think or thwim

A time lapse of the construction of the ATLAS particle detector, one of two large “all purpose” particle detectors in the LHC. There are also four smaller more specialized detectors.

This animation shows the parts of the detector and what they do.

The New York Times also published a great article about the LHC today: A Giant Takes On Physics’ Biggest Questions

Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Peter Venkman: Why?
Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad”?
Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

- Ghostbusters (1984)

In November, CERN will flip the switch on the Large Hadron Collider and cross the streams. We’ve done this before, but not on this scale. The LHC is 7 times more powerful than it’s predecessor at Fermilab. The concept is simple. Two steams of protons will accelerate to almost the speed of light and smash together head on. This animation shows how it’s done.

The idea is to break the protons into pieces to see what they’re made of. Using this technique we have already observed 12 fundamental mass particles and 4 fundamental force mediating particles. With these more powerful collisions the main hope is to get a look at the fifth and most important force particle - the Higgs boson. In theory, it’s mass is so small that the previous colliders have not had enough energy to see it, but this one will.

That’s a big deal because Einstein had the insight that matter and energy are the same thing: e=mc2. The Higgs boson is the particle that’s thought to create mass from energy, the mechanism that “makes stuff, stuff.”

Here’s an overview of the LHC excerpted from BBH Horizon. The entire show is at Google Video and Stage6 (better quality):

The LHC was originally supposed to start up in late 2007, but it was already behind schedule when a support for one of the 43 foot long superconducting magnets lining the ring failed during a test. CERN hasn’t announced any revisions to the schedule yet.

Google Map with an overlay showing the ring

This is one of my favorite documentaries, but I haven’t mentioned it before because the last time I checked it wasn’t available online yet. Now it is.

Physicists explain the large and the small things in our universe with two different theories. General relativity explains the large scales. Quantum mechanics explains the small. The very disturbing problem is: they can’t both be right because they don’t agree. String theory was conceived to reconcile the two and be a theory of everything. The film is hosted by Brian Greene, one of the physicists working on the theory:

Physicists often use the term elegant to describe a solution to a problem that is as powerful as it is simple. It’s a solution which cuts to the heart of an important problem with such clarity that it almost leaves no doubt that the solution is either right or at least on the right track. And string theory is just that kind of solution.

The movie is based on Brian Greene’s book, The Elegant Universe. The movie is excellent, but as usual, the book is better.

:: Cosmology Curiosity

Arthur Koestler coined the term holon in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine. He combined the suffix “on” meaning part (ie. neutron, proton, and electron) with the greek “holos” for whole. It refers to something that is both a complete individual, and a part of a larger whole at the same time. Likewise, the individual is made of even smaller things, which are composed of smaller things, and so on.

Brain neurons are holons, which are part of a brain, which is part of an animal. At each stage, the larger entity has properties that are greater than the sum of it’s parts. A brain can form thoughts, but a neuron can’t. An animal can be alive, but any one organ by itself can’t.

Maybe these hierarchies (or holoarchies) extend forever. US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recounts this popular story in his opinion of Rapanos v. United States:

In our favored version, an Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies “Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down.”

We’re constantly expanding how far we can see into larger and smaller scales. I think the smallest thing we’ve actually observed so far is a quark, and the largest thing is this blob.

From the introduction to the very cool book Heaven and Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye:

Knowledge of the smallest — and largest — entities that we can contemplate helps us to define where we fit in the scheme of things. Rather surprisingly, we find that humans are about halfway between the very smallest and the largest things we know.

The classic 1977 short film, Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames echos that theme. It zooms out to show what we know abou the extremely large, and then zooms back in to the subatomic level:

Of course I don’t have any idea, but I like the idea that holarchies extend infinitely, mainly because it’s hard to find a place to draw a line. String theory is as small as we theoretically go so far. Let’s say it’s true. Strings vibrating in 11 dimensions are the building blocks of all matter. What are the strings made of? They’re obviously loops of some substance (just energy?). String theory math says some of those extra dimensions may be wrapped around themselves in unfathomably complex (to me anyway) shapes.

At the other extreme we’ve made up the word universe to encompass everything that exists anywhere. Oddly enough, the space we experience may also be wrapped into a complex shape. Theoretical physicists are routinely working with math that suggests multiple parallel universes, maybe even infinite universes. We need a new name to encompass all of them. And what if there is a creator outside the universe(s)? To me, that seems more likely than all this stuff appearing from nothing.

My personal theory is that our entire universe exists within an electron that’s part of an atom that is part of the shell of a turtle so large that we don’t a chance of comprehending it’s presence. The universe that turtle inhabits is a subatomic particle in the next scale, and so on. Turtles all the way up.

This was an American audience.

From Eddie Izzard | Dress to Kill

This graphic from Chart of the Day illustrates that when the Dow Jones Average is measured in gold, the recent bull market doesn’t look so impressive. The numbers on the side of the chart are the number of ounces of gold it would take to buy the Dow. The Dow closed at 13,215 last night. Gold was at $679 per ounce. 13,215 / 679 = 19.5 ounces to buy the Dow. A lot of the current stock market run up has really just been the dollar falling (inflation).

We’re at the top of the downtrend channel. It may continue up through, but I’m banking on a bounce with the Dow heading lower and gold heading higher.

I personally think too much weight is put on the Dow. It’s only 30 stocks - not very indicative of the market as a whole, and it’s price weighted which bothers me. A company can split it’s stock price at will, so one stock’s share price is not a measure of anything relative to another stock’s share price. Companies that don’t split have a disproportionate effect on the average, and that makes no sense. I do compare the Dow to the Russell 3000 to judge whether large companies or small companies are in favor, but I watch the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq much more closely.

The New York Times has a similar set of graphics comparing the S&P to lots of different measures. They’re saying the same thing. The S&P looks good when measured in Yen, but that’s because the Japanese have been purposely devaluing their currency even faster than the US has.

My positions: 97% cash, but some small positions that will get much bigger if I see some confirmation: short US Dollar, long gold, short QQQQ.

Pauric OCallaghan constructed a wooden case for his wireless router and used an analog RPM gauge to show the network utilization. It would look good with a stained glass computer case.

Pauric says:

I grew up in and around boats making wiring looms and control panels, and have a collection of gauges & dials that would normally be found connected to small marine diesel engines. Today I work as a designer building interfaces to networking equipment. As such, I like re-using the old analogue gauges to display network information in a more human readable analogue form. Tying my past to the present to some degree.

I used a 3″ rev counter, simple clean design, that came of one of the boats my dad owned when I was a kid and wired it in to a wireless router I had lying around at work. The rev counter is a rough approximation of the traffic utilization between my home network and the internet.

Pauric is the Principal Architect for User Interface Design at 3Com. I’ve been waiting to post this while he’s been building his website (also very cool) so you could see his very impressive resume. He’s is also the guy behind this chumby case, the elegantly simple cable bone, and the very cool tabbed maps at Make (built on Platial Mapkit). See more of his creations at his site.

This map is from the lecture notes of Dr S.E Jones at The School of Ocean Sciences, University of Wales - Bangor. There is a link to it under 3) Patterns of Climate. It looks like a class I’d like to take.

Check out the green band that the circles the globe through South America, Africa, and Asia. I knew each of those places had high rainfall, but I’d never put them together before. From Jones’ notes:

Rainfall is highest near equator (rising air is warm so can store a lot of water vapour). Most tropical rainfall is convective: prolonged heavy showers and thunderstorms.

At high latitudes precipitation is low because the air is too cold to hold much water vapour. Subtropical high pressure belts have low rainfall (stable conditions due to high pressure) while northern mid-latitudes have moderate rainfall, much of it frontal, which diminishes into the interiors of North America and Asia.

He has another equally interesting animation showing temperature. I didn’t put it here because two animated gifs on one page is too many.

Michael Lopp wrote a helpful article about how to give a presentation. In it he cites this example where he repeated the same presentation but received two completely different reactions:

A few years back, I gave a recruiting presentation at two different universities on the same day. Same presentation, same general age group of students, morning versus evening.

The morning presentation was in front of a packed room. Just after 10am. I was three cups of coffee into the day and so was everyone else. Three slides in and I knew this was going to be an easy presentation. Heads were nodding, laughs were coming from the least expected slides, and folks were actually taking me up on my offer: “Stop me if you have a question”. Captivated. 40 minutes of slides. 20 minutes of intense, engaged questions and answers. Mission accomplished.

5 hours later. I’m in another conference room 50 miles away in another university and everyone’s coffee has worn off. The room is half full and I’m a little tired, but I’ve done this presentation 30 times in my head, so when I start on slide #1, it’s on. I know this presentation, so why is everyone falling asleep on slide #3? There’s no laughing and, by slide #10, someone gets up and walks out. Ouch.

Rands in Repose | How to Not Throw Up