Two American physicists are reporting the discovery of nearly perfect quasicrystal patterns in the decorative tiles of a certain type of Islamic art: Penrose tiling is very reminiscent of "girih" - the elaborate patterns used in Islamic architecture. While travelling in Uzbekistan, [Harvard physicist Peter] Lu noticed motifs with 10-fold rotational symmetry, which is a hallmark of some Penrose tiling. This inspired him to search through thousands of photographs of Islamic patterns to try to find a quasi-crystalline pattern - and this led him to a wall of the Darb-i Imam shrine in Iran. It's…

Fade In: The dining room of Chateau Steelypips, at dinner time. "Can I have a piece of chicken?" "No." "But I really like chicken." "That's nice. The answer is still no." "But I really like chicken. Pleeeease?" "For the last time, no." "OK." Pause "Can I have a cookie? Pleeeease?" Fade out Of course, I shouldn't really complain-- I could have Kate's view of this whole exchange:

Two exciting new developments in the Seed-o-sphere: 1) Rob Knop's Galactic Interactions has joined ScienceBlogs. It's nice to have another physical science type around here, along with all these damn biologists. If you're so inclined, go say "hi." 2) The Powers That Be have also unveiled a new RSS feed option: Scienceblogs Select, through Feedburner. This is a feed containing posts chosen by the individual bloggers as our best stuff. If you find the full combined feed too intimidating, this is a way to get a look at the very best things that are being posted, all across the site. We've had…

My father taught sixth grade in the public schools for thirty-odd years, and always griped about the teacher training workshops that they were periodically subjected to, in which some expert would be brought in to talk about the wonders of the latest fad in pedagogy, while all the teachers in the school struggled to stay awake. I'm sure he'll be amused to know that the same thing happens at the college level, where Laurence Musgrave is cranky about faculty development workshops on teaching with technology. This bit ought to sound familiar to, well, anybody in academia: [O]ne of the reasons I'…

This is an approximate transcription of my physics talk from Boskone, titled "Spooky Action at a Distance," in which I attempted to give a reasonable explanation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen ("EPR" hereafter) paper and Bell's Theorem. This was sort of a follow-on from last year's "Weird Quantum Phenomena," meant to highlight a specific class of weird quantum phenomena. There's some SF relevance to the ideas involved in EPR and Bell's Theorem. A number of authors have name-checked the idea, most notably Charlie Stross citing "entangled particles" as the mechanism for FTL communications in…

Maryland beat Florida State last night, and moved over 0.500 in the ACC for the first time. This is also their 21st win on the season, and Jeremy Gold has gone round the bend: MD could rise as high as #2 seen in the NCAAs should they finish 10-6 in the ACC and win the ACC Tournament. Granted that is extremely unlikely. What is more likely, is a 9-7 conference record and a run to the semis of the ACC Tournament (if the draw works in our favor). If that is the case, we are 25-9 and I think that warrants #5 seed in the NCAAs. From that position, I think we make the Sweet 16 and depending on the…

The only reason I'm not going to hunt and kill James Nicoll for pointing me at the Conservapedia thing is that he also provides a link to the latest results from the Spitzer telescope. Not the one that Kate's former boss uses to keep an eye on the New York State Legislature, but the one that scientists are using to look at the atmospheres of planets around other stars: The data indicate the two planets are drier and cloudier than predicted. Theorists thought hot Jupiters would have lots of water in their atmospheres, but surprisingly none was found around HD 209458b and HD 189733b. According…

I was busy yesterday at work, so I managed to avoid looking at the "Conservapedia" until James Nicoll, the bastard, drew my attention to the entry on Relativity: Unlike most advances in physics, the theory of relativity was proposed based on mathematical theory rather than observation. The theory rests on two postulates that are difficult to test, and then derives mathematically what the physical consequences should be. Those two postulates are that the speed of light never changes, and that all laws of physics are the same in every (inertial) frame of reference no matter where it is or how…

John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes ("people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines"), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible: 1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction. 2. Write with that person in mind. He goes on to note that these same rules apply to other genres of fiction. He does not, however, make the point that this is also excellent advice for non-fiction…

I picked up a copy of the re-issue of The Armageddon Rag in the dealer's room at Boskone, mostly because Emmet O'Brien raves about it. This is, of course, a little dicey, because Emmet's a weird guy sometimes, but the premise looked fairly interesting. The book follows washed-up author Sander Blair, founder and former editor of a counterculture newspaper turned major music magazine, who gets asked to write a story about the gruesome murder of a former rock promoter. The promoter in question was a real sonofabitch, but nobody deserves to be tied to a desk and have their heart ripped out, and…

The AIP's Physics News Update this week highlights a paper on the laser cooling and trapping of radium by a group at Argonne National Laboratory. This is a new record for the heaviest atom ever cooled and trapped. It's not quite as cool as the previous record, which involved the trapping of francium atoms that were produced using an accelerator-- you need to do a bit more work to get radium than just scraping off a bunch of old watch dials, but the basic apparatus is a fairly standard atomic beam system. It's still pretty cool stuff, and a good bit of work has gone into it-- before they could…

As Kate and I are planning to attend the Worldcon this year, we're eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which are sort of SF's version of the Oscars, or maybe the Golden Globes (the Nebula Awards being the other). This is only the third time I've had this opportunity, and it's always kind of difficult, given that I end up having basically no opinion in so many of the categories. I do have a few ideas about works to nominate, but I'd like to hear suggestions from other people. So, what should I be putting on my nominating ballot this year? I'll put the list of categories below, with my…

The post title is taken from the announcement for today's colloquium talk. The abstract: Quantum gravity is the theory which is thought to underlie quantum theory and general relativity. I will introduce the subject, emphasizing recent results which suggest that spatial geometry is discrete. Such discrete geometry may have an observational signature, especially if it breaks Lorentz invariance. I will describe limits on such discrete geometry effects by astrophysical observations and will also argue that, in the not too distant future, quantum gravity may become physics and enjoy contact with…

Kate and I spent the weekend in Boston for the science fiction convention Boskone, which we've been going to every year for the past several years. I'm not going to do a detailed recap of everything that was said on every panel that I went to, mostly because I don't keep notes. Also, that would probably drive away all the readers who weren't actually there. The highlight of the con was probably in the socializing, anyway-- dinner at Legal Test Kitchen with Debra Doyle and James Macdonald and Yoon Ha Lee, hanging out outside the con suite with Jordin and Mary Kay Kare, hanging out in the hotel…

The first panel I was on was travel advice for the Japanese Worldcon: Visiting Japan, If we attend the Worldcon in Yokohama this August, what knowledge should we bring along? What ten phrases are essential? What societal differences should we be prepared to accommodate? What are Japanese SF fans like? What will we eat? How much will this cost? Vince Docherty, Chad Orzel, Peggy Rae Sapienza The other two people on the panel turn out to be the official agents for the Nippon 2007 Worldcon for North America (PRS) and Europe (VD), making me the token guy-with-a-website. They've also been to Japan…

This one came across the RSS feeds last week, when I was getting ready to leave town and didn't have time to post, but I really can't let this slide by without comment. The EurekAlert headling really says it all: Sleep disturbances affect classroom performance: As a night of bad sleep can have an adverse effect on an adult's performance at work the next day, an insufficient amount of rest can also have a negative impact on how well middle or high school students perform in the classroom. A study published in the February 15th issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (JCSM) finds that…

In my campus mailbox this morning: Dear Chad: I am pleased to report that on Februrary 10, 2007 the Board of Trustees approved our recommendation that you be tenured effective September 1, 2007 at the rank of Associate Professor. Woo-hoo! It took about half a second to decide to sign the copy indicating my acceptance, and send it back. That brightens an otherwise groggy and out-of-sorts morning... (Amusingly, the other thing in the letter describes an offer to pay half the cost of a set of academic robes for those occasions when I want to look like a medieval scholar. It's actually a pretty…

We're back from Boskone, which included lots of fun stuff, and not enough sleep. I also cleverly forgot to bring my lecture notes home from work, which means I need to go in early to figure out what the hell I'm talking about in class today, so there's not much time for blogging at the moment. I would be remiss in my physics-blogging duties, though, if I failed to point people to this Physics Web story about a new single-photon interference experiment (you'll need a subscription to read the Science article). A French group including Alain Aspect (who else?) has done a beautifually clean…

You may think it's the year of the pig, but know this: Every year is the Year of the Dog.

Over in LiveJournal land, Kate has an open letter to Daniel Keys Moran: As someone who very nearly cries at the idea of a completed Trent novel languishing on your hard drive, may I introduce you to Lulu or Cafe Press? Both will print books from uploaded files, as they are ordered, for the price of their cost plus whatever profit you like (meaning no money up front for the author, though I understand some services are extra); both have you retain your copyright; and both are very easy. I've seen Lulu books myself and the quality is quite good. If you don't know Moran, he's the author of a…