Anil Ananthaswamy has won the inaugural Physics Journalism Prize, which is sponsored by the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
Anil won the prize for his article in New Scientist entitled Hip Hip Array, which focuses on the Square Kilometre Array.
Link
Winner of inaugural Physics Journalism Prize announced IOP News
Wetwebwork from London, U.K.
The American Physical Society March Meeting 2013 (Monday–Friday, March 18–22, 2013, Baltimore, Maryland), is going to be focused on the physics of behavior. One abstract caught my eye…
Mosh pits and Circle pits: Collective motion at heavy metal concerts
Matthew Bierbaum , Jesse L. Silverberg , James P. Sethna and Itai Cohen
Heavy metal concerts present an extreme environment in which large crowds (∼10^2−10^5) of humans experience very loud music (∼130dB) in sync with bright, flashing lights, often while intoxicated. In this setting, we find two types of collective motion: mosh pits, in which participants collide with each other randomly in a manner resembling an ideal gas, and circle pits, in which participants run collectively in a circle forming a vortex of people. We model these two collective behaviors using a flocking model and find qualitative and quantitative agreement with the behaviors found in videos of metal concerts. Furthermore, we find a phase diagram showing the transition from a mosh pit to a circle pit as well as a predicted third phase, lane formation.
The preprint
Their presentation is based on a preprint on the arXiv “Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts” [1]. Using videos publicly available online, they study the highly energized collective motion of attendees at heavy metal concerts.
They model the behavior at heavy metal concerts and find a disordered gas-like state, commonly known as a mosh pit and an ordered vortex-like state known as a circle pit.
References
[1] Jesse L. Silverberg, Matthew Bierbaum, James P. Sethna, Itai Cohen, Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts, arXiv:1302.1886 [physics.soc-ph]
Link
Mosh pits and Circle pits: Collective motion at heavy metal concerts
The House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee has published a report focusing on the implementation of the Government Open Access policy.
The debating chamber of the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster
Things the report covers includes arrangements for article processing charge funds, international issues and risks for learned societies, such as the Institute of Physics and the London Mathematical Society.
Link
The implementation of open access (Opens PDF)
Prof. Larry Hunter and colleagues at Amherst College in Massachusetts, together with Jung-Fu Lin of the University of Texas, Austin, have used the Earth to put bounds on long-range spin-spin forces associated with the virtual exchange unparticles [2].
Background
Recall that intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, of a particle of what gives rise to a particle’s magnetic moment and it is the interaction between spins that generates a magnetic field. In quantum electrodynamics the standard understanding of the interactions between the spins is in terms of the exchange of virtual photons.
In 2007, Howard Georgi of Harvard University proposed the existence of unparticles, which represents an as of yet undiscovered scale invariant sector to the standard model [1]. The exchange of unparticles would lead to a new type of spin–spin interaction. It is this new interaction that Larry Hunter and colleagues have been looking for.
Unparticles and the crust?
Prof. Hunter and colleagues created a map of the Earth’s polarized electron spin density. Then they calculated the potentials associated the possible spin interactions and integrated this across the whole of the Earth. The effect of these potentials on two detectors that can probe long-range interaction between spins in the Earth’s interior was worked out.
Using this they were able to place new upper bounds on the forces due to the exchange of unparticles. Improvements in sensitivity as compared to existing laboratory experiences is by a factor of a million.
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Prof. Larry R. Hunter |
References
[1]Howard Georgi (2007). “Unparticle Physics”. Physical Review Letters 98 (22): 221601
[2] Larry Hunter Joel Gordon, Stephen Peck, Daniel Ang and Jung-Fu Lin, Using the Earth as a Polarized Electron Source to Search for Long-Range Spin-Spin Interactions, Science 22 February 2013: Vol. 339 no. 6122 pp. 928-932
Links
Search for ‘unparticles’ focuses on Earth’s crust (Physics World)
The International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences is to be held at Prague, Czech Republic during September 1-5, 2013. The conference aims to promote the knowledge and the development of high-quality research in mathematical fields that have to do with the applications of other scientific fields and the modern technological trends that appear in them, these fields being those of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Economics, Sociology, Environmental sciences etc.
Topics
ICMSQUARE-2013 topics encompass, but are not restricted to, the following areas:
Venue
The conference is to be held at Prague, Czech Republic during September 1-5, 2013 at the Conference Center of the Orea Hotel Pyramida 4*. The hotel is situated by Hradcany and Strahov, within walking distance from the Prague Castle, Loreta, Strahov monastery and the Lesser Town. The Conference Center of the Hotel Pyramida offers ten fully air-conditioned conference rooms. Together they can accommodate up to 1100 people.
Registration and submission
All the actions related to the IC-MSQUARE 2013 (paper submission, registration etc) may be completed via the Conference website at http://www.icmsquare.net.
Important dates:
Tuesday, 30 April 2013, Abstract submission deadline
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, Notification of acceptance
Friday, 31 May 2013, Early registration deadline
Wednesday, 31 July 2013, Full paper review submission deadline
Sunday, 1 September 2013, Conference opening
Organizing committee
Prof Theodosios Christodoulakis
Dr Elias Vagenas
Prof Dimitrios Vlachos
… all of the available constraints on the validity of the founding principles of SR and GR have so far failed to crack any faults in these century-old theories, which thus remains the standard against all competitors so far.
Orfeu Bertolami and Jorge Páramos in [1]
I like the above quote. It is rather an inescapable that Einsteinian relativity works well.
Objections to relativity
I posted, about a year ago now, on the experimental status of Einsteinian relativity, you can read it here.
Whatever the faults with general and special relativity, philosophical or real, today we have no other theory of space, time and gravity that has the experimental success of Einstein’s theories.
Most of the “objections” to special and general relativity stem from not really understanding what the theory is saying, or indeed what a theory really is. Analogies and popular science accounts seem to also be the root of a lot of misunderstandings.
Other good references on the experimental status of relativity include [2,3,4].
The failings of general relativity
It is not true that anyone really expects general relativity to be the final say on gravity. The issues as they stand include:
All these problems only really tell us that general relativity is not a complete theory in the sense that there is physics that it cannot accurately explain. This is not grounds for dismissing general relativity as it is a very accurate model of gravity for a huge range of phenomena.
References
[1] Orfeu Bertolami and Jorge Páramos, The experimental status of Special and General Relativity, arXiv:1212.2177v1 [gr-qc]
[2]Orfeu Bertolami, Jorge Páramos, and Slava G. Turyshev. General theory of relativity: Will it survive the next decade? In Lasers, Clocks, and Drag-Free: Technologies for Future Exploration in Space and Tests of Gravity. Springer Verlag, 2006; gr-qc/0602016.
[3]Clifford M. Will. The confrontation between general relativity and experiment. Living Reviews in Relativity, 9(3), 2006.
[4]Will, Clifford M. (2006). Was Einstein Right? Testing Relativity at the Centenary. Annalen der Physik 15: 19–33
BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour announced its list of the 100 most powerful women in the UK on Tuesday 12 February. The list included a number of other high profile scientists and engineers including Professor Bell Burnell.
Prof S Jocelyn Bell Burnell
We’re delighted to see Jocelyn, joined by a range of extraordinary female scientists and engineers, in this inaugural power list. Jocelyn’s contribution to research and as an inspiring figurehead and role model in the fight to overcome gender disparities in science make her a very deserving choice.
Professor Sir Peter Knight, President of IOP
Pulsars
Prof. Bell Burnell is credited with the discovery of the first radio pulsar (PSR B1919+21), while a postgraduate student under the supervision of Antony Hewish. Interestingly, the regular radio signal detected in 1967 that lead to the discovery of the first pulsar was given the designation LGM-1. That stands for “little green men”. The signal was so regular it was initially thought it could not be natural!
We did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem – if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe how does one announce the results responsibly? Who does one tell first?
S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell. “Little Green Men, White Dwarfs or Pulsars?”. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, vol. 302, pages 685-689, Dec., 1977
It took the powerful mind of Fred Hoyle to realise that these signals came from neutron stars with strong magnetic fields.
Controversially, she was not a co-recipient of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics along side Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle, which was awarded for pulsar research.
Academic activities
Prof. Bell Burnell was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002-2004 and president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010. She was also interim president following the death of her successor, Marshall Stoneham, in early 2011.
Links
Past-president makes Woman’s Hour power list IOP News
The power list BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour
Prof. Jim Al-Khalili, an expert on nuclear physics, spoke at the Royal Institution about the role of quantum physics in biology. The video is embedded below.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwgQVZju1ZM&feature=player_embedded]
I know that Prof. Al-Khalili is working on the interface of quantum mechanics and biology.
Recently I have become more interested in a new field called quantum biology, where we are gathering evidence for biological phenomena at the cellular level that seem to work according to the strange rules of quantum mechanics. My interest (and I have a great grad student working with me on this at the moment) is in modelling mathematically genetic mutations in DNA that seem to take place because of a quantum mechanism called quantum tunneling. In fact, this whole area is the subject of my next book that I am currently working on.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology, Hewlett Packard Laboratories and University of Washington have a “proof-of-concept” device that could pave the way for on-chip optical quantum networks [1]. The device is etched in a diamond membrane that was around 300 nanometres thick.
In an optical quantum network, information is carried by photons, as opposed to electrons in more standard devices. The potentials for quantum computing are huge, computers could be millions of times faster at performing certain calculations than they are today.
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Andrei Faraon. |
References
[1] Andrei Faraon et al, Quantum photonic devices in single-crystal diamond, 2013 New J. Phys. 15 025010 (link)
Link
Researchers create “building block” of quantum networks (IOP News 08 Feb 2013)
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Dr Paul G. Abel is a British astronomer, mathematician and writer. He is now a regular face on the BBC’s The Sky at Night. Paul has written for many popular astronomy magazines promoting amateur astronomy and the science that amateurs can contribute to the field. |
He agreed to answer a few question I had.
Science and Popularisation
What first got you involved in science, and in particular astronomy?
It was a combination of things actually. In 1989 Voyager 2 got to Neptune and sent back some wonderful pictures of this blue planet. This was also the first time I encountered Patrick Moore. He was obviously different from the toher scientists who spoke- his words conveyed such a passion for astronomy, and even with the results of the great Voyager 2 spacecraft, he emphasized the good work amateurs could do. So, I started reading his books and watching The Sky at Night. I got a small telescope and I remember the first thing I saw was Saturn. The sight of this magnificent alien world, with its surreal looking ring system and family of moons hooked me. From that moment onwards, I knew I would never do anything else but astronomy.
What was your first telescope?
My first ‘proper’ telescope was a wonderful Russian thing- a Tal-1 Mizar 4.5 inch Newtonian reflector on equatorial mount. Looking back on it now, it was like being given the keys to your first low powered spaceship. I observed all of the planets I could, and sought out many of the objects on the Messier catalogue. I also made my own star charts and became reasonably familiar with the constellations which populate the UK night skies.
How did you get involved in the BBC’s Sky at Night?
Quite by chance- indeed I had no plans to do tv at all! It was all Patrick’s idea. He had asked if I had wanted to do one (I had been in correspondence with him since the age of 12). But I had declined. So he organized one without me I was going to be in it- until I arrived on the day!!! It was the event a few years ago now when four of Saturn’s moons passed in front of the planet. Both Patrick and our producer Jane fletcher thought I was OK and I joined the team as a co-presenter.
What is your favorite astronomical object, and why?
It’s what ever I’m looking at- yes I am that fickle! To be honest, it is only the Moon and planets which interest me as an amateur astronomer. I am a visual observer so I don’t image, I make coloured drawings of what I have observed. Indeed, it was the art of visual observing, and keeping good astronomical log books which Patrick taught me to do, and he himself was taught this by the wonderful astronomer W. S Franks. I do wonder how many hours I have spent at the eyepiece of a telescope, and I have quite a few log books now with drawings and observations of the Moon and planets.
Which medium do you think is the most effective at popularising science?
I don’t think it is the medium, I think it is the person doing the communicating. If you have a passion for astronomy and science, you can convey it anyway open to you!
What, in your opinion, should be the ultimate goal of science popularisation?
I think it should be two-fold. First it should re-familiarise people with why science is a wonderful thing, why objective rational thought and the scientific method has improved all of our lives. Not only do we have it to thank for giving us the technology of our civilization but it has allowed to tame the dark, we no longer burn witches for example! As Carl Sagan once rightly pointed out, science is the candle in the darkness. The second thing it can do is encourage people who want to make a contribution in their own way. Amateur astronomy is a thriving subject in this country, and I would hope that people feel compelled to do more than just point there telescope at some of the wonderful objects in the Universe, they might start to make their own systematic observations and contribute to the wonderful scientific work amateur organizations like the British Astronomical Association have been doing for over a 100 years. In short: get involved!!!!
Research
Can you say a few words about your research? (GR, Hawking radiation and semi-classical gravity?)
Indeed. My research is concerned with using a quantum Langevin approach to Hawking radiation. I am also interested in the Unruh effect. The Davies-Fulling-Unruh effect (to give it its fall name!) is the idea that constantly accelerating observers in Minkowski (flat) spacetime see a thermal spectrum of particle in an area of spacetime called the Rindler wedge. I think it is clear that recent work has showed that although energy from say a harmonic oscillator on such a trajectory would radiate, that energy would be absorbed by the field so overall there is no energy flux. This has applications to Hawking radiation.
Which one of your papers are you most proud of, and why?
I believe I have yet to write this paper! Who wants their greatest work to be behind them?!
In your opinion, what is the biggest stumbling block to finding a quantum theory of gravity?
Well perhaps the greatest stumbling block is ourselves. At present there are two approaches, one is the approach adopted by String theory which is, in essence to describe the basic particles of matter in terms of 1D energy filaments- strings. A big part of String theory is super-symmetry the evidence for which is in-direct. In order for a theory to have physical significance it must be testable. Alas many of the predictions for string theory require energies far greater than human being can produce here at this time.
The other candidate is Loop Quantum Gravity which seeks to use general relativity and quantum mechanics but again this approach has many problems and at the time of writing, LQG is not testable either.
For me personally, I don’t think either String Theory or Loop Quantum Gravity is radical enough. They doesn’t feel like they are presenting a radical shift in fundamental philosophy what we got when Newtonian gravity moved over for General Relativity. Of course it may be that the answer to the problem of a quantum description of gravity does not need such a profound rethink, but until either of these theories can provide experimental evidence to support their claims, I would regard them as nice excursions into mathematics. Physics, should be testable. It may be the case that it takes another ‘Einstein’ to shake up our views of space, time and matter and point us in a new direction
About Paul
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Paul is based in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Science in the department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Leicester where he teaches Mathematics. His research is focused on black hole thermodynamics with Prof. Derek Raine. You can find out more about Paul on his website and The Sky at Night website. |
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