Aspen

Glöggt er gests augað

catdynamics — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 20:48:25 +0000

Glöggt er gests augað

The Aspen Art Museum is doing a series of interdisciplinary lectures, titled "Another Look"

Another Look Lecture: Gabriel Orozco & Cosmology - so this is a thing.

I did one of the lectures. The first one, I gather.
It was quite an interesting experience, for me at least.
Good fun, riffing on the perspective from physics on Orozco's work, which is partially inspired by astronomy and thoughts on cosmology.

MoMA was very helpful in providing a perspective on Orozco's work over the years.
The actual exhibition was very interesting. The central floor display piece was quite startling in person and gave me a new perspective.

Detail from central exhibit piece of Gabriel Orozco's exhibit at the Aspen Art Museum

The second talk was on Friday:
Another Look: Obituaries & Adam McEwen with Bruce Weber
Wish I could have been there.
No, I really wish I could have been there... :-)

There will be more "Another Look" lectures, I gather.

From From Unsafe Art

catdynamics Sun, 01/22/2017 - 15:48

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Aspen Art Museum

"Computational Complexity and Fundamental Physics"

catdynamics — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 15:24:40 +0000

"Computational Complexity and Fundamental Physics"

Summer continues, and the public lecture series on physics continues a pace at the Aspen Center for Physics with Dr. Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh talking today on the "Dark Side of the Universe".

The talk is part of one of the three workshops currently taking place:

"Testing the Laws of Gravity with Cosmological Surveys"
"Emergence, Evolution and Effects of Black Holes in the Universe: The Next 50 Years of Black Hole Physics"
"Entanglement Matters"
the public talks are recorded and will, eventually, be available online courtesy of Aspen Grassroots TV, in the meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, here is Prof. Scott Aaronson's DeWolf Public Lectures on "Computational Complexity and Fundamental Physics", given in conjunction with the Winter Conference on "Advances in Quantum Algorithms and Computation"

catdynamics Thu, 06/23/2016 - 11:24

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The Monster of the Milky Way

catdynamics — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 21:37:55 +0000

The Monster of the Milky Way

The Aspen Center for Physics organizes weekly public lectures durings its winter conferences and its summer workshops.

This week the public lecture was by Roni Harnik of Fermilab on “The Higgs Boson and the Mystery of Mass.” The lectures are videoed by Aspen Grassroots television, and archived, and are very slowly being added to the Aspen Physics youtube channel.

This winter, Prof. Andrea Ghez, UCLA gave one of the public lectures at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen: "The Monster of the Milky Way", on the central supermassive black hole in our galaxy.

catdynamics Fri, 06/10/2016 - 17:37

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Radio Physics

catdynamics — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:12:58 +0000

Radio Physics

The Aspen Center for Physics does a number of public outreach and engagement activities.

A new and quite interesting effort underway is Radio Physics, in collaboration with KDNK community radio.

The project links (visiting) physicists with local AP physics classes, who do a 30 minute group interview, live, on the topic du jour.
When available in person, the interview is preceded by a mini-physics cafe, where the whole class meets with the victim at a local coffee shop and gets to quiz them on pretty much anything.

And, of course, the whole thing is not just broadcast live, but archived for posterity on the innertoobz (see above).

This week the victim was me, the topic was Pulsars.

I met with Linda Flohr's advanced physics class from Glenwood Springs High, the glass is a topical seminar in science. The topics were everything from college applications to the nature of time.

We met for an hour at the Bonfire Cafe in Carbondale (excellent mocha btw), and had a good chat, I think, before Patty Fox and the student interviewers marched me down to the KDNK studios.

You can hear the results for yourselves...
I'm the one with the funny foreign accent.

It was fun. And hopefully useful.
I was actually late to Matthew Bailes "Diamond Planet" DeWolf public lecture because after the broadcast we continued talking, with a lot of followup questions by some very very sharp students.

This is a potentially useful form of engagement that might be duplicated eleswhere.

catdynamics Fri, 01/25/2013 - 13:12

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Continuing Conversation

catdynamics — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:39:18 +0000

Continuing Conversation

Blows against supersymmetry and facebook.

Matthew Bailes continues ruminations at the Conversation - the general riff is on crowd sourcing and distributed computing, with a bit of bragging on The Beast they got down under.
Ok, I'm, just jealous.

I had not heard of Diaspora - be interesting to see if it can crowd out fb or other commercial social networks.

The Raspberry Pi I had indeed heard of, and will be acquisitioning. My kids are so looking forward to have their own computers... ;-)

But, what we really conclude, is that Matt needs to meet Charlie Stross for a quiet beer or three.

On a different note, there are rumours from the Hadron Collider Physics conference in Kyoto that B_s -> μ⁺ + μ^- decay has been observed at the LHC, albeit at low significance (claimed 3.5 σ - looks more like 2.2 σ to the jaundiced eye, but that is just me being cynical).
However, the inferred rate is not consistent with supersymmetry.
Presumably N=1 low energy SUSY.

Beeb new story (cribbed from Astronomer fb group).

See also Quantum Diaries blog with ugly graphs.

Official word at LHC
Paper and Talk here

On a different note: Chad at Uncertain Principles is on fire with Financiers Still Aren't Rocket Scientists (well, some of them...) and Twilight of the Elites and the Rise of the Culture

Final reminder: applications to the Aspen Winter Conferences are due.

Biophysics and Condensed Matter deadlines are already past,
Pulsars and Dark Matter applications are due by thursday!

catdynamics Mon, 11/12/2012 - 18:39

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LHC: more Higgs complications

catdynamics — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:39:52 +0000

LHC: more Higgs complications

Back at the LHC Shows the Way workshop at the Aspen Center for Physics - more discussion of Higgs alternatives and peculiar branching ratios.

No, the branching ratios for the different decay modes of the 125 GeV boson that is putatively the Higgs are not anomalous at a statistically significant level, but, they are off a bit.

So, theorists go wild with ecstatic speculation - it is fun and not yet ruled out by data, what else can we do!

This morning Fan on 2:1 for Naturalness at the LHC? by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Kfir Blum, Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo, JiJi Fan

Later there will be discussion on jet physics at LHC, but I have a telecon so will have to skip.

For now, we observe a particle theorist learning some practical fluid dynamics, the hard way - if there is a large puddle on the canopy above you - don't fuck with it, you'll get wet.

Lisa Randall improvises a practical rescue plan, to great applause.
She'll lose her theorist cred if she keeps this up.

Oh, yeah, talk: the branching ratio to two photon decay is higher than it should be from Standard Model (heard that one before), compared to ZZ decay.
IF that holds, it constrains new physics at ~ TeV scales, so the LHC must get lots more data up to higher energies. Natch.
Bonus: if the decay mode ratios are as predicted, it excludes a lot of favourite alternative models.
So Win-Win.

So instead I leave you with this sign, left in my office window:

Ask not who will pay for Dark Energy.
We all will pay.

catdynamics Tue, 08/07/2012 - 06:39

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Dark Energy is its own bill collector. Doing far more than breaking kneecaps, its eventual toll will be to rip apart galaxies, stars, and molecules. (assuming the 'big rip' theory is correct.)

ACP 25th Anniversary Workshop on Black Holes

catdynamics — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:18:55 +0000

ACP 25th Anniversary Workshop on Black Holes

The Aspen Center for Physics is holding its annual series of winter workshops, with the final, double sized workshop being on the astrophysical topic of Black Holes.

Aspen Center for Physics

Yes, I am there, organizering, Daniel Holz from CV is also here, along with 100+ other luminaries, and, yes, he's also been too busy to blog.

The discussion has been lively and broad, covering everything from formation and accretion of low mass stellar black holes, through to mergers of supermassive black holes, via the puzzle of intermediate mass black holes.

Wednesday evening, Prof. Andrea Ghez gave and extremely well attended Maggie and Nick DeWolf Public Lecture at the Wheeler Opera House in downtown Aspen, preceded by an also very well attended physics Science Cafe, and followed by long and exceptionally perceptive questioning by the audience, fielded superbly by Andrea.

We can rest assured that the Supermassive Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way will not swallow the Earth any time soon, though Andrea's summary of what would happen if it did, undoubtedly kept some of the younger audience members awake into the evening...

Before the lecture, after the cafe, there was a short video on Aspen Center for Physics - 25th Winter Anniversary: 'When Physics Centers Was a Heading in the Yellow Pages, a fascinating video on the history of the Aspen Center for Physics, its affiliation with the Aspen Institute and the original Aspen Ideal, and how the Winter Workshops came to be and their history.

Both the ACP history video, and Andrea's Lecture (and indeed the other Aspen Workshop public lectures) are available through grassrootstv.org
listing and direct links to individual videos here

As a workshop activity, a subset of the physicists at the workshop, or "Fizzies" as we are known locally, did a "First Track" run thursday morning.

Assorted Fizzies in the "swoosh on the groomed runs" subset, near the top of the mountain
click to embiggen

In First Tracks, a group of about 30 of us went up before the early morning session started, before the lifts opened to the public, for a run on the untouched and near empty mountain.
We had a dusting of snow overnight, and at the top of the mountain split into three ski groups based on ability and interest in different conditions, plus a 'boarder group.
Each group had a ski patrol guide leading it, as mountain operations were underway, so we were restricted to certain trails down the center of the mountain.

Conditions were near perfect and an excellent time was had by most all of the participants. Some of us managed to squeeze in two runs before morning session began.
The First Tracks were provided courtesy of the Aspen Ski Company, and we are very grateful to them for a pleasant and unique opportunity.

catdynamics Fri, 02/19/2010 - 06:18

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DeWolf Public Lecture

workshop