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.
Showing posts with label Grad Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grad Life. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Little bump = Higgs?
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Solvay Colloquium
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".
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".
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The next couple of days
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.
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.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Progress report
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
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
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Social and other gatherings
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
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
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Colloquia en Lectures
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.
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.
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