June 17,2010 - We got a letter today saying that my uncle is going to take all of my grandmother's estate, and none will go to her five daughters. I am speechless - why would anyone who likes the family as much as he does (or did) hurt them this way?
May 28,2010 - I just heard that Microsoft is now distributing their Robot Development Software for free. Download it
here.
May 16, 2010 - I just heard through the physics grapevine that Fermilab may have discovered a B-meson decay that produces more matter than anti-matter, potentially resolving an old problem of cosmology - "where is all the antimatter?". As always a lot more data will be required to confirm their discovery.
May 15, 2010 - My chaos game screensavers seem to be stable, and so I am releasing them to the public now as freeware. Download it
here.
May 10, 2010 - Who says that the mail service is slow? Today I received a card from my aunt and uncle congratulating me on my graduation 11 months ago...
May 8, 2010 - I have finally finished updating my original chaos game screensavers, and have released them to friends and family for beta-testing
May 6, 2010 - Interesting new data from the XENON dark matter detector makes dark matter more exotic and more interesting. It seems to make the previous data from both DAMA and CDMS-II conflict with XENON and with each other. On the opposite side, their are serious questions about the methods used by XENON and whether or not their data is flawed. More information can be found on
my blog.
April 17,2010 - For hardcore LHC fans, there is now a
website that gives real-time information on the beam parameters. Completely useless, but still entertaining for uber-nerds and (experimental) physicists.
April 16, 2010 - Saw
this article in the paper this morning and thought it was worth passing on. It doesn't give many details, but it does mention both the LHC and the University of Victoria physics department. It really is an exciting time to be a physicist.
April 14, 2010 - Interesting
new results on modified gravity. Specifically, a study of the galaxy cluster Abell 3376 has provided a stronger test of general relativity, and Einstein's classic theory still holds up. The rival theories proposed in the last decade have been constrained further, and there is still no evidence of anything beyond what we have known for almost a century.
April 4, 2010 - Happy Easter Everyone!
April 2, 2010 - With the end of classes for the term, I would remind my students that I usually have more requests for tutoring sessions than I can handle so contact me as soon as possible. I will try to fit everyone in, but I can't promise anything...
March 31, 2010 - I see there is a lot of bunk on the internet this morning about the dangers of the LHC. For my take on this, see this
blog entry. (and perhaps visualize Slim Pickens riding a proton beam...)
March 30, 2010 - Today is an important day in the history of science, for today the Large Hadron Collider has finally started running. One giant leap for physicists...
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