HTTP/2 200 cross-origin-resource-policy: cross-origin etag: W/"a8f8d7d82bf96be8b156a7aa834b423ee2728035700e03b901334995ab119600" date: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:22:18 GMT content-type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8 server: blogger-renderd expires: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:22:19 GMT cache-control: public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate, max-age=1 x-content-type-options: nosniff x-xss-protection: 0 last-modified: Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:41:09 GMT content-encoding: gzip content-length: 23357 x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000 tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-114826882025-03-02T19:41:09.700-05:00Thoughts on science and life. Mark Trodden is a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, working on cosmology, particle physics and gravity.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1121690069987121752005-07-18T08:09:00.000-04:002005-07-18T08:34:29.993-04:00As promised on <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/07/exciting-news-on-way.html">Friday</a>, I have exciting news to announce. Today sees the launch of a new group blog - <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/">Cosmic Variance</a>.<br /><br />My esteemed new co-contributors are; <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/sean/">Sean Carroll</a> (of the widely-read <a href="https://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/">Preposterous Universe</a>) - another particle cosmologist; <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/risa/">Risa Wechsler</a>, who is a cosmologist from the University of Chicago, <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/clifford/">Clifford Johnson</a> - a string theorist from the University of Southern California, and <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/joanne/">JoAnne Hewett</a> - a particle phenomenologist from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.<br /><br />We've been planning for the last month or so, discussing in secret and designing the site in a restricted test area protected by the highest security (well, Risa's excellent computer skills at any rate). We were going to have Karl Rove leak the blog's existence to create a buzz, but he was busy with other, more treasonous leaks.<br /><br />If you have read <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/">Orange Quark</a> more than once, you'll already have a reaasonable idea of the kinds of issues I will be addressing on the new blog - science, science and society, science and politics, what it's like to be a scientist, plus smaller amounts of whatever takes my fancy. The other authors will all have their own voices and interests, although I fully expect the fact that we are all physicists will provide a central theme for the blog.<br /><br />For now, I'm going to leave open the possibility that I will continue to post here also. However, realistically, I can imagine that time constraints will mean that pretty soon I will focus exclusively on <a href="https://cosmicvariance.com/">Cosmic Variance</a>. Even if I do cease active posting here, I'll still leave this site up so that, if needed, I can link to previous posts.<br /><br />I'm excited about the new blog and the cosmo-particle-stringy rabble with whom I'm consorting. If you take a look, please let us know what you think.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com158tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1121447980938720602005-07-15T13:18:00.000-04:002005-07-15T13:19:40.943-04:00I'm still traveling and not able to provide significant posts. I did, however, want to post a quick heads up that on Monday I will be announcing some exciting blog news right here. Hope you'll come back to see what it is.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1121132590260850212005-07-11T19:59:00.000-04:002005-07-11T21:49:18.406-04:00I leave in the morning to spend a few days at the <a href="https://www.grc.org/programs/2005/nucphys.htm">2005 Nuclear Physics Gordon Conference</a>. The Gordon Conferences are relatively small, intimate meetings, designed (so I'm told, having not attended one before) to facilitate discussion of cutting edge topics. They are typically held in small colleges all over New England, and the one that I'm attending is happening at <a href="https://www.bates.edu/">Bates College</a> in Lewiston, Maine.<br /><br />It'll be interesting to be at a nuclear physics conference, since I don't typically attend them. I'm going to this one to give an invited talk titled "<span style="font-style: italic;">Connecting Fundamental Physics and Cosmology</span>". This is <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/03/travelin-man.html">the talk I often give</a> to audiences predominantly composed of particle physicists, in which I discuss the issues raised by the energy budget of the universe, discovered through increasingly accurate observations over the last decade. I talk about dark matter, dark energy and the <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/03/matters-of-antimatter.html">baryon asymmetry of the universe</a>.<br /><br />As <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/03/of-colliders-and-cosmology.html">I've mentioned before</a>, the story with dark matter is a particularly interesting example of how microphysics and macrophysics - particle physics and cosmology - can work together to help explain one of the most fundamental questions about reality. If we're lucky, our colliders will discover the properties of new particles, which, with the help of data from dark matter detection experiments, may be identified as twenty percent of the missing matter content of the universe.<br /><br />There is an interesting precedent for this connection, and it has a nice tie in with nuclear physics. In work beginning in the 1940s and continuing up to the present day, physicists have been able to use well-established nuclear physics data in the context of an expanding spacetime, to understand the abundances of the light elements in the early universe. This prediction of the hot big bang theory, and its remarkable confirmation through precision measurements of primordial Deuterium, Helium-3, Helium-4 and Lithium abundances, is one of the most stunning pieces of evidence supporting our modern cosmological model. <span style="font-style: italic;">Primordial nucleosynthesis</span> (or <span style="font-style: italic;">Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN)</span>), as this process is known, thus provides a compelling template for other cosmo-particle connections, such as the search for dark matter.<br /><br />Given this rich history of the interplay between nuclear physics and cosmology, I expect to feel quite comfortable as a cosmologist at a nuclear physics conference. In fact, such interplay is not just historical. I'm looking forward to learning a little more about how nuclear physics can help us understand more about supernovae, neutron stars and neutrino physics, and even how the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) might unlock some of the secrets of matter at high densities that are so important to understanding the early universe.<br /><br />The only downside to this trip is that I suspect that my Internet access will be very sparse over the next three days, and so I don't expect to blog again before Friday, although I will if I can. When I get back I'll give a more detailed report on the conference.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1121046503435122592005-07-10T21:40:00.000-04:002005-07-10T21:48:23.440-04:00As I've mentioned a number of times before, Ian McEwan is one of my favorite authors. I have enjoyed essentially everything I've read that he has written. <a href="https://guardian.co.uk/">The Guardian</a> is carrying <a href="https://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1524058,00.html">a small article that McEwan has written</a> about the impact of the London bombings on everyday life in the capital. It would be pointless for me to try to describe his writing in my clumsy way here, but I think it's worth a read.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1121023087344546862005-07-10T14:44:00.000-04:002005-07-10T19:09:12.196-04:00I was intending to write a long post today about the upcoming inaugural meeting of <a href="https://www.cafescientifique.org/">Café Scientifique</a> in Syracuse. This required me to finish the web site and use a number of files that are stored on the Physics department server. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that this server is down for almost the entire day while the switch to a new server is completed. I do still want to write something about this, in order to get the message out to anyone in Syracuse who may be interested and happens to watch this space, so I'm going to give the bare bones here, and then provide a lengthy discussion of it in a longer post very soon.<br /><br />As explained on <a href="https://www.cafescientifique.org/howitworks.htm">the Café Scientifique web site</a>,<br /><blockquote>"Cafe Scientifique is a place where, for the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology. Meetings have taken place in cafes, bars, restaurants and even theatres, but always outside a traditional academic context.<br /><br />The first Cafes Scientifiques were held in the UK in Leeds in 1998. Since then, Cafes Scientifiques have sprung up in Newcastle, Nottingham and Oxford and the network has now begun to expand to other cities in the UK. We hope that by 2003 there will be a thriving network of 20 to 30 Cafes that meet regularly to hear scientists or writers on science talk about their work and discuss it with diverse audiences.<br /><br />Cafe Scientifique is a forum for debating science issues, not a shop window for science. We are committed to promoting public engagement with science and to making science accountable."</blockquote>The idea has now spread to a number of different places worldwide. The Syracuse branch is being organized by a group of us spanning the science departments at Syracuse University - myself (representing Physics), <a href="https://www-che.syr.edu/Faculty/deBettencourt-Dias/">Ana de Bettencourt-Dias</a> (Chemistry), <a href="https://earthsciences.syr.edu/Samson/Scott.htm">Scott Samson</a> (Earth Sciences), <a href="https://psychweb.syr.edu/facultystaff/research/drverhae.htm">Paul Verhaeghen</a> (Psychology) and a Biologist to be named very soon.<br /><br />Our inaugural meeting will be held at <span style="font-style: italic;">Ambrosia</span> restaurant in Armory Square in Syracuse on August 2nd at 7pm. There will be a $5 door charge, but this will cover some delicious snacks provided by Ambrosia, and our own bartender so that we don't constantly have to go into the main part of the restaurant to order drinks. For the first meeting, we will cover the door charge for the first thirty people who arrive.<br /><br />When I write my long post about this I'll include links to our web site, the title and speaker and directions to <span style="font-style: italic;">Ambrosia</span>, but, given my technological restrictions, I've written all I can for now.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120782602333436772005-07-07T19:41:00.000-04:002005-07-07T20:30:02.346-04:00I have spent most of today flipping between news sites and listening to the audio feed of the BBC news on my computer while trying to get a little work done. Needless to say, the latter effort was not particularly successful. It has been immensely saddening to watch the carnage in London, but at the same time it has been heartening to watch Londoners' remarkable response to this tragedy.<br /><br />Today is not, of course, the first time London has faced bombs, and not even the first time it has faced terrorist ones. Nevertheless, in the midst of what must have been a terrifying situation, I thought people did as well as one could imagine.<br /><br />Almost everyone who is anyone, and plenty more who are not (case in point right here) have had their say on television, radio and in the print media. Some responses have been touching and eloquent (actually the least eloquent I heard was from Donald Rumsfeld, one of the few native "English" speakers commenting) but the one that stood out for me was by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.<br /><br />Livingstone is the kind of guy who could never win office in the U.S.. I could go into a number of reasons, but it is probably enough to say that he is a self-described Trotskyite (<span style="font-style: italic;">Red Ken</span>, as I recall him being called). I've sometimes found him to be a thoughtful and caring person and sometimes heard him say things with which I wholeheartedly disagree. However, his somewhat emotional response to today's events was nicely done. He said<br /><blockquote>"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old.<br /> <br />It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.<br /> <br />That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other."</blockquote>This is a comment that certainly resonates with me. Livingstone's <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/mayor_statement_070705.jsp">entire statement</a> is somewhat longer, ending with<br /><blockquote>"Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.<br /> <br />I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.<br /> <br />In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.<br /> <br />They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."</blockquote>This is a little more simplistic but I can recognize its power nevertheless, and I'm glad Livingstone is saying things that generally make sense. Complex as the issues surrounding terrorism are, and as angry as I am with some of the nonsensical things we have done, such as the war in Iraq, in the name of the war on terror, I have found myself despairing over some of the silly comments made by people with whom I share many other views.<br /><br />A case in point is <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/EthnicStudies/faculty/w_churchill.html">Ward Churchill</a>, who became infamous for his comments about the victims of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. I support Churchill's right to free speech and his academic freedom. His comments just made me sit and shake my head. I'd like to hear what he has to say about the London attacks, on people using public transportation to get to their varied jobs around the city. Somehow, after Livingstone's inspired comments, I think Churchill will be hard pushed to refer to these victims as "Little Eichmanns" or as the British equivalent of the "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire."Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120735942945107242005-07-07T07:16:00.000-04:002005-07-07T07:32:22.960-04:00I have just woken up to the news of the coordinated bombs on the transport system in London. It's hard to say anything meaningful at this point, except the obvious - that one feels both saddened and angered to see such an appalling event. I've just sent out emails to family, friends and colleagues in London, to see if they are all safe, and I am now waiting for responses.<br /><br />You can be sure I'll post more heavily about this in the coming days. For now, I'm hoping that the British response will be to identify who is responsible and then to do everything possible to apprehend or kill them. I'm also hoping that such an effort won't become diluted by an obsession with regimes in countries unconnected to these attacks. I don't make this as a flippant comment on Iraq; I just don't want my government to make the same mistake again.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120705620075428822005-07-06T22:57:00.000-04:002005-07-06T23:07:00.100-04:00Time for blogging is a little short this week, for reasons I'll explain in the near future. I did want to point out <a href="https://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/0707/p14s02-stss.html">an interesting article</a> in <a href="https://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/">The Christian Science Monitor</a> though. There is quite broad agreement among scientists that scientific goals are far more easily, safely and cheaply attained through the use of robotic space missions, rather than manned missions. The CSM article discusses this from a variety of viewpoints. For my tastes, I liked the following quotes from James Van Allen, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa.<blockquote>""I'm one of the most durable advocates for space exploration around," But beyond Apollo's moon landings and missions to service the Hubble Space Telescope, he adds, human spaceflight hasn't contributed as much to humanity's understanding of the cosmos as increasingly sophisticated unmanned probes.<br /> <br />"It's the cost," he says. "If it was easy to do, I'd be all for it." But with record federal deficits, an increasingly expensive war in Iraq, problems with Social Security, and other demands on the federal purse, the benefits to science from human spaceflight over the past 10 to 15 years have not justified the cost.""</blockquote>Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120536860193071992005-07-04T23:56:00.000-04:002005-07-05T00:15:24.846-04:00While Americans everywhere were celebrating victory over my countrymen, <a href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span></a> is reporting that, after waiting patiently for 229 years, a crack team of British special force troops has struck back. These brave souls have succeeded in penetrating White House security and retrieving Tony Blair's balls from the crystal display case in the Oval Office, in which they have been on prominent display for the last four years.<br /><br />At least, this is the only explanation I can think of for <a href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1519106,00.html">an article titled "Blair May Snub U.S. on Climate"</a>,Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120315203159947872005-07-02T09:30:00.000-04:002005-07-02T18:31:28.723-04:00The <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th/">new issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Science</span></a> celebrates that magazine's 125th anniversary by exploring 125 major open scientific questions. I haven't had time for a thorough read yet, although I'm looking forward to it, but a couple of things have already caught my eye.<br /><br />The subtitle of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Science</span> issue is "What Don't We Know?", and this is one reason to be excited about the contents. For me, one of the great powers of the scientific approach to the world lies in the ability to say <span style="font-style: italic;">I don't know</span>. This simple statement of ignorance drives scientists along, spurs new discoveries, keeps us awake at nights and, despite what those who do not understand science might say, firmly distinguishes science from any of the belief systems with which it is sometimes compared. New discoveries in science are triumphs for those directly involved, for science in general, and for humankind as a whole. They are rightly heralded by scientists, journalists and the public alike. But visit the office or laboratory of any practicing scientist the day after a major new discovery is announced, and you'll invariably see them sitting around asking "How does this cast light on other unanswered questions?", "How can this help us with other things we don't know?", "What next?!". It's all about moving on - we're excited by what we don't know.<br /><br />Because of our sceptical attitude, and willingness to say what we don't know, there is a sense in which scientists know less than many other people in our society. I'm using "know" here in the sense that if someone truly believes they understand the answer to a question, independently of the actual evidence that that answer is correct, they truly think they "know" something. It is true that scientists know many fascinating, sometimes technical, sometimes arcane facts about nature. However, the broad strokes of many of these ideas are often also widely accepted by society. However, in addition to this knowledge, many members of society think they know vast "truths" about the universe beyond those established by rational enquiry. Because scientists are typically unwilling to sign on to such unwarranted beliefs, we often "know" less than others. Despite being frequently derided as "arrogant know-it-alls" (which we sometimes ask for), I think there's a reasonable case to be made that scientists are "humble know-nothings" (but I'm guessing people won't be clamoring to adopt this interpretation).<br /><br />I've <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/04/importance-of-serious-science.html">written before</a> about the crucial role played by science journalism in our society. At its best, great science writing doesn't just provide a jargon-free, simplified, analogy-laden version of what scientists write in their technical journal articles. Rather, it helps frame the crucial issues, shows how they fit into the wider realm of scientific and human enquiry and, perhaps most crucially, conveys a picture of how science works, including the power of acknowledging the things we don't know.<br /><br />I was therefore delighted to see that the Science issue contains <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/76">an opening essay</a> by one of my favorite science journalists, Tom Siegfried, titled <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/76"><span style="font-style: italic;">"In Praise of Hard Questions"</span></a>. This is an extremely well written article, which I think presents science in an exciting and beautiful light. In a paragraph that partially quotes David Gross, one of the 2004 Nobel Prize winners in physics, Siegfried writes<br /><blockquote>"Science's greatest advances occur on the frontiers, at the interface between ignorance and knowledge, where the most profound questions are posed. There's no better way to assess the current condition of science than listing the questions that science cannot answer. "Science," Gross declares, "is shaped by ignorance.""<br /></blockquote>Science is not the study of a dead body of knowledge. The action is at the frontier and there are mountains of interesting questions and fascinating work to be done. One thing that Siegfried's essay accomplishes is to demolish the silly argument that some commentators have made - that we are approaching the end of science. It seems to me that we now realize that there is more science left to do than we ever realized before, and I hope that young people reading Siegfried's article and this <span style="font-style: italic;">Science</span> issue can see that there's a place for them in the great endeavor. It would provide a fascinating focus for a class discussion led by an innovative science teacher.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120173702125450482005-06-30T18:40:00.000-04:002005-06-30T19:21:42.136-04:00Anyone who regularly reads <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Orange Quark</span></a> knows that I spend a fair amount of time outraged over the increasing encroachment of religion on the rational world. It's not because I'm a glass-half empty sort of guy, or that I love complaining (although it is true that neither of these help); it's just that it's amazingly rare that I see anything in the news these days to give me hope that reason will ultimately prevail. When something encouraging finally does come along, I can be all sweetness and light, honestly.<br /><br />The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a> has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/education/29camp.html?8hpib">a wonderful, happy, feel-good story</a> about a very special summer camp for kids. This delightful place is called Camp Quest and is in, of all places, southern Ohio. And what is it that makes me giddy for Camp Quest? As the Times reports<br /><blockquote>"Providing a haven for the children of nonbelievers is what Camp Quest is all about. As the camp's official T-shirt announces, it's a place that's "beyond belief." More precisely, it claims to be the first summer sleep-away camp in the country for atheist, agnostic and secular humanist children."<br /></blockquote>Isn't this great? I'd love it if this were all they did - just provide a place where kids aren't made to feel odd because they don't subscribe to others' fantasies - but it gets better. The camp sees it as part of its mission to celebrate and teach reason and rationality. For example<br /><blockquote>"At the opening campfire ceremony, Mr. Kagin issued a set of challenges for campers to respond to in skits on the final night of camp. One such challenge: Help residents of the faraway planet Questerion understand how life on earth came into being. Another challenge: Prove that the two invisible unicorns in residence do not exist.<br /> <br />As in years past, camp leaders also worked on presentations in science and other natural (as opposed to supernatural) phenomena. This year's subjects were raptors and meteorology, including a demonstration of a portable weather station. Also, Gene Kritsky, a biology professor at the nearby College of Mount St. Joseph, talked to campers about creationism, arguing that the theories used to try to disprove evolution fail to hold up."</blockquote>I'm not going to rant about the pressures faced by nonbelievers in this country - it'd ruin my happy happy post. I'm just going to end with the words of Edwin Kagin, the camp's director and one of its founders<br /><blockquote>"We're serving as a night light in a dark and scary room"</blockquote>Imagine me with a big goofy smile across my face.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1120003840616641562005-06-28T20:00:00.000-04:002005-06-28T20:10:40.636-04:00You just <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to read <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18625054.700">this short article</a> from <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/home.ns">New Scientist</a>. It sounds like an unusual, but interesting piece of science. What made me laugh though is the description if the experiments themselves:<br /><blockquote>"Christian Kell at the University of Frankfurt in Germany has put eight men into an MRI scanner to help settle the question. Using a soft brush, Kell stroked parts of each volunteer's body while recording brain activity."<br /></blockquote>We need research like this in the U.S., because if the religious right got wind of federal funding for a guy sitting in a laboratory stroking other guys' penises with a soft brush, it's just possible that it would draw the totality of their fire and the rest of the scientific establishment could relax for a while.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119921150225019342005-06-27T20:39:00.000-04:002005-06-27T22:56:24.193-04:00At the risk of being pedantic (Oh, who am I kidding, I'm going to go on and on about this stuff until it stops), the attack on science in the U.S. is going ahead full steam. Congressman Joe Barton (Republican, of Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is sending intimidating letters to the members of the <a style="font-style: italic;" href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> and to Arden Bement, Director of the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/">National Science Foundation</a>. It's true - <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Letters/06232005_1570.htm">take a look</a>! Chris Mooney has <a href="https://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp?Id=1926">some excerpts from the letters</a>, so I won't reproduce them here, but will just comment that they are of a kind designed to make scientists think twice about undertaking research on such a politically sensitive topic as global warming.<br /><br />Representative Barton's tactics are just part of the more wide-ranging assault on scientific evidence that the Bush administration is waging. I'm not going to go through them all again, but I'm not going to stand by either. The congressman has a web site through which you can send him a message, but it won't accept your comments if you're not from his district. However,<a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/feedback.htm#feedback"> you can send a message to the House Energy and Commerce Committee</a>, telling them what you think of Barton's tactics, and I'm going to use it right now.<br /><br />I just sent a message with the following content:<br /><blockquote>Dear Congressman Barton,<br /><br />I have recently become aware of the letters you have sent to the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and to the Director of the National Science Foundation. As a scientist myself, I am extremely concerned by the tone and implications of these letters and consider them a thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate honest scientists into avoiding work that might lead to an opinion different from the current administration on topics that are politically sensitive.<br /><br />I strongly encourage you to desist from sending letters of this kind in the future and to leave reputable scientists alone to pursue their research, regardless of the political import of its outcome. By attempting to cast unreasonable doubt on solid scientific evidence you are doing your constituents and the rest of the country an immense disservice.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br /><br /> Dr. Mark Trodden<br /></blockquote>If we all, scientists and non-scientists, don't fight back against these outrages, we can hardly complain as science is eroded in this country. I would strongly encourage you to send your own email, or even a version of mine, to the Congressman, via <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/feedback.htm#feedback">the link</a> above. It'll only take a minute and will let him know that there are lots of people out there that don't think it's fine to treat scientists in this way. Please take a moment to do it. If you want to drop me a comment here telling me you did it, all the better; but in any case, please do it!Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119639833118495472005-06-24T14:49:00.000-04:002005-06-24T15:03:53.133-04:00Early this morning I drove back to Syracuse from the Perimeter Institute. I had a wonderful few days there, enjoyed giving my lectures and seeing old friends, and spent quite a lot of time talking to students after my talks. Great fun! In addition, I got to hang out in Perimeter's cool, modern building, which I found to be both beautiful and extremely relaxing - I'll have to go back.<br /><br />Since I need to deal with all kinds of backlogged issues here, and it just so happens to be Friday, I'm going to take the Friday Random Ten cop-out for the rest of this post. More tomorrow<br /><blockquote>1. Moby, <span style="font-style: italic;">Find My Baby</span>.<br />2. The Jam, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Modern World</span>.<br />3. The Beastie Boys, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tough Guy</span>.<br />4. Lauryn Hill, <span style="font-style: italic;">Miseducation of Lauryn Hill</span>.<br />5. Elvis Costello, <span style="font-style: italic;">Oliver's Army</span>.<br />6. Miles Davis, <span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Old Stockholm</span>.<br />7. Blondie, <span style="font-style: italic;">One Way or Another</span>.<br />8. Anthony Hamilton, <span style="font-style: italic;">Comin' From Where I'm From</span>.<br />9. Hot Chocolate, <span style="font-style: italic;">You Sexy Thing</span>.<br />10. The Cranberries, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rebels</span>.<br /></blockquote>Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119474526107650752005-06-22T16:47:00.000-04:002005-06-22T17:09:11.636-04:00<a href="https://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67968,00.html?tw=rss.TEK">Here brother Bush goes again</a>, trying to impose his religious "morality " (or at least that of the people who he'll need on his side for a presidential bid) on people. Just as with his <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-low-can-you-go.html">persecution of Michael Schiavo</a>, he's now coming out against stem cell research. Well there's a shocker. Apparently the Governor claims that no universities in Florida will perform embryonic stem cell research. Kind of ironic that this should happen in a state <a href="https://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/elderpop.html">so disproportionately populated by those in desperate need of what this research promises</a>.<br /><br />Keep picking the crazy side of issues Jeb. Help us out. We don't need another of you in the White House hurting America.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119441873517610172005-06-22T07:41:00.000-04:002005-06-22T08:04:33.523-04:00The Washington Post is carrying <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062101485.html?nav=rss_print/asection">an article</a> on an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report stating that<br /><blockquote>"The Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has dangerously undermined U.S. scientific enterprise and national security by abridging the constitutional and academic freedoms that have long fostered the nation's technical superiority"</blockquote>In my opinion this is clearly true. The most obvious damage can be seen in the drop in the number of foreign applicants for U.S. Ph.D. positions. On multiple occasions I have had colleagues from Europe and Canada tell me that there is, in fact, one thing they have President Bush to thank for, and that is the increase in quality foreign Ph.D. students they have seen over the last few years.<br /><br />However, I actually think that the response to 9/11 is not the primary problem with the current administration's attitude to science. As <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/04/science-and-government.html">I've mentioned before</a> (a number of times), the main problem is with the willingness to twist, modify, ignore, politically manipulate and outright lie about any scientific results or approaches that conflict with the religious or corporate interests that have a stranglehold on our nation.<br /><br />This attitude is harming progress on preventing teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases; is a threat to women's health; is preventing us from aggressively addressing the causes behind climate change; is clouding public understanding of established scientific theories such as evolution and threatens to undermine the technological and scientific base crucial to a vital future for our country.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119409982601835152005-06-21T22:47:00.000-04:002005-06-21T23:13:02.636-04:00I just got back from a delightful evening - dinner and drinks with Don Marolf and <a href="https://physics.usc.edu/%7Ejohnson1/">Cliff Johnson</a> (aka cvj). These guys are also lecturing at the <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/cws/PI-SCHOOL-1/index.php">Perimeter Institute summer school</a> that I mentioned yesterday. Now I have to make sure I know what I'm going to talk about tomorrow and try to get a good night's sleep. So any hopes I might have had of posting anything profound here will not be realized.<br /><br />Perhaps I can try to hold some people's attention by pointing them to the <a href="https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67967,00.html?tw=rss.TEK">sad story of the solar sail</a>. Let's keep our fingers crossed that a signal from the spacecraft is received over the next couple of days.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119328475569163052005-06-21T00:01:00.000-04:002005-06-21T00:34:35.576-04:00Tomorrow afternoon I'm heading off to the <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/">Perimeter Institute</a> (PI) to deliver a couple of lectures on cosmology at their <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/cws/PI-SCHOOL-1/index.php">Summer School on Strings, Gravity and Cosmology</a>. The Perimeter Institute is an interesting place - a collection of theoretical physicists, <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/research/">working on foundational issues </a>in a variety of different areas, from a variety of different directions. The facility was founded by Mike Lazaridis of <span style="font-style: italic;">Research in Motion (RIM)</span> - the people who brought you the <span style="font-style: italic;">Blackberry</span> handheld - and is funded from private donations by Lazaridis and two other RIM executives. This alone makes PI rather unusual.<br /><br />The summer school should be fun, although I can only stay for a couple of days and will unfortunately miss what is sure to be a <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/community/generalpublic/publiclectures.php">tremendous public lecture</a> about string theory on Friday by <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/people/index.php">Rob Myers</a>. As well as giving a couple of talks, I'll also get to see some physicist friends (one of whom occasionally comments on my blog using the name "cvj") and see Perimeter's <a href="https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/about/facilities/">fancy new building</a>. All of this will leave me with very little time for blogging, so I might be a little scarce for the next two days (I'll try though).Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119325655349764852005-06-20T23:34:00.000-04:002005-06-20T23:47:36.823-04:00From the Guardian, <a href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1510891,00.html">excerpts</a> from the reports of George Weller, the first western reporter to reach Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped. I don't have insightful comments. It just makes for fascinating and rather sobering reading, and must have been extremely difficult work. Of course it's nothing compared to having to chase Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes around, but life was easier back then.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119068940426878362005-06-18T00:20:00.000-04:002005-06-18T00:29:00.430-04:00Not content to have put Michael Schiavo through hell while he had already had to suffer for years caring for his brain-dead wife, Governor Jeb Bush is doing his best to make sure that Schiavo cannot pick up the pieces of his life now that Terri Schiavo's body is finally dead.<br /><br />Because the recently released autopsy report showed results entirely consistent with the assertions made by the doctors who had examined her (but inconsistent with the claims of the doctor who is the Senate majority leader, and who didn't examine her), the Terri Schiavo case has turned into an even larger political mess for those who tried to use it as a cheap way to further their political ends. No matter though, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a> is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/national/18schiavo.html">reporting</a> that Jeb Bush is now seeking an investigation into Michael Schiavo's actions on the night, back in 1990, that his wife collapsed.<br /><br />This really is outrageous. What's the idea here? If Bush can make Michael Schiavo look like a callous, uncaring husband, who deliberately contributed to his wife's condition, is that supposed to draw attention away from the fact that Republicans violated this family's privacy in order to appease their rabid religious right supporters? I'm hoping that Americans are smart enough not to be fooled by such absurd tactics. Most Americans certainly saw through the original scheme, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/politics/17poll.html">the President's approval rating has taken a hit as a consequence</a>. I'm hoping that his brother's is similarly affected - it might help us to avoid a third Bush disaster in the White House.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1119040014516079672005-06-17T16:15:00.000-04:002005-06-17T16:26:54.520-04:00As <a href="https://orangequark.blogspot.com/2005/04/teri-heads-to-iraq.html">I've mentioned before</a>, my friend Teri Weaver is spending a couple of months in Iraq as part of her job as a journalist for <a href="https://www.estripes.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Stars and Stripes</span></a>. Teri has been in Iraq since late May and has posted a series of impressively written accounts of her time there on <a href="https://mystonesoup.blogspot.com/">her blog</a>. The most recent, posted just today, discusses, among other things, what happens when U.S. troops have to go to pay out money to the family of someone killed in crossfire.<br /><br />Teri's writing provides fascinating and sometimes upsetting insight into day-to-day life in Iraq. Take a look.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1118974090851782242005-06-16T21:15:00.000-04:002005-06-16T22:08:47.013-04:00<a href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/">The Guardian</a> has <a href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1506958,00.html">an article</a> discussing a couple of new books concerned with the scientific legacy of Fred Hoyle, the remarkable British cosmologist who coined, albeit sneeringly, the phrase "the Big Bang". Hoyle was one of the people who founded modern cosmology in Britain, and his influence and research were behind the work of many of the great minds working there.<br /><br />Hoyle is perhaps best known for the <span style="font-style: italic;">steady state theory</span> of the universe, a serious model of an unchanging universe that ultimately was ruled out by the increasingly accurate observations that lent ever-stronger support to the Big Bang model. Hoyle developed the steady state theory in collaboration with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi. I never met Hoyle or Gold, but have had the privilege to meet Hermann Bondi on many occasions, although none of them recently. Bondi was the Master of my college, <a href="https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/">Churchill College</a>, when I was a mathematics undergraduate at <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/">Cambridge University</a>. In fact, I had seen him give a talk on humanism a couple of years before I went to university and been incredibly impressed with him even then. (I once sat next to Bondi's wife, Christine, an intellectual powerhouse in her own right, at a college dinner and she was also delightful, even going so far as to help me get a summer research job.)<br /><br />What impressed me about Bondi is the same thing that impresses me about Hoyle when reading the accounts of his life. These guys were giants in their field, the same field in which I work now, but beyond that have been major intellectual forces beyond the confines of their research discipline. It is my impression (although I have no data and would be interested to hear what others think) that such widespread intellectual engagement is rarer in recent generations of physicists. I don't think the people are less smart or less able, I just feel that there are relatively fewer of them with such broad interests.<br /><br />The Guardian article lists many of the areas in which Hoyle made contributions, but points out, in terms that I don't think one would see is a U.S. newspaper, that Hoyle was all these things<br /><blockquote>"and - in later life - a grade one batty boffin who argued that diseases were forged in space and delivered to Earth by comets and that the archaeopteryx specimen in London's Natural History Museum was a fake."<br /></blockquote>Well, you can't have it all. If I could have the impact of a Hoyle or a Bondi I'd be over the moon, and you could call me a batty boffin as much as you liked.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1118799119383699872005-06-14T20:13:00.000-04:002005-06-14T21:31:59.390-04:00When I was in high school, my friends and I would often spend Saturday afternoons playing pool and video games in a downtown arcade in my home town (OK, we would also spend part of that time in several pubs that didn't seem to care how old we were, but that's not important right now). I enjoyed some of the more challenging video games, and was quite good at them, but I was in no way what you'd call an addict.<br /><br />Fast forward to graduate school. One of my friends owned a home video game console, and none of the games interested me at all, until the now-famous <span style="font-style: italic;">Doom</span> came along. For reasons that aren't clear to me, we spent inordinate amounts of time on that game, working through the many levels until we finally finished it. After that, I was once again uninterested in any games that my friend bought.<br /><br />Fast forward another ten years, to this past week's vacation, to which that same friend brought his Xbox with, wait for it, the newest incarnation of <span style="font-style: italic;">Doom</span> - <span style="font-style: italic;">Doom3</span>. You guessed it - I became hooked again, and each day we spent a couple of hours working through the game. Once again I can't really say why it grabbed me, but it was wonderful escapist fun.<br /><br />Now; the above admission goes against the unspoken academic code, which one might paraphrase as<br /><blockquote>"Do not engage in any activity that is part of popular culture. Such activities include, but are not limited to; playing video games, playing card games (bridge excepted), watching movies without a serious social message and watching television (PBS, in particular NOVA, occasionally excepted). Any violation of the above may lead to a stubborn stain on your intellectual reputation, which may only be removed by repeatedly attending highly experimental theater."</blockquote>It is hard to articulate the amount of guilt academics suffer when they have violated this rule, especially if they've done so deliberately. But once one realizes that such guilt exists, it helps one to understand comments like<br /><blockquote>"Last night I was looking for the <span style="font-style: italic;">NOVA</span> program on <span style="font-style: italic;">Flying Casanovas</span> (the Bowerbird <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> is <span style="font-style: italic;">fascinating</span> you know) when I accidentally turned NBC on and caught the beginning of some crime show. I think it might be called `Law and Order', but I'm not sure. Anyway, I was too lazy to change channels and ended up watching the whole thing. It was kind of fun actually, in a predictable, corporate way."</blockquote>Well, before all you fellow academics out there jump all over me, I should say that I'm exaggerating a bit here. But every one of you knows what I mean.<br /><br />Given all this, <a href="https://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67835,00.html?tw=rss.TEK">an article</a> on <a href="https://www.wired.com/news/">wired.com</a> allows those of us who have violated the video game clause to assuage our guilt somewhat. This article points out that the next generation of home video game machines would be perfect for a distributed computing project such as LIGO@home (searching for gravitational waves), SETI@home (searching for E.T.) or Folding@home (searching for the solution to protein folding), which already take advantage of down time on personal computers. These are raw data-crunching projects, for which the sheer computing power of huge numbers of machines is extremely useful. As wired.com puts it<br /><blockquote>"Distributed, or `grid,' computing breaks down complex computing problems into small steps that can be solved in parallel by thousands or even millions of machines at once. It is basically the difference between hiring someone to label 1,000 envelopes for you and asking your friends to each label 100 when they get the chance. In this example, the hired person is the traditional mainframe crunching numbers, while your friends are personal computers all over the world that offer to crunch small packages of calculations when they're not busy."</blockquote>The article ends with the thought<br /><blockquote>"So, let my console fold proteins or search for E.T. when I'm not using it. Let the public take a larger role in innovative research efforts. Most importantly, let me be able to end any console debate with, `So what if your system lets you watch movies and TV, listen to music and play games? My system cures cancer.' "<br /></blockquote>This seems like a wonderful idea to me. Huge numbers of kids (OK, adults as well) own video consoles and think of the time that these machines spend idle while the kids are, for example, at school. In fact, with a little thought, one might be able to use this aspect of the consoles to inform kids about some interesting science. If one was to take this really too far, one might imagine marketing campaigns designed to pitch different distributed computing projects to gamers. Oh dear, there I go again, offending the wrong people.<br /><br />Most importantly, the next time I take a vacation I'll also be able to say "Sure, I didn't personally do any physics while I was away, but the time that I spent on the beach and not blowing away Cacodemons with my BFG-9000, I was playing a crucial role in the LIGO data analysis project"Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1118773206944533702005-06-14T14:15:00.000-04:002005-06-14T14:20:06.950-04:00The second issue of <a href="https://cgwp.gravity.psu.edu/gravlens/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Gravitational Lens</span></a> is now out. I helped out a little with the writing of this one. There are brief discussions of testing General Relativity with double pulsars, of gravitational radiation from strangely shaped pulsars and of primordial inflation and the accelerating universe. Enjoy.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11482688.post-1118689633320136652005-06-13T14:55:00.000-04:002005-06-13T15:07:13.326-04:00I just got back from vacation and am realizing that I have a lot of blogs to read and a lot of writing to get down to. I'm going to do both as soon as I unpack.<br /><br />Vacation was great. We were in Corolla, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and I had absolutely no internet access all week. The weather was beautiful, I was surrounded by most of my closest friends and we indulged ourselves like the hedonists we all are.<br /><br />Sara and I spent last night in Philadelphia so that we could eat at one of my all-time favorite restaurants - <a href="https://www.almadecubarestaurant.com/">Alma de Cuba</a> - and drove back the rest of the way this morning.<br /><br />OK; unpacking, then some blogging.Mark Troddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18010891474771208613noreply@blogger.com0