Blogs / Cosmic Variance

This has been a particularly heavy couple of weeks for me, which is about to culminate in a rather long trip. It has also been illustrative, in a short time, of what goes on in the life of a physics professor.

Two weeks ago I went to Chicago, to give the Physics Colloquium at Northwestern University. I’d never been to Evanston before and found it to be a lovely place, with my impression being helped by highly cooperative weather (it was in the high 60s and I was able to walk by the lake, enjoy the view of Chicago, and not freeze to death while doing it). I was treated wonderfully at Northwestern, cramming in a day full of physics discussions, including a fun one with the astrophysics postdocs (I know you guys are lurkers here) before my colloquium in the late afternoon.

I spoke on Connecting the Dark Side and Fundamental Physics and it seemed to go well, with plenty of good questions and then an intense discussion session at the blackboard for an hour during the post-colloquium reception. The day was capped off by a relaxing dinner with my extremely gracious host, Michael Schmitt, and three other physicists – André de Gouvêa (particle theory, particularly neutrino physics), who I already knew and Vicky Kalogera and Fred Rasio (Astrophysicists, particularly the physics of compact objects) who I hadn’t met before but who turned out to be perfect dinner companions.

The day afterwards (Saturday) I’d arranged an evening flight in order to hang out with Sean in Chicago. We sampled some of the city’s hedonistic offerings and even discussed a couple of projects, one of which is almost completed. I was back in Syracuse by 9:30pm.

I have since spent most of my time feverishly finishing one project (on ghosts in modified gravity models, with my former student Antonio de Felice and Mark Hindmarsh); working on the second one (on structure formation in some modified gravity models, with Sean, my student Alessandra Silvestri, and Sean’s student Ignacy Sawicki); teaching cosmology to my undergraduate class and preparing them for an exam next week; helping Alessandra prepare for her Research Oral; hosting a visitor and getting organized for a trip I’m taking tomorrow.

Yesterday was pretty busy. I was hosting a visitor and seminar speaker – Chris Hill, head of the Fermilab particle theory group. Chris spent all day with us, gave a fascinating talk and discussed physics with me and other faculty members.

In the afternoon, right after Chris’ talk, I went straight into another talk – the Research Oral exam of my graduate student, Alessandra. This is an exam in the style of a thesis defense, with a full committee, that we conduct about a couple of years after our graduate students arrive. It focuses on what research they are currently doing, and their plans for the future. Alessandra gave a virtuoso presentation on the work with Sean and Iggy that I mentioned above, answered tough questions correctly and with confidence, and passed with flying colors, making me happy for her and also very proud.

So, to celebrate Chris’ visit and seminar, Alessandra’s successful Research Oral, and the presence of another visitor, Toby Wiseman from Harvard (plus a great job that one of our postdocs just got, which I will report in a separate post), ten of us – faculty, postdocs, students and visitors – went out for a great dinner last night at The Mission restaurant.

Today I chatted again with Chris in the morning, and am now preparing to teach in the afternoon and then I need to get organized, because I leave tomorrow afternoon for a trip to Italy.

I know, I know, it’s a tough life. But don’t worry too much about me – I’ll be OK. I’m headed to the island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples, to give a plenary talk on Colliders and Cosmology at the International Conference on the CMB and the Early Universe, taking place after the Planck Consortium Meeting. I’ll actually be getting to Ischia early on Wednesday (the conference starts on Thursday), but will be spending a few days before that visiting my family in the North West of England. This should be just enough time to gain ten pounds eating home-cooked food before stuffing myself with Italian delicacies for three days to gain a further ten and waddling onto the plane back to the U.S.

As you can see, life is pretty crazy (although I’m guessing that whole “island in the Bay of Naples” thing burned some of the sympathy you might have built up), but truly fun. These things, working hard on projects you love, teaching engaged students, mentoring smart up-and-coming physicists and fascinating travel to discuss your work, are some of the things that make this job, although long and hard, absolutely wonderful.

Here in Syracuse, the semester is approaching an end, the baseball season has started, the World Cup is on its way, summer is arriving and my bike rack and golf clubs are back in the trunk of my car. If I can just see my way through twenty or thirty tasks remaining to be done, I might even get to use them, you never know.