Vacation

Oh yes, I've been on vacation. Since my parents were here this vacation was a bit slower and involved less beer than usual. Some impressions:

* The service staff in Banff seems to consist to 50% of Australians left over from the ski season.

* The road between Lake Louise and Jasper has to qualify to the top ten list of the world's most beautiful highways.

* It is almost possible to get tired of waterfalls and canyons.

* It is understandable that some hockey players are sceptic towards living in Edmonton.

* Animal sightings: deer, elk, mountain goats, bald eagle and an awful lot of squirrels.


More photos at Picasa.

Super-K

Cool pictures from Super-Kamiokande (after the repair).



Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Alice and Bob are getting farther apart

A new length record for quantum communication is reported by New Scientist and Nature Physics. The record is 144 km and the signal was sent by free space link.

Via Abstinence Kid.

Black holes is da shit?

Two PRL:s within four months is something that Campanelli et al seems to have achieved. They have developed a new computational algorithm for gravitation and have used it to perform simulations of two black holes merging Phys Rev Lett 96 (2007) 111101. The paper (or its animations?) were noticed by Physics News Graphic which I found via Dark Roasted Blend.

This weeks Physical Review Focus mentions two papers looking very similar to Campanelli's, and indeed, one of the papers have basically the same authors as the article mentioned above. It is not unusual that one project renders several similar papers. Usually one writes a short paper briefly describing the finding and then complements with longer, more detailed papers. Two PRL:s though is very well done. My gravitation and cosmology and my knowledge of computer algorithms is a bit rusty but I suspect that the authors got some extra attention since they produced some cool pictures and animations. The research is probably top class (they did get it in to PRL) but if you want to make your voice heard in the scientific noise it doesn't hurt to have some fancy graphic.

Followup

Today there was a departmental seminar with some guy from Ottawa who got his PhD like three years ago and already had his own group that were producing Science papers. The talk (Catalytic Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation without Activating Groups: A New Biaryl Synthesis) only rendered two marks on the bingo sheet; the two giveaways "You've no idea what's going on" and "Master's student bobs head fighting sleep". In other words a pretty good talk. It is not unusual that I have no clue what the speaker is going on about, especially if it is not physical chemistry. If it's chemistry chemistry I'm totally lost. Unfortunately I think most other people are lost too. Can it really be so hard to get people to speak at a lower level at a departmental seminar? Is it really that important to show off?

Will be tested on next seminar

Regarding the second frame on the fourth row it can be noted that I rarely ask questions at departmental seminars. The third frame on the fifth row is a giveaway though...