Archive for February, 2007
To the astronomer, perhaps the single most helpful property of brown dwarfs is this: YOU CAN SEE THEM. Brown-dwarf-ologists are not obliged to resort to the observational craftiness of their planetologist friends, but can just, well, take a picture. At least sometimes.
To illustrate, here’s a fun exercise: find the brown dwarfs.
See? So very easy.
Filed under: classes, seminar | 5 Comments
This week’s seminar topic is HOW TO FIND THINGS, namely brown dwarfs and exoplanets. It covers a nice mix of interesting physics and practical real-world considerations.
Plus, in a stunning display of totally awesome, WordPress added support! Which means I can now present seminar synopses WITH EXTRA EQUATIONS.
Here goes.
Filed under: seminar | 3 Comments
Sexy Datasets in Physics
The conversation in lab this morning somehow worked around to “Hot ___” calendars, and specifically to the lack thereof featuring physics. Now actual physicist calendars would be a little hackneyed, and hard to implement. But you know what else is hot? DATA. Such as oh man the CMB blackbody.
I could totally make a HOT XXX [...]
Filed under: life, projects | 3 Comments
Scenes from a Wednesday
I have jlab this morning from 9-12. It’s precipitating in little stinging freezy bits outside, so I wait for the shuttle, which gets itself stuck in a long lineup of 18-wheelers. There’s a truck on Mass. Ave covered in swamp-monster black goo. The pavement beneath it has buckled and broken; against the newly-fallen snow, it [...]
Filed under: classes, hilarity, life | Leave a Comment
Stealth Cloud Attack
Figure 1: An IR weather picture of the southwestern US. Note the lack of threatening green blobs over southern Arizona.
Figure 2: An optical all-sky photograph on Mt. Hopkins, in southern Arizona. Note the horrible soul-consuming clouds.
WTF, sky? You were perfectly photometric an hour ago. Perfectly.
If you are going to pull such stunts, I would [...]
Filed under: observing | 2 Comments
Klein bottles!
Some people I know run an annual math competition called the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament. The winners get the most excellent prize of a lab-quality glass KLEIN BOTTLE.
I don’t have any particular interest in math tournaments, and I wouldn’t otherwise have had anything to do with HMMT, but three years ago I got suckered into painting [...]
Filed under: hilarity | 1 Comment
Astro Seminar: Exoplanet basics
This is the second half of the Astrophysics Seminar described in the previous post. It follows the same general pattern, only with extrasolar planets instead of brown dwarfs.
Ready, world? Here’s what Josh said:
Filed under: classes, seminar | 3 Comments
The first meeting of 8.972, my brown dwarf/exoplanet seminar, was today. It’s jointly taught by Profs. Adam Burgasser and Josh Winn, split roughly so that Adam takes the dwarfs and Josh takes the planets. The class is technically a graduate seminar, but about half the students are undergrads. I know a handful of them: a [...]
Filed under: classes, seminar | 3 Comments
Laz0r Safety and Other Stories
Yesterday was my first Junior Lab session, and we spent most of it hashing out the usual first-day logistics – finding partners, getting notebooks, looking at the experiments, and so on. My section is led by Prof. Peter Fisher, who, in addition to being an awesome physicist, tells the greatest anecdotes. For instance, while introducing [...]
Filed under: classes, hilarity | 2 Comments
And so it begins
First day of classes today! I am, as always, inordinately excited, but will become suitably embittered within a month. Such is life.
I am taking:
8.044 Statistical Physics I
8.06 Quantum Physics III
8.14 Junior Lab II
8.972 Astrophysics Seminar
At 48 units, counted MIT-style, it looks ike my lightest courseload yet. But HAH HAH: I’ll be lucky to survive [...]
Filed under: classes | 4 Comments
The Prodigal Field-of-Stars
I’m observing again. Now, my grad student is making supernova lightcurves, which means we take pictures of the things over a period of a few months, while they blow themselves up and calm down again. And then we wait a while, and we take another picture to finish them off.
So I just took a picture [...]
Filed under: observing | 1 Comment
I am so chaaaahming
Today I got my first official degree from MIT. W00T!
But it won’t get me into grad school.
Okay, context: At the end of every IAP, MIT sponsors an event called Charm School. It’s intended to, well, instruct nerds in social graces – an idea I’ve always found both hilarious and unbelievably appropriate. Charm School runs for [...]
Filed under: IAP, hilarity, life | Leave a Comment
Unit of the week
I keep stumbling upon this one, and every time I think it’s hilarious.
The unit of a scattering cross-section at atomic/nuclear scales is a BARN.
As in, “couldn’t hit the side of a”.
AWESOME.
Filed under: hilarity | Leave a Comment
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An MIT undergrad lusts after physics. Meanwhile, life happens. Excitement and high drama ensue.
