Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Well, the garden is still rather dormant in several places, but it seems that the camelia tree/bush by the side of the house can be relied upon to put on a show in Winter and early Spring:

Must start work on several aspects of the garden next weekend to get ready for Spring!

-cvj

I return you to regular physics programming here on CV with a brief summary for our non-experts of some of the [screaming and shouting] passionate, informed debate that usually takes place whenever I do a post on string theory…..

String theory (or whatever it will be called when we figure out what it actually is) is a work in progress. It is an attempt to formulate the physics which will help us understand Nature at a level well beyond that at which we understand it now. Among the things we hope that such a theory will tell us about are:

• The quantum physics of spacetime. Nature is at its heart quantum mechanical, yet we don’t yet know what happens when we combine quantum physics with the physics of spacetime (phenomena such as black holes, vacuum energy, the nature of the very early universe, (and possibly more things we just have not realized yet!) depend on us understanding this);
• The connections between gravity and the other forces of Nature (lots to say here too…..much overlap with the other bullet points’s parenthetical remarks);
• The physical origin of several unexplained patterns and mysteries in our current models of particle physics (the matter/anti-matter imbalance, the origin of mass, the weakness of gravity, why three similar families of matter particles?, Why are “force” particles and “matter” particles so different from each other anyway?);
• The structure and evolution of our universe (Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which make up a whole 96% (or so) of our entire universe!…..what the Dickens are they? See several posts here on CV on these constituents of our universe.)….

….and several other questions that I don’t want to go into here, otherwise it stops being of benefit to non-experts…. (I also won’t go into all of the excellent things string theory has been useful for in our potental understanding other things about Nature, such as the nature of the Strong Nuclear force, why you never see a quark all on its own (”confinement”), etc…..)

Ok. So where are we?

Well, string theory is very complicated. It may well be that all we’ve worked out about it so far, over quite a few years, is just a tiny fraction of the whole story.

Maybe when we have the story worked out, we’ll have a big party in celebration of all that we learn about Nature from it. Or, we’ll see that it’s just the wrong story. Nobody knows whether or not this is the case. We need to work it out in order to know. Another perfectly fine possibility is that string theory tells us about *some* of the list of physics issues above, but not all of it.

In an effort to understand if the theory makes contact (or even has a chance to make contact) with Nature, many have attempted to extract physical scenarios, corresponding to our world, from the theory. Many of these scenarios are difficult to extract. They are often called “solutions” of the theory, in a (partial) analogy to finding solutions to a set of equations in an exercise in high school algebra. (Caveat: The analogy is only partial, because it is not clear if we really have all of the equations yet. This bit is important to remember!)

Workers in the field have found that (keep the above caveat in mind) there are apparently very very many solutions, making up a whole “landscape” of possibilities. (See my earlier, more technical post on this.)

So somewhere in that apparently vast landscape of (possible) string theory solutions, one of them might just correspond to Nature.

The big questions (in this context) for our field right now are:

• Is there a dynamical (or other physical) principle we’re missing that will help us find the One Solution? (In other words, maybe all those solutions aren’t solutions.)
• Must we appeal to other means of selecting the correct solution? (This is where arguments about things like the “Anthropic Principle” begin. See that earlier post and its discussion thread, and several others.)
• Will we just end up choosing a “solution” by hand and see if there’s still interesting science to be done, post-pick? (In other words, use observation/experiment to guide you in determining some parts of the solution (”fitting some parameters to the data”) , and then the theory makes predictions about the rest of the physics.) A perfectly sensible possibility that seems to get forgotten in these discussions, despite the fact that it happens all over the rest of science!)
• Or is it totally random, there’s nothing further to be understood, and string theorists are not doing science any more?

All good questions. Nobody knows the answers, but several people have strong opinions in various directions. Meanwhile, research continues. Excellent.

While we wait for the answers, here’s some hope:

Ok. I’ll come clean now:

(more…)

I know that this is not a big deal to a lot of you, but just now, here in normally sunny city of Los Angeles, we had a blizzard of hail, looking a bit like a snowstorm for a little while. Excellent! Apparently it is snowing for real in various parts of the greater region of Los Angeles county, (up to six inches up in the foothills of the mountains). There was accumulation of ice on the ground for a while, and I went outside to took a snap of the rather pretty concentration at the heart of one my cycads:

I was planning to do a bit of work in the garden today, but it will have to wait until this heavy precipitation has abated…..

Sean and Mark are in town apparently. They must be wondering what they did to deserve this on their trips away from the frozen North East or Midwest.

-cvj

Well it is a bit late, but I’ve started the task of rampant pruning and other Winter tasks in the garden. This is mostly hedges, various shrubs, a large bougainvillea bush, a couple of fig trees and roses. Then endless organic trash -leaves, berries, citrus detritus, stuff from palm trees blown off in the recent storms, more leaves- needs to be swept up. Over the time I was on Walkabout, it seems that the skunks have battered two huge holes in the back fence, and there are signs of digging everywhere. I will have to rejoin the battle with them, starting first with repairing these holes…. This whole series of things will run over at least two days.

A certain wonderful yellow rose bush has been faithfully giving me roses, even long after the others have begun to just look tall and stringy and barren. I’ve got to prune everything back, so I harvested the last of the roses to put into a vase. Several of them are still full and perfect. And the scent is unbelievable, and indescribable!

(more…)

Well, the garden is a mess, front and back. So much of a mess that I’d be embarrassed to have anyone visit me at home right now (so I won’t). And I don’t know when I’ll get to it. Maybe next weekend. For example, the fig trees have dropped their large, floppy leaves everywhere and now stand naked. They need pruning, as does almost everything else. Exceptions include the citrus trees, and the camelia bush that is about to burst into flower.

I stepped out into the back garden for the first time in a month and was rewarded with the sight of this fully-laden orange tree. Last Spring, I planted the lemon tree and the lime tree, but I did not plant this fellow, but it’s quite faithfully producing each year with no encouragement from me (I think it will need some feeding though….these seem smaller than they were last year).

So, what shall I do with these? I don’t know what the variety is. It might have been intended by the planter (whoever that was) to be purely decorative, but these oranges made an interesting (fairly standard recipe) marmalade last year. But I suspect that, given their unusual taste, they may be better suited to other recipes.

Thoughts anyone? I got some excellent discussion (thanks all) on the case of the lemons in the other thread, with recipe suggestions (thanks Janet, Amara), including the unexpected appearance of the food professional, Rochelle Foles from whose book one of the earlier recipes came! That’s just the kind of variety I like to see here….. thanks all!

I’d be happy to hear thoughts from everyone again….

-cvj

The garden is in a transitional phase right now, so not much to report….

….except for meyer lemons! Lots and lots of them on the tree I planted earlier this year. They’re going more and more golden coloured every day.

What will I do with all these lemons? Well, among other things, I see lemon-themed baking in my future. Mmmm…..

-cvj

“Omigod! An alien birthing!”, was what I thought upon seeing this when I stepped outside into the front garden one day. Beautiful, isn’t it? I’m still geting used to the yearly cycle of activity of some of the larger trees out there, so this was a pleasant surprise.

Having convinced myself that it was not going to grab me in its many-fingered purple paw and do something horrible to me, I studied it for a long while, and took a few photographs. Within a day or two, it revealed its full, elegant shape. Since then, I’ve had several appear.

I love the colours.

I don’t know the name of this palm, unfortunately. Do you? It is very common around Southern California. There are so many varieties here (all but one brought here in the last century or so, apparently), and gardeners love them: I’ve three two (correction because the other is a variety of cycad…not a palm at all) different types in a quite small space. You can see typical streets in the city of LA with several varieties along the sides for many blocks, and several more types in the gardens of the houses on that street. My Sunset Western Gardens book gave me several names, but no pictures, and there just way too many to make a guess. Google turned up this wonderful online encylcopedia of palms, which is not organized in a way that allows for a timely identification, but does seem to have a wealth of valuable information in it. Look at the photo gallery to get an idea of just how many types there are worldwide.

-cvj

Just got back from taking my mum to the movies. The new Wallace and Gromit film! It’s wonderful. It hit several of my buttons: As you know (perhaps) our heroes are inventors and have wonderful homemade gadgets, and solve their problems by thinking, and often employing a little exaggerated physics when in a tight spot. The physical humour is just wonderful in all of the short film’s they’ve done, and there’s more of that in this feature-length film. Also there’s a special bonus for me this time: Gromit, my favourite (right, with rabbits), is -of course- a keen gardener! And it’s all about the humane trapping of garden pests, which fits nicely with part of the comment thread of my last post!

Went to see it at my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, which I’ve told you about before (here and here), and it was in the fantastic Cinerama Dome. Another great thing about the Arclight is that they have interesting film-related displays in the lobby contributed by the film-makers. Guess what they have on display now? Two of the model sets from the film!

They are just great. I carefully took some snaps through the glass cases for you. (My secret for success: no flash, hold your breath, squeeze-don’t-press.)

Here’s Wallace and Gromit in the basement. I won’t tell you what’s going on in case you have not seen the film yet (above right has another shot from that same set):

Here’s Gromit, examining his prized vegetables in the greenhouse:

These are particularly bitter-sweet to see up close, since the recent news of the terrible fire which destroyed most of the sets and props from all the previous work of the Aardman Animation studios.

Anyway, tonight was a lovely evening before a terribly busy work week. Setting alarm clock for 5:45am. Sigh….

-cvj

Working at home in the morning today, trying to find a pool of calm to think about physics after the organisational storm of the last couple of days, culminating in the excellent Energy colloquium about which I’ll post shortly.

Sitting outside on the patio, working through the world’s supply of coffee and tea (one has to do one’s part) while scribbling is always very nice. There are distractions, of course, and some of them are pleasant. Two recent ones:

(1) This giant beetle (larger than the size of the top joint of your thumb!) which is a beautiful iridescent green (not revealed in the picture – it left before I could get a good angle to photograph its underbelly). In flight it is huge and loud, like the helicopters that fly over a lot in this city’s busy skies. I had to get up and run to shut the windows it was busily trying to enter. It is so (at first) terrifying in flight close up that my first thought was that if it found its way into the house, I would just give it the keys and leave. But once it alighted on a surface and I could look at it and see how beautiful it was, I was hooked. Does anyone know what this wonderful/scary/beautiful creature is called? ((S)he did not stop to chat.) Specifically, I mean – what type of beetle is it?

(Another iridescent green visitor I’d like to capture on “film” is a marvellous tiny hummingbird (of some sort) that keeps coming to visit the stralitsias, the buddleias, and the salvia leucantha (Mexican sage) that are all blooming in the front garden now. But this beauty moves way too fast, and is rather shy.)

(2) The sounds of my mum (visiting for a while from the UK) chuckling away as she reads J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with evident enjoyment (she has not even noticed me snapping this picture). She’s recently discovered Potter, and so I expect she’ll have several days of fun to come, reading these books. (I’ll have to borrow or buy the later ones for her since I’ve never read further than the first one, which someone bought for me several years ago. – Yes, I know it should be “…Philosopher’s Stone”: don’t get me started on that topic!)

-cvj

Well, it was a quiet weekend here. I was working hard on writing a paper, and so did not go to any wild parties, or parties of any sort, for that matter.

I learned from Pharyngula that it was World Naked Gardening Day on Saturday, so I thought I’d give you an update on the garden, as I did do some pottering about out there…..and I know what you want to ask! The good news is that some of the peas are ready! But they’re going to come ready in separated stages, so it looks like I’ll have about four peas a week, annoyingly. Also, I got one early pepper, of quite an unexpected colour, that was ready the day after I did the last garden post, but I neglected to tell you then since I thought you’d heard enough. No more have come, as the pepper plants seem to have decided to focus on growing to twice their size first. They do look healthy.

It’s an all out war between me and the skunk(s) again. And it might go nuclear again. I’d declared a truce for a while, but a few nights ago two of my zucchini plants were dug out at the roots just at the height of their flowering, so I’m mad. Will be re-arming with all the previous weaponry: sticks, stones (for throwing), cayenne pepper, and the nuclear option …ammonia!

Also on the gardening front, after a day’s calculating and writing yesterday, in the evening I decided to go to my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, (in Hollywood, not too far from home, on Sunset Blvd, near Vine – best sound, seats and screens in town; check it out) and see The Constant Gardener. It was an excellent relatively low-key film, with a powerful and sad message. I do recommend it if you’re looking for ideas about what to see. Excellent performances (Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, among others), and directed by Fernando Meirelles, that excellent director who also directed a wonderful film that I love called City of God. Also, the film served as a reminder to me that unexpectedly crappy things can happen in your life while you’re worrying about the garden…

Today was spent mostly at home sat at the computer, writing. A sure sign that I’m getting old and distracted is the fact that it is much harder to get fully immersed in a writing project. When I was younger, much younger than today, I’d have been constantly working on the research with no other distractions (you know, committee meetings, teaching, etc), so that when I came to write the paper I’d have the whole paper essentially assembled in my head. Then I’d just sit and write it, sometimes all in one sitting, working through the night if neccessary. Not so now. Too many other things to worry about (not counting the blog here at all, by the way), so ideas come out all slow, not fully formed, and in the wrong order, which is not what I’m used to. Also -very importantly- I’m still trying to determine my favourite places to sit and work around the city when I’m in writing mode. Friday afternoon saw me at an excellent cafe I like called The Alcove (it’s in Los Feliz) for a few hours, writing and thinking. I spent yesterday working at home, mostly, but I did go for a pint or two at the Cat and Fiddle (a British pub (!), also in Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd; everybody checks everyone else out a little bit because someone spread a rumour that you’re supposed to spot celebrities there….tiresome, but a good spot) after the movie and do a bit of writing (on a folded-up bit of paper so as not to scare the patrons) on a bench there until about 11:00pm. I like changing venues a lot, getting on with life (seeing it and living it) and calculating and writing as I go. It’s one of my favourite modes of operation.

Today (Sunday) was mostly home, sitting outside from 8:00am writing and thinking, listening to the quiet morning sounds, broken only later by the guys building a deck over at the house across the street, and the sounds of the new neighbour (some minor celebrity, apparently) and his buddies moving into the other house opposite. Then in the late afternoon I decided on the spur of the moment to head to a new venue and scribble there: the beach. So I drove over to Santa Monica, parked the car, got out the bike and cycled into town, walked down the 3rd Street Promenade (checking that the buskers are still absolutely awful – they were (I have a theory about why)) and then cycled on to Santa Monica beach, then Venice beach, and then back to Santa Monica Beach because for some annoying reason there don’t seem to be any public tables at Venice beach.

It was another gorgeous sunset, and after it got too cold to continue writing I did do a bit of cycling around to see what I could see along the promenade. I’m rather pleased with how much I got done in terms of quality thinking, computing and writing, although I do sometimes long for those days when I could get totally immersed, could stay up late both physically (and logistically) and just rattle off a paper like that, all in one go. On the plus side, I’m probably able to achieve way more across a variety of duties, and be useful to a lot more people, now as compared to then. So you win some, you lose some.

Don’t ask me what the point of this ramble was. I don’t know either, so there you have it. Anyway, now I’ve got to go write the lecture for tomorrow’s 9:00am class. And it’s almost midnight. Sigh…

-cvj