bergman

Well, Chad's back, and I guess that means that this guest-blogging stint has come to an end (free! I'm free!). I want to thank Chad again for the opportunity to play in his sandbox for a few weeks. I didn't get the chance to write every post I had planned. Real life -- or at least the closest…

I remember the last time I saw the milky way. I was at my aunt's house in the foothills of the Sierras, and late at night the dense river of stars emerges. But that is still not the true milky way, or so I hear. And, in more urban areas, the detritus of our incandescent society reduces the night…

Now that I'm back in College Station, it's time to start getting applications ready for the great job search. I don't know how it is in other fields, but in math/physics, this generally involves three to four letters of recommendation, a CV, a research statement, sometimes a teaching statement and…

Steinn reports that the NRC has made its recommendations for NASA's Beyond Einstein program. The winners appear to be LISA, a gravity wave observatory, and JDEM, a competition of dark energy focussed satellites. Steinn has lots of links to the various projects. The executive summary of the report…

Well, I'm back in Texas and just in time for Steve Jobs to introduce new toys I can't afford. At the risk of turning Chad's blog into an Apple advertisement, every time I pass an Apple store, it takes significant willpower to not walk out of there with a new iPhone. I find it endlessly amusing to…

Happy Labor Day to everyone. I'll be traveling back to Texas, so no blog for me for a day or so.

Because my team, the Forty Niners, aren't. Neither apparently is Michigan. On the other hand, my co-guest blogger is surely happy.

The Principles proprietor is currently at WorldCon where the Hugo awards are given out. This year's winners are available (among many other places, I'm sure) at Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog. I wasn't a huge fan of Rainbows End myself. I did like "The Girl in the Fireplace", a Doctor Who…

Taking a break from all this physics, I thought I'd talk a little about music and some related mathematical coincidences. One of the fundamental concepts of music is that of consonance and dissonance. Consonant things sound nice when played together and dissonant things do not. For example, if you…

If you're on the west coast tonight and are willing to stay up late or wake up early, you have the chance to see the Aurigid meteor shower. This shower is fairly unique because it arises from a comet with a period of around 900 years. Some people have even claimed that there's a chance this could…

Since I have control over this blog for a little while (and where is my co-guest blogger anyways?), I figure I ought to use it in my own self-interest. Towards that end, the Austin City Limits music festival is coming up soon, and, as usual, I only recognize a small portion of the bands playing.…

I remember back when I was in high school and came across lists of the greatest mathematicians ever. They almost always included Archimedes, Newton and Gauss. Sometimes Euler made it in. I knew who these guys were, but every once in a while, there was this guy I had never heard of, Alexander…

The title of this post is a famous question (posed, for example, by Joe Polchinski) which is modeled after an even more famous question by Ken Wilson, "What is Quantum Field Theory?". I certainly can't answer the first question, but Wilson's question now does have a widely agreed upon answer (which…

For those of you willing to stay up late, there will be a total eclipse of the moon on August 28 visible to various extents over most of the western hemisphere and some of east Asia. The show is a little late for me (some might call it early) as I'm on the east coast right now, but if you're up for…

Or, "Stealing Chad's Ideas: First in a Series". When you write 'log', do you mean base 10 or base e? What field do you work in? Update: Or base 2 for you CS-types.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm currently attending the Simons Workshop in Mathematics and Physics at Stony Brook University. The weather finally warmed up today, and we relocated to Smith Point Beach to hear Juan Maldacena tell us a bit about AdS/CFT and gluon scattering. If you're looking for a…

The LHC is coming, and it's time to place your bets. What do you do? (Fun though it may be, shooting the hostage doesn't really help here.) We're committed Bayesians (for the sake of this post, at least), and we want to assign a probability that the LHC will see supersymmetry. More generally, we…

I'm here at the Simons Workshop at Stony Brook out on Long Island. I'd like to talk a bit about the workshop later, but right now I just want to note that it is 56 degrees out. In New York. In the middle of August. Thunderstorms I'd understand, but cold, dreary drizzle? It's August, not November. I…

When we left our story, we were stuck in the unfortunate position of living somewhere in a multiverse without any a priori way to figure out where we live. What might we do? One thing we can do is let the dreaded anthropic principle rears its head. At its most basic essence, the anthropic principle…

Thanx to everyone for all the interesting questions in the previous thread. I apologize for not being able to answer every one of them. I just arrived at a workshop on Long Island, and I'm also feeling a bit under the weather. From what I've seen so far, I think I will do a post on what is…

Let's say you have a theory, and, let's say it happens to have a whole lot of solutions. Maybe it's the theory you're thinking about, but it doesn't have to be. Nothing of what I'm going to say depends on any details besides this surfeit of solutions. I should begin by saying what it means for a…

When Chad first asked me to guest blog here, my first response was that I didn't have anything to say. After a little thought, however, it occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to do a little exposition. Unfortunately, my research area is quite a bit on the esoteric side, so I had to…

Over at Andrew Sullivan's place, he's been presenting candidates for best movie line ever. Since I seem to have control of a blog of my very own, I'd like to present my nomination: Holly Gennero McClane: After all your posturing, all your speeches, you're nothing but a common thief. Hans Gruber:…

One of the things Chad didn't mention about me in his introduction is that in addition to being a physics major as an undergraduate, I also majored in mathematics. My research interests these days tend towards the exciting confluence of mathematics and high energy physics. So, in honor of that (but…

First of all, I'd like to thank Chad for the keys to his internet-house for the next few weeks. If you're here, you know that one of the things Chad believes in (and is quite good at) is using his weblog for the exposition of science for the general public. While I don't think I can manage any…