November 20, 2008 - In a few days I defend my dissertation, the culmination of decades of schooling. I guess I will be working non-stop for the next few days to ensure I can remember everything and present it well to my committee.
November 13,2008 - There was an interesting new paper on the arXiv a few weeks ago. The PAMELA experiment has apparently discovered an excess of positrons in cosmic radiation, which can't be explained easily without introducing dark matter. Even more interesting is that there are other experiments which have found no increase in anti-protons, something that would normally be expected. This may be the first major clue to the identity of dark matter...
October 31, 2008 - HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (those who dare may visit my Pumpkin Gallery)
October 21, 2008 - With all the work I have been doing on my dissertation lately, I forgot to mention that my paper on catalyzed BBN has been published in the Physical Review D. The details are on my publications page.
October 3, 2008 - After many weary late night working sessions, I have finally completed the final draft of my doctoral dissertation
September 21,2008 - If all goes according to plan, this is the last time I will ever have to pay tuition! Which is a good thing since it seems to rise every semester...
September 20,2008 - Bad news for the high energy physics community. I just saw this press release saying that there was a helium leak or some similar incident in one section of the LHC, and to repair the damage they are going to have to reheat it which means no collisions until the new year. At least it means my dissertation won't be obselete before I defend it :(
September 14, 2008 - I had hoped to be finished with my dissertation now so I could finish my up-island chores, but with the delays it looks like that won't be happening for a while now. Maybe in the new year I can get back there.
September 10,2008 - It is a big step for modern physics! After countless years of construction, the Large Hadron Collider started up today heralding in a new era of particle physics. In the next few years there should be some great new discoveries from this machine...
September 2, 2008 - Another dissertation draft completed - hopefully soon I will be defending and graduating
August 27, 2008 - After all the exhausting maintenance work I was doing up-island, I am happy just to sit at my desk and type again!
August 26,2008 - I am back from my working holiday now. The weather cooperated with me and I was able to get some spectacular night time photos of the stars. When you are a few hundred miles from the nearest city and the light pollution , the stars really shine. I will post some of my better photos on my site when I get a spare moment.
August 10, 2008 - This is my last day of work before I go away for a working holiday up island. I have to clean up some land as part of settling the estates.
July 9, 2008 - My plans to defend in the summer didn't work out with scheduling, so now I will have to try to defend in the fall. It all depends on when I can get everyone together at one time.
June 15, 2008 - I finally got the feedback on my dissertation, so now I can quickly make the revisions that were requested and then prepare to defend.
June 11,2008 - After several years of anticipation, NASA has launched the GLAST satellite today. Once it is in orbit, it will begin detecting an array of gamma-radiation in the Universe and potentially could discover some interesting new phenomena. It will be interesting to watch it over the next several years.
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