How many dimensions?

Suppose you have some physical process you are want to describe, for example a simple situation where a few particles move around, possibly scatter from each other. Each particle has a few numbers that specify its particular state at a given time. It can have position (specified by 3 numbers), velocity (3 other numbers), electric [...]

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Sometimes we learn things in unexpected places

I attended a colloquium talk on Thursday at the Institute I’m visiting for a couple of days. It was a colloquium on interesting magnetic orderings. There I learned that there are many species of bacteria that produce single domain magnetic crystals of high purity. Here is a link with some of that information. It seems [...]

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My Canadian tour

Ask any academic and they will tell you all about the joy that is the grant proposal. In fact, I expect you may find it hard to stop them…There are so many research grants out there, and since success rates are low and terms are short, part of your job is to become an expert [...]

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Physics puzzle: candles and centrifuges.

So here we have a physics puzzle to tease you a little bit. The idea is simple. You put a candle in an open container (let us say a glass, like in the restaurants). You attach the container to a centrifuge, with a long arm, and you make the centrifuge spin at high speeds.   [...]

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String Gas Cosmology

This post in “Science After Sunclipse” reminded me of one of the most beautiful ideas to come out of the continuing attempts to combine String Theory and Cosmology. The idea of Robert Brandenberger and Cumrun Vafa, dubbed more recently as “String Gas Cosmology”, is a wonderfully creative attempt to explain why our world has three [...]

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Where in the world is….

 By the time you start reading this post, I will be squirming in my seat trying to get a little bit of extra leg room, or I will have landed already. In any case, just to add some meaningful content and to avoid complaining about cramped conditions in airplanes, I thought I would give you [...]

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Everyday Physics: suction cups.

You might have seen them in your shower, kitchen refrigerator or walls, or even you might have seen them hanging from the glass panel in the rear of a car you are following. They are suction cups, the product that really sucks. Erm, maybe that is not the best description of these objects, since they [...]

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Miles Davis’ second quintet

When it comes to Jazz, and probably in other parts of life as well, I am a conservative (let me add that originally that word did refer to perfectly sane people). The jazz that brings me most joy is early to mid-bebop, the music of the 1950s and 60s: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, [...]

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If I only had a brane…..

I have been attending the conference called “Stringy reflections on LHC”. This has been put together by the Clay Mathematics Institute, and here is the link. So with that wonderful title, you might be wondering what are we up to. What will follow is a quasi-technical discussion of what I have seen so far.

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Defending our turf

A couple of years ago, browsing as usual the bulletin board outside our main office,  looking for interesting talks and conferences, I noticed some odd advertisement. Apparently UBC has some sort of Christian student club, which occasionally has talks about various topics in theology. Some advertisements for these talks, to be held at the student [...]

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