Blogs / Cosmic Variance

On Wednesday morning I arrived in Melbourne to take up the second half of the Sir Thomas Lyle fellowship I’ve held for the past couple of years. The thirty-something hour total traveling time left me somewhat disheveled and exhausted but, since it was 9:30 am, going to bed would have ruined any plans for efficient jet-lag recovery, and so I showered and headed in to the physics department.

You may recall my post from last year about my time in Melbourne, in which I recounted a delightful Saturday spent with my friend Ray Volkas visiting art galleries and bars (OK, more of the latter than the former) and generally getting to know Melbourne through its tremendous martini, wine and beer joints. Yesterday (also Saturday for me), having pretty much recovered from the trip, I spent an equally fun day, although displayed much more restraint than last time (it may have something to do with the seriousness required of me now that I’m a Reverend – more about that coming in a separate post soon, you can be sure!).

Perhaps the most unusual experience of the day was taking on “The Edge”. During last year’s visit Ray had pointed out to me that construction was nearing the end on what was to be Melbourne’s tallest building – the Eureka Tower. This year, the construction had indeed finished and, like most super-tall buildings these days, it has an observation deck allowing 360 degree views of the city. Certainly this is a fun way to get a look at the city, but I’ve been on observation decks before – including another in Melbourne – and it wouldn’t on its own be particularly notable, were it not for one unusual feature.

The Edge is a glass cube with an occupancy of up to twelve people. While I’m not completely sure about this particular glass, its effect is the same as switchable glasses that are laminates separated by polymer dispersed liquid crystals. Such glass can instantly be switched from opaque to transparent. This works because, in its normal state, the material between the glass is liquid crystal droplets immersed in a polymer. These droplets are randomly oriented and light is very efficiently scattered, so that the glass is opaque. However, when an electric current is applied the liquid crystals align with the electric field and light passes straight through.

So one gets in the cube, the walls and floor are opaque, and it slides slowly (with a number of prerecorded scraping and creaking sound effects) three meters out of the building, as in the picture below taken from the web page.

At this stage, all that one notices is that the walls and floor are a little lighter. Then, of course, someone flips a switch, and the entire cube is transparent, and you are suspended from the 88th floor, almost 300 meters above Melbourne. It is a pretty remarkable experience. If you’ve been on the observation deck for a while before doing the edge, it really isn’t too terrifying, although I think if you got off the elevator (9 meters per second by the way!) and went straight in, it’d be quite disorienting. Still – very fun.

So this was a nice way to pass the afternoon, and then in the evening I went to several very fun bars – Jwow wine bar, Lounge (Upstairs) and Double Happiness – and out for a nice dinner in Chinatown with a fellow Englishman and physicist – Andy Martin. Another successful first Saturday in Melbourne! Thanks guys.

I’m going to spend much of today working, trying to make progress on the project that Ray, his student – Damien George – and I are working on, trying to blend our complementary expertise about extra-dimensional models to address some outstanding questions about brane-world cosmology. I really want to get this project on a firm footing before I leave in two weeks, since Damien is going to spend next semester visiting me at Syracuse and I want to be sure we can hit the ground running when he gets there.

I am, however, going to try to spend part of the day in an Irish pub that I’m pretty sure carries the right television sports channel on which I can catch at least part of the second Indians-Red Sox ALCS game. Sports are, in fact, the only downside of my visit here. I have arrived when, coincidentally, two teams that I follow have reached critical stages of major competitions. The Cleveland Indians, having defeated the Yankees in the ALDS, are now one game in (a loss) to a seven-game series for the ALCS. For those of you who aren’t baseball fans, the ALCS (and the NLCS) are essentially the semi-finals for the World Series. At the same time, the rugby union World Cup is currently on and England – the defending champions – played in the semifinal this morning and knocked out France to reach the final. The problems for me are the time differences, which mean that I might be able to catch a little of the baseball and can’t really hope to watch the rugby. Two further problems are that the Indians knocked out the Yankees, but there are no Yankee fans here for me to rub it in to, and England knocked out Australia in the quarter finals, but nobody in Victoria cares about rugby – it’s all about AFL here – and so I can’t even rub that in! So frustrating!

Anyway, this is a very nice place, where I can mix good work and great fun for the next couple of weeks. I’ll be sure to write again soon.