Showing category "News" (Show all posts)

Entangled Diamonds

Posted by on Sunday, December 4, 2011, In : News 
This week saw yet another interesting scientific result from Canadian physicists. Specifically, a team in Ontario has announced that they have detected quantum entanglement in a macroscopic system.

Since the birth of quantum mechanics over a century, it has been a puzzle due to its very odd but proven properties. Among these is the principle of quantum entanglement, in which two spatially separate objects affect each other without communicating in any ordinary way. 

The standard example of this...
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Superbubbles and Cosmic Rays

Posted by on Friday, November 25, 2011, In : News 
Yet another mystery of space has been at least partially explained now. 

For many decades (since 1912 to be precise) it has been known that the Earth is constantly being hit by high energy particles, known as cosmic rays, which originate from somewhere far out in space. And these are not just mildly energetic like we produce on Earth in particle accelerators, but many orders of magnitude more energetic than anything scientists can produce. But the source of these particles has been an unknown ...
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The Search For Life

Posted by on Sunday, November 20, 2011, In : News 
Canadians have one more thing to be proud of today.

Today NASA launched the Curiosity probe, the latest in a long history of robotic explorers sent to Mars to collect data and to search for signs of life present or past. This mission is going to travel to the red planet, and a robotic rover will descend to the surface. The target region was identified several years ago by an orbiting probe which identified a region of Mars which is covered in clay.

The presence of clay indicates that at some po...
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A Visitor From Space

Posted by on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, In : News 
I thought I would let everyone reading this know that there will be an interesting astronomical event today. The asteroid YU55 is scheduled to pass close to the Earth today (actually 320,000km but to astronomers that is close) and could be visible in amateur telescopes. It should arrive around 3:28pm PST today.

This will be the first time such an event has happened since 1976 (or the first time in most of our lifetimes if you are of my generation or younger), and will allow the professional sc...
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A New Experiment

Posted by on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, In : News 
In all of the excitement last week, I fear that I failed to mention a new experiment starting up which is lead by of two of my former employer institutions. For now I can only outline the project, but it is my hope to give a more detailed explanation when the first results are published. (Not because of any restrictions right now, but rather because I have been too busy with other projects to compile and compose a proper review for this blog).

There is an ongoing problem in (some) branches of ...
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A Hacking Update

Posted by on Friday, November 4, 2011, In : News 
For anyone who is interested, I am still in the process of undoing the changes and additions made by the still anonymous hacker who illicitly modified my website at some point in the previous few weeks or months. So far I have found three new entries that I did not write, and five that were modified after writing. And some of my e-mail messages were also either deleted or redirected. And of course the biggest threat of all was that someone removed the password protection and privacy settings ...
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And The Prize Goes To Dark Energy!

Posted by on Tuesday, October 4, 2011, In : News 
The Nobel prize committee have just announced that the 2011 prize for physics will go to the two teams that inadvertently discovered dark energy (or at least their leaders).

For those who haven't followed this story, here is a brief review.

Back in 1915 Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity which describes the properties of space, time and gravity. One of its predictions was that the size of the Universe is changing - but Einstein didn't like that so he added an extra term called ...
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Nonmagnetic NMR/MRI?

Posted by on Sunday, May 22, 2011, In : News 
There was an interesting result (at least to physicists and chemists) published this week which could have wide ranging effects on medicine and various other disciplines. Two groups of researchers have done some preliminary work on obtaining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) without using magnets!

 That might seem rather dull and pedantic to many of you reading this, but allow me to digress for a moment and explain one reason why it is important...

One of the most powerful medical imaging method...
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When Did I Move To Winterpeg?

Posted by Chris Bird on Thursday, February 24, 2011, In : News 
I woke up this morning to find 11" of snow on the ground, and a thick sheet of ice on the roads. I thought this was Victoria, not Winterpeg!

In any case, being as how I live on a steep and icy hill, and being as how I don't trust Victoria drivers to manage a skiffing of snow let alone an entire foot, I am not venturing out today.

Therefore any in-person tutorials scheduled for today (Wednesday) are being rescheduled for later in the week. Tomorrow's sessions will depend on the weather, but the ...
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Spring Break Tutoring

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, February 22, 2011, In : News 
I have had a few people ask about tutoring over the university reading break week, so I thought I would post the information here. 

I will be offering tutorial sessions this week, but I am not offering as many as previous years so interested students should contact me as soon as possible. I can offer both one-on-one tutorials or group sessions depending on what is requested (the group sessions are cheaper for the students, but it is up to the individual students to organize time and place). As...
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The First Glint of Extrasolar Life?

Posted by Chris Bird on Wednesday, October 6, 2010, In : News 
There was an interesting astronomy news story a few days ago that I wanted to pass along. A team of astronomers has discovered the first planet outside of our own solar system that has the right temperatures to support liquid water and life. 

 Although scientists are usually cautious about such things, it is possible (though admittedly improbable) that this new planet has life on it. Of course it is many light-years away, so no one is going to go there to check in the near future.

Consider that...
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A Family History Worry...

Posted by Chris Bird on Thursday, June 10, 2010, In : News 
I had a slight shock today, and I am really hoping it doesn't turn into an even sadder event. 

The two heritage homes that my great-grandfather built a century ago have been put up for sale. They are registered as heritage homes, but apparently they never received the full protected status and so they could be demolished now.

They are next-door to a large condo development, and the owner of a recently burned-down duplex nearby has said he would like to put in townhouses across the street from t...
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Where is the Antimatter? - UPDATE

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, In : News 
The Fermilab today released some preliminary findings of a particle reaction that produces slightly more matter than antimatter, possible explaining why there is so much matter in the visible Universe but no antimatter.

In nature there are two types of massive particle, dubbed by scientists as matter and antimatter. When the two meet they destroy each other and convert their masses to pure energy. And in every experiment conducted thus far, they are produced and destroyed in exactly equal amou...
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Rebirth of a Screensaver

Posted by Chris Bird on Saturday, May 15, 2010, In : News 
As some loyal readers may already know, about ten years ago I wrote a series of screen savers based on the chaos game method of fractal generation. These were quite popular (especially with the U.S. military for some strange unknown reason) and were downloaded thousands of times.

However I quit maintaining them due to an overwhelming amount of other work and responsibilities, and so they faded from use.

Well, in the last few months I managed to find a few spare minutes to re-write them using fo...
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The Mysterious Dark Matter Detections

Posted by Chris Bird on Thursday, May 6, 2010, In : News 
I read an interesting article today on new experimental data from the XENON dark matter search. But first I should give a little background...

For the last few decades there has been growing evidence that the majority of matter in the Universe is in some unknown exotic form. All we know about it is that it has a mass, and that it doesn't interact very much if at all with light. There are literally thousands of proposed models for dark matter, and it seems at times that there are just as many e...
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More Fun :(

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, March 12, 2010, In : News 
I think the fates above decided that I didn't quite have a bad enough week yet, because two days ago they made my internet connection die on me. And then when I phoned the company for information, I encountered the more 'interesting' automated calling system I have ever heard of. 
 Since I have my internet with the same company that used to carry my cell phone, as soon as I phone them through my landline, their system assumes that I must want the cell phone department. And it doesn't give any ...
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My Grandmother's Death

Posted by Chris Bird on Monday, March 8, 2010, In : News 
I just got word this afternoon that my grandmother passed away this morning at 8:10am. 

She had been suffering with diabetes, dementia, and for a while a fractured hip. In the end it was renal failure that took her life at 87 years old.

The funeral should  be sometime this week, and after that is over with I will write more.

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The Best Laid Plans...

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, March 5, 2010, In : News 
As some of you remember, about ten years ago I wrote a series of screensavers based on the chaos game methods of generating fractals. At the time they were very popular, and had tens of thousands of downloads. 

 Then in 2002 I got busy with other responsibilities and quit updating them,

Well, this weekend I finally seemed to have enough freetime to rewrite them using OpenGL so that they would work with the latest graphics processors. Or at least I thought I did...

Friday afternoon there was a po...
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My Office Must Be Haunted...

Posted by Chris Bird on Wednesday, February 10, 2010, In : News 
There have been several electrical problems in my office in the last month, so the only sane and rational conclusion is that it must be haunted...

 In the span of less than thirty days, I have had five short but total blackouts that only affect my office, two routers that had the AC/DC power adapters burn out, the power supply in my computer burned out, two CFL lights burn out, a cd player turn itself on in the night, and several light flickers.
Before this year started, I have never had any ad...
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Technical Difficulties

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, In : News 
It would seem that there was some sort of technical difficulty with my blog so that the last few months of entries were deleted. I can't rewrite them all, but here is a summary of the last few months:

October: 
  •  I found a roofer to do my roof, and they say it will be a one or two day job. At the two week mark they aren't even half finished yet. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was due to bad weather.  
  •  As usual I went overboard with pumpkins for Halloween. Photos are publis...
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Back in Town

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, August 25, 2009, In : News 
Just got back from my all-too-short summer vacation. (I might post some photos later, but the weather really wasn't conducive to photography this time).

So now it is back to the old routines...

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A Nuisance on the Network

Posted by Chris Bird on Thursday, July 16, 2009, In : News 
This is irritating...

I just got an email from my ISP that someone has hacked my router and was redirecting their network through it. Now I have to spend the day checking my network for any other intrusions, and waste my time fixing it! At least I was told about it before they caused any real damage...

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A Busy Day...

Posted by Chris Bird on Saturday, July 11, 2009, In : News 
I have just finished a very busy day (and night) of work. 

But first I want to thank those individuals who bought me a nice new camera lens to celebrate my graduation. I am sure it will be used a lot and I will be certain to post the results here.

However the busy happened because my CPU started to give out after only five years of extreme overclocking (it's almost like the warnings not to overclock that much are valid :-0 )

So I replaced the CPU, but to accomodate the one I wanted to use I also...
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I'm The Greatest!

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, In : News 
Perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement, but I am feeling important.

I googled my name, and lo-and-behold I find that I have the top place in the search results! That may not be an accomplishment for some people, but consider that there are several thousands or even tens of thousands of people who share the name 'Chris Bird'.  And that list includes a reporter, a noted biologist, an ornithologist, and even four other physicists!

I am so proud of myself right now :)



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Another Injustice...

Posted by Chris Bird on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, In : News 
I knew this week was going too well...

I found out this morning that my best friend is being forced to move because the landlord is throwing a tantrum. About ten years ago the property in question was damaged by a neighbouring renter, and the landlord ignored it. Now the municipality has ordered it repaired at a cost of $1100, and the landlord has responded by telling the tenants to either pay that amount in addition to rent, or to move out. (Personally I think they should talk to a lawyer, be...
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Ceremony Photos

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, June 19, 2009, In : News 
I have posted some photos of the ceremony on my webpage now, as well as some graduation photos of myself.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the individuals in the department of Physics & Astronomy at UVic who has helped me through my years as a graduate student. Your efforts are very much appreciated.


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Graduation

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, June 19, 2009, In : News 
After many years of hard work, and numerous hurdles overcome, today I graduated from the University of Victoria with a PhD in theoretical physics. It has been a long journey, but I have finally finished with that phase of my life, and now I can (hopefully) find another equally interesting adventure to begin.

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Attending the Job Fair

Posted by Chris Bird on Wednesday, June 3, 2009, In : News 
Now that I am ready to graduate, I have decided to go to a job fair this week to see what is available. I am sure that someone out there would like to hire a PhD level physicist :)
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Graduation Photos Are In...

Posted by Chris Bird on Thursday, May 28, 2009, In : News 
I have received the proofs of my graduation photos, and posted a selection of them here. I think they turned out reasonably well. I will post more after the convocation ceremony in June.
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Major Upgrade to my Website

Posted by Chris Bird on Sunday, May 10, 2009, In : News 
For the last two weeks I have been completly revising my homepage - a task I haven't gotten around to for the last five years or so. So here it is, my new homepage.
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About Me


Dr. Christopher S. Bird I am a physicist recently graduated from the University of Victoria, with a doctorate in theoretical physics. I also have training in mathematics, engineering and computer programming.

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