Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Hey Raccoons!

You suck.

In 2007, my spring semester finished up with what was a truly remarkable weekend. Almost two years earlier, it had been brought to my attention that Syracuse had a particularly distinguished alumnus – Martin A. Pomerantz – in an area tightly connected to my own. Let me tell you a little about him.

Martin was the father of Antarctic astronomy. He graduated from Syracuse with an A.B. in physics in 1937 – the same year as the Hindenburg disaster, and went on to U. Penn and Temple and finally to the University of Delaware’s Bartol Research Institute, where he spent most of his research career – serving as it’s president for many years. Martin became a leader in the fields of submillimeter astronomy, cosmic and gamma rays, and measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB). In particular, he pioneered solar observations using helioseismology, becoming the first scientist to set up a telescope and observe the sun for 120 continuous hours from a single point on Earth. This kind of research is now the bread and butter of observational cosmology, and indeed, if one reads modern accounts of cosmology from the South Pole, Martin features prominently, and can be seen in photographs of the first team trying to measure the CMB from there. Our entire field has depended crucially on observations made in this pristine environment.

Because of these achievements, and his connection to Syracuse and one of our current research areas, my colleague Peter Saulson and I nominated Martin for an honorary doctorate. This nomination was ultimately successful, and we were informed that Martin was to be honored during our 2007 graduation.

So in mid-May, Martin, his son Marty, daughter Jane-Anne, son-in-law Steve and grandson Jonah arrived in Syracuse for our graduation weekend. On Friday May 11, we held The Martin A. Pomerantz Symposium, at which Peter and I gave talks, followed by a keynote presentation by our alumna – Gabriela González – and a summary talk by Martin himself. It was immense fun. Gabby’s talk in the afternoon was great – she is a Professor at Louisiana State University and an expert on the detection of gravitational waves, who had recently been awarded the American Physical Society’s 2007 Edward A. Bouchet Award. In addition to her research achievements, this award was also “for communicating the excitement of this field to the scientific community and the public”, and these abilities came through clearly in her talk.

Martin and his family clearly enjoyed the afternoon, but halfway through Martin started to feel ill, and we suggested canceling the rest of the program. But Martin declined, had some water, took a brief break, and insisted we continue, even though he looked a little weak and tired. The closing event was planned to be a slide show (yes, actual 35mm slides) presented by Martin, and discussing the early days of Antarctic astronomy, through his 27th and final visit to the pole at age 79 (during which the NSF recognized him by naming an observatory at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station after him). We were certain that Martin wouldn’t feel well enough to deliver this talk, but when the time came, he stepped up, faced the room, straightened his back and gave a remarkably energetic, animated and compelling presentation. He was just a different man when discussing his life’s passion.

The next evening we had a lovely dinner, with all the other graduates, and the following morning I presented Martin to the Chancellor to receive his honorary degree. It was obviously a proud moment for him, and it most certainly was for all of us, particularly for me, presenting someone who pioneered the kind of observations that are such an important part of my field. We sat on the stage, in front of the assembled crown of graduates and their families, in wonderful weather, and listened to Frank McCourt’s witty and thoughtful Commencement speech. And after lunch we all said our goodbyes and the Pomerantz clan headed off to the airport.

The Pomerantz family has been very good to Syracuse, endowing the Martin A. Pomerantz Professorship in Physics (the inaugural holder of which is Peter Saulson) and the Molly B. Pomerantz Graduate Fellowship, and the physics department is extremely grateful to them, as well as proud to have Martin as an alumnus. Martin couldn’t make it to the formal announcement of these gifts, but Marty was there, and we telecast it out to Marty and the rest of the family.

Soon after Martin’s visit to Syracuse he was diagnosed with cancer, which may explain why he felt bad during our symposium. The prognosis was quite bad, but he fought on remarkably well. Over the last 18 months or so we kept in quite close contact, and last November I was giving a talk at Berkeley, and was able to get together for dinner with Martin and his family, and finally to meet his wife, Molly. Even though he was in treatment, and over 90 years old, he looked great, and was full of energy. We talked about cosmology, and he wanted to know about the status of the field, and was telling me about some research he’d kept up with by reading articles online. It was a wonderful evening.

In the last month or so, through Marty, Martin’s devoted son, I’ve kept up with Martin’s condition, and knew that he’d been getting steadily weaker. I sent him the occasional article, and Marty told me he liked to read them.

On October 26th Martin Pomerantz passed away. He was a terrific physicist, a true pioneer, a gentle and generous person and a caring father. I am proud to have gotten to know him, deeply sad that he is gone, and grateful to his family for the time they and he spent with me. He will be missed.

Frankly speaking, I am not big on change. Oh yeah, the Obama business was pretty good, and I recognize that change is necessary for progress, blah blah blah, but man, it doesn’t come easy for me.

I was made excruciatingly aware of this by my stubborn refusal to log into CV’s back end at our new home. Why? Because it was going to be <cringe>different</cringe>.

I actually can’t make any sense of this behavior on my part, because science is all about change. I have no problem changing topics and points of view in a scientific context. Want to know what I’ll be working on in 5 years? It’ll probably be found in the set of things on which I am currently not working, nor have ever worked on before.

But technologically-driven changes in my day-to-day behavior? Scaaaaaary. One of my students mistakenly assumed that I was a bleeding edge of technology sort of person, based on my spiffy new MacBook Air. However, the only reason I have a new laptop is because after six and a half years, my old one was sufficiently dented that I couldn’t close it anymore, and it made ominous noises when writing to disk. Oh, I could have afforded a new laptop at many points in the intervening years, but then I’d have to install software or learn to use Leopard, and that, my friends, is not change I can believe in.

So, this post is my attempt to get past the queasiness and start defining this as the new normal.

And hey! Did you see the new images of extrasolar planets?!

Ok. That didn’t hurt a bit.

The arena at Politico.com has an interesting Q&A today. The question is “What, for you, was the most memorable moment of this long race for the presidency.” The responses run from the obvious (Obama’s now famous race speech) to the very personal (`my 6-yr old daughter didn’t realize that a woman had never been president of the US’). Anyway, I invite you all to go have a look, provided you enjoy year-end lists.

And, I’d thought it would be great to hear from the ultra-intelligent, ultra-interesting, avid CV readers what their response is to this question. So, please, write a comment and let us know, “What, for you, was the most memorable moment of this long race for the presidency.”

I’ll start! For me, the most memorable moment happened last Saturday. I had just returned from China and called my parents to let them know I was home. The conversation turned to politics, inevitable this time of year. Usually we step on eggshells whenever this subject arises (my parents are die-hard Republicans, but I love them anyway), but this time we were all speechless. In awe of my Uncle Chuck.

Uncle Chuck is my favorite uncle – we are the scientists in the family. He came home after serving in the Navy in the South Pacific during WWII and went to school on the GI bill. Ended up with a master’s in mathematics. Worked at Oak Ridge National Lab on the very first computer systems. Went on to NASA and was one of the folks in charge of the computer program rewrites to get the Apollo 13 astronauts safely back home. He has done tremendous things and is very smart. But, he’s lived most of his life in the deep South and has somehow developed a deep racial prejudice that most of the family can’t understand. We have cringed for years whenever he has espoused on the virtues of the Bell Curve in regards to race. I could go on, but think I’ll hold back and just say he is the most racially bigoted person I know. I can’t fathom some of the things I have heard him say.

On Saturday, I learned that Uncle Chuck cast his early ballot for Senator Barack Obama for President of the USA. Nothing could have surprised me more! No matter what happens with the election tomorrow, Obama has already stirred deep, positive change in our society.

Ten or fifteen years from now, virtual worlds will be as prevalent as web pages are today. I remember fifteen years ago when I had just set up my first web page and was trying to explain to my friends that this was going to be really big. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t very convincing. “The other day I found a web page that you can use to order a pizza to be delivered!” “You know, we already have a technology to do that — it’s called a phone.”

Likewise, I don’t have an especially clear picture of how virtual worlds will be put to use in the years to come. Right now, by far the leading presence in the game is Second Life, which remains clearly marked by the signs of geekdom which tend to characterize early incarnations of technological advances — for example, you have to choose a pseudonym for your avatar, the surname of which must come from a list of more-or-less goofy selections. And, admittedly, the most popular activities seem to be roleplaying and cybersex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But the scientific community is catching on. Rob Knop, erstwhile astronomer and science blogger, now works for Linden Labs, creators of Second Life. Organizations like the Exploratorium have set up bases in SL, and one ambitious fan of the Large Hadron Collider built a mock-up of the ATLAS detector. At the research level, astronomers have set up the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, which uses SL and other virtual worlds for a number of different activities — collaboration meetings, data visualization, outreach, etc. Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study, who founded the group, has posted a few papers on the arxiv about how he envisions the possibilities, e.g.:

Virtual Laboratories and Virtual Worlds
Piet Hut (IAS, Princeton)

All of which is preamble to mentioning that Rob has invited me to give a popular talk in Second Life, which (I think) will be happening next Saturday, November 8, at 10 a.m. Pacific time. So if you regret not being able to come to my arrow of time talk in so-called “real life,” here is your chance to hear it. It’ll be taking place at the Galaxy Dome at Spaceport Bravo — that’s a Second Life URL, or SLURL; if you have already signed up, just click that link to appear at that location in-world (as they say). It looks something like this:

Chances are that you don’t have your own Second Life identity, but here’s your excuse to join up and spend a couple of hours this weekend building your avatar and buying clothes. There’s no need to spend any money at all if you don’t want to, but if you do, there is a real economy with its own currency and a variable exchange rate with US dollars. (Just like real life, fashion choices for women vastly outnumber those for men. Unlike real life, you get to buy your skin and hair, or even your shape — or just modify the default stuff you are created with.) Here’s a useful startup guide, if you don’t mind receiving instructions from a mermaid.

Look forward to seeing you Saturday. Or rather, Seamus Tomorrow does.

As has been discussed on CV before, Californians have an opportunity to vote on a ballot initiative to invalidate gay marriage in the state. While we’re being all endorse-y today, I’m throwing my two cents in with a link to a piece by a friend of mine:

We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. “We’re married now!” We’d cry, after crossing through Customs and handing over all our papers and the Mermaid Girl’s birth certificate with both our names on it. And then, on the way home, as we passed the Peace Arch: “Not married any more! Hey, girlfriend!”

It wasn’t that funny, though, to tell the truth.

Read the whole thing, and then come back and tell me how giving this family legal protection has damaged the fabric of Canadian society.

It is estimated that 182,460 women in the US will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2008, and that 40,480 will die of the disease (20,080 and 4150, respectively, in California alone). That’s better odds than the rest of the world, where 1.1 million new cases and 420,000 deaths are predicted this year. Chances are that 1 in 8 American women will have the disease during their lifetime. In addition, 62,480 Americans are <a href=”expected to be diagnosed with melanoma in 2008, with 8420 deaths attributed to that disease.

The set of Americans that are diagnosed in 2008 with both breast cancer and melanoma, as two separate primary cancers, is not a null set. It contains at least one person: me.

When you are sitting in the doctor’s office and being told that you have cancer, time really does stop. The remainder of that doctor’s appointment occurred in slow motion, with words being drawn out and motions distorted, as if I were walking through a haunted house display. I instantly turned numb. My doctor explained the pathology from the biopsy and the treatment options. Intelligent questions were out of the question – I had yet to learn the breast cancer dictionary – so all I could muster to ask was whether I was going to lose my hair.

Two months later, after the main surgery, the final pathology revealed that the situation was more serious than previously thought. At that point, I was in a combined state of total, sheer panic and determination to seek the best, aggressive treatment available today.

Three weeks ago, I was diagnosed with the melanoma. By this time, it seemed old hat. I peppered the poor doctor with questions about the pathology and the treatment, and there was a new cancer dictionary to learn. I would much rather have a new primary than a distant recurrence of the breast cancer.

I never asked “why me” as apparently many women do. I’m the fourth woman in my family to have breast cancer, so it’s more of an “oh shit, me too” than a “why me” moment. Out of 4 aunts, Aunt Helen is a 20 year survivor. She has had one instance of a local recurrence that was treated. Out of 9 female first cousins, 3 of us have/had breast cancer. And we are not an old group. Cousin Margie, born six weeks after me, was diagnosed in 2003 and died in 2004. Cousin Carol was diagnosed in 2007. Me in 2008. The rest of the family is now on high alert.

One of the more interesting stories about my cancer, is how it was diagnosed. I’ve been good about getting mammograms on the recommended schedule, particularly after Margie’s death. However, it is often the case that younger pre-menopausal women have dense breast tissue, rendering mammograms less effective. My doctor was concerned for years whether I was being adequately screened. So the last time around, he casually mentioned that perhaps, just maybe, I should have an MRI as well. Just for screening. I wasn’t keen on it – didn’t wanna be locked up in a tube. Doc was leaning 60-40 in favor. I left for a 4 week trip to Europe the next day and didn’t think about it for awhile.

I returned to find that the ever efficient staff in my doctor’s office had moved forward, scheduling a mammogram and sending in an insurance request for the MRI. And that my insurance company, wasting no time, had immediately turned down the request. (I have the most expensive, hot-shot insurance that Stanford offers.) The service denial letter stated

The MRI is an investigative and experimental procedure.

That is a direct quote. My doctor was livid. In the meantime, the mammogram revealed a harmless cyst that we already knew was there and was of no concern. But the insurance company didn’t know that. So my doctor sent in an appeal, using the cyst to demonstrate medical necessity. I left for Europe for a week and thought about this every minute.

Upon my return, the hot-shot insurance folks had decided that medical necessity had been met, afterall, and my MRI was already scheduled by the ever efficient staff. They gave me a pill to make me ditzy and stuffed me into the tube. And here is the result:

On the left, is the mammogram image of my breast. Nothing (except the harmless cyst) shows up. On the right, is the MRI image. Bammo, there it is. Clear as day in the twelve to one o’clock position. You don’t need an advanced degree in radiology to see it. Given the size, it’s been growing for about 4 years. I had it in me when I attended my cousin Margie’s funeral. It never showed up on a mammogram. My doctor’s hunch that I should have an MRI saved my life. Now I have something in common with Christina Applegate (well this, and my comic wit ).

Turns out that none of the 4 breast cancers in my family were discovered by a mammogram. Aunt Helen felt the lump. Cousin Carol had an MRI (without protest from her insurance). And cousin Margie felt the lump, only 6 months after her last mammogram.

Indirectly, that MRI also led to the early detection of the melanoma. My breast cancer oncologist was diagnosed with a serious melanoma over the summer and at my last appointment, suddenly being very aware of such things, she took my arm and said `you are going to have this looked at’. She didn’t give me a choice and wrote up the paperwork then and there.

The breast cancer consisted of a multi-focal ductal carcinoma in situ, a 1.2 cm invasive ductal carcinoma with moderately aggressive cell structure, and a 1 mm micrometastasis in one out of 12 lymph nodes removed. The official staging is 2a. The prognosis for a micrometastasis is under medical debate – leave it to me to be on the cutting edge of science in everything I do. The melanoma was only 0.3mm deep, Clark’s level II and is stage 1a. This year, I’ve had 3 biopsies, 5 surgeries and counting (at least 2 more to go), 4 months of the most aggressive chemo they do for breast cancer (without a distant metastasis), and I now take endocrine therapy for 5 yrs. I think I had every side effect in the book during the chemo (was even hospitalized for awhile) and I’m amassing enough scars to resemble Frankenstein. And yes, I lost my hair. Throughout, I have been fortunate to receive some of the best medical care in the world.

And, most importantly, I’m alive! I’ve made it through the journey and am on the other side of the ordeal. I am learning to cope with the ever present anxiety of recurrence. I am getting stronger everyday and am starting to live life fully again. I am looking forward to the opportunity of growing old, no longer being frightened as body parts start to display their age. And, most of all, I am thankful for that MRI, because otherwise….

I had the pleasure the other day of talking with science writer Jennifer Ouellette, blogger at Cocktail Party Physics, who also happens to be a black belt in jujitsu (!), and Sean’s wife. The conversation was recorded for Bloggingheads.tv, which is a (to me) peculiar project to record bloggers talking to each other. I admit to being baffled that people actually want to listen to bloggers talk into their computers. However, people seem to actually watch these discussions, and given that I enjoy talking about science (and had never had the opportunity to meet Jennifer before), it seemed like a fun thing to do. If you’re interested, the discussion is here:

While I enjoyed the actual discussion, I confess to finding it disconcerting to have a recording of myself floating around the internet. I still have a bit of the anxious 13 year old stuck in my head, replaying years-old conversations where I wish I hadn’t said something, or said something different. The rational 40 year old part of me knows these conversations were long forgotten by everyone but me, but with the internet, they’re actually not. Instead, people can replay them over and over, and (even worse) comment on whether or not I misused a particular word (I did — I said “spurious” when “serendipitous” would have been more appropriate), or whether or not it’s distracting that a hunk of my hair tends to fall down and cover my one non-functional eye. It’s like my middle school nightmares actually coming true. I’ve progressed enough in the intervening two decades that I’m not paralyzed or depressed over it, but the desire to get everything just right, and feeling faint flips in the stomach when you fall just a little bit short, has never completely gone away.

A few months ago I mentioned a rather large professional change – namely that in January I’ll be moving to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. In that post I referred to at least one further surprise to come later, and I’m now ready to announce two.

First, Penn is setting up a new Center for Particle Cosmology, launching January 1, 2009 (although, as you’ll see by clicking on the link, the web site is already up and running, in case potential students and postdocs, or just curious others wish to check us out.)

This is extremely exciting, and I’m very much looking forward to arriving in the Spring and getting involved (Bhuvnesh Jain and I will be co-directing the center.) A large part of my excitement is because of the second nice surprise – Justin Khoury has recently accepted a faculty position at Penn, and will also be joining the department and the new center in January. I’ve been a fan of Justin’s work for a while, and given the overlap of our research interests, we’ll hopefully have a lot to talk about.

All this provides me with a handy excuse to mention that if you’re looking for a postdoc position, and you’re interested in what we’re up to, then you may want to look at our announcement of two postdoctoral fellowships for Fall 2009.

Also, be sure to look for an announcement of our inaugural workshop.

Well into my household’s Year of Sensory Input Issues, my husband is dealing with a detached retina. It’s been a sometimes frightening experience — for example, did you know that if you have to leave an international flight en route, that the customs agent will come out and clear your passport on the ambulance? And that in spite of their stinginess with blankets and pretzels, United Airlines really can come through in a crisis? Annoying as it’s been, the experience has been filled with Cool Applications of Physics, which helps me pass the time.

A retinal detachment involves the retina (which lines the back of your eye like wallpaper) sagging away from the back of the eye (as your wallpaper might do in a damp bathroom). Now, if you’ve ever tried to wallpaper a curved surface, you know it’s not easy to get some intrinsically flat thing to stick smoothly to the inside of the curve, especially when that bitch Gravity is pulling it down all the time. The clever way that retinal surgery deals with this (squeamish people stop reading now, please) is to suck some of the goo out of your eye and replace it with a gas bubble. You then tilt your head into the right position to have the gas bubble float up into the correct portion of the eye while the retina re-attaches. For a month. If you’re lucky, you get to sit up, but if you’re unlucky, you spend a month looking at the floor. In addition, you cannot go up or down in altitude by more than a thousand feet or so, because when you have an air bubble in your eye pressure changes are not a great idea.

My husband has been lucky enough to have a sitting-up kind of detachment so far (though I’m writing this while waiting for him to get out of surgery a second time, since it seems to have detached again, and based on where he lost vision and knowing the inversion of the image that takes place in the eye’s reimaging system, I’m worried he’s going to be a floor-looking guy when he comes out). The cool bit about getting to look at him face-on is that you can actually see the bubble! He looks like a human level, as the bubble readjusts as he tips his head.

The other physicsy bit is that when you have a gas bubble in your eye, your index of refraction is all wrong, and in spite of having a working retina attached in the right place, you still can’t see, because the air-lens interface steers the light to the wrong place. This gets better as the air is absorbed by the body and replaced with fluid. It’s also better when you tip your head down so the bubble floats away from the lens.

The upshot of all this is that I think that modern medicine is pretty darn clever, though I wish I didn’t have to know about it.