies who are not put off by guys who know how to calculate the energy levels of a hydrogen atom are welcome to post their comments ;-)

Kidding aside, best wishes to the happy couple and may their marriage be a happy one!

Sick

2006-11-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

Not much to tell you really. I've been rather sick for the last week or so, but I had to go out last week to take care of some things. As a result it's gotten worse this weekend to the point that I had to cancel the recitations for today. So as you can imagine, there is not much interesting I can write is unless you're really interested in the contents of my hanckerchief...

Needed : math

2006-10-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I was faced with a problem this week. Well, several problems. The start of it all (the meta-problem if you will) was te realisation that dawns on you constantly when you try to do anything in string theory, and any branch of theoretical physics for that matter; I don't know enough mathematics.

Fair enough, this is where we get some studying done. The plan for the coming weeks is to get a good grasp of differential geometry. It's pretty hard to find a good text that describes it at the level that I need. I don't need it to be too rigorous (my apologies to the mathematicians), but it needs to be rigorous enough. I think that my long search is over. Prof. Gary Gibbons from Cambridge was kind enough to post the following lecture notes on his website

Applications of Differential Geometry to Physics

The notes are from a Part III course in Cambridge, which seems to be exaclty what I need.

The main reason why I need this is that I want to understand more about vector bundles. Remember that I'm working on gravity in the string theory context? Well, gravity is described by General Relativity, who'se mathematical language is that of tensor calculus on manifolds. I'm trying to use methods found by my advisor to construct exact solutions that hopefully will shed some light on the high energy behaviour. These methods arised in the context of gauge theories, which are described mathematically by symmetry groups called Lie groups. Fibre bundles (at least to me) seem to be the natural bridge between the two. Apparently, gauge fields can be seen as connections on vector bundles. This is what I want to understand better.

-Dimi

Social and other gatherings

2006-10-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was fun. A professor in my department decided to hold a little social gathering at his appartment in Brussels. The original pizza plan was foiled, due to the cook of his usual pizza place being abroad for the pizza world championships (no, I'm not making this up...), but in the end it all worked out and we had a nice meal.

So what happens when a bunch of string theorists get together with a few bottles of wine? A very interesting discussion erupted about the nature of mathematics and it's relation to physics. We also agreed the landscape was rubbish ;-)

The next few weeks will be very busy. I will be attending a graduate school about nonperturbative aspects of quantum field theory, supersymmetric QFT's, string theory and D-branes. Speakers will include Frank Ferrari, Ludwig Fadeev, Ben Craps, Carlo Maccaferri and Riccardo Argurio. Should be fun, but it will take up a lot of time. Wait, weren't the days of attending lectures all day over...?

In conclusion, some random pictures from various parties last week

Colloquia en Lectures

2006-10-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Some news about that new aspect of my new life, qolloquia, symposia and the likes.

Next week I'm invited to the following :

Solvay Colloquium by Professor C.N. Yang
THEMATIC MELODIES OF TWENTIETH CENTURY PHYSICS: QUANTIZATION, SYMMETRY AND PHASE FACTOR

The Inaugural Lecture of the 2006 International Solvay Chair in Physics by Professor Ludwig Fadeev
THE MASS PROBLEM IN YANG-MILLS GAUGE THEORY

Sounds fun doesn't it? I'm going to attend, but I'll mentally prepare myself that I will be feeling rather stupid afterwards.

As for other news... all I can say is : curse Blackadder DVD's! I really ougth to have gotten more work done yesterday. No matter, I'll make up for it today.

Party tonight as well. I'll post op pictures if I don't forget my camera.