Pirated Syllogism

New Beginnings...

2009-10-09T16:07:00.004-05:00

There's going to be a bit of a turn-around here. Things seem to change so much right in front of your eyes that it becomes hard to keep track of anything anymore.

Nonetheless, with the blessings I have received lately, I will take nothing for granted.

More to come.

My new bike!!!

2008-07-14T21:56:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I know, it's been a while since the last post. It's been rather busy at the lab lately, so it has been kind of difficult to keep up with my other little side projects unfortunately. Excuse? Naah...just rationalization. =)

Anyway, here are some pictures of my new bike, Kona (yes, I named her). And yes, her name is, in fact, the manufacturer's name, which you might say is unoriginal...but to the contrary! How many people do YOU know that actually name things based on who made them? (Hopefully not many, otherwise my argument would be null and void...)

I hope you like the pictures. They came from my latest adventure with Kona across the ridgeline of Pajarito in the Jemez Mountains. Along the way, I came across a beautiful meadow (no, it wasn't enchanted unfortunately), which was an absolutely PERFECT photo opportunity! So, with no further a-do, enjoy:

A rather convincing argument

2008-06-22T22:29:00.004-05:00

Oh how the winds will change things for you in an instant...

2008-06-18T10:17:00.001-05:00

But everything is still okay.

Something we should all think about

2008-06-15T16:47:00.002-05:00

Check out this article on The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr. He makes a good point if you ask me.

The Next Challenge

2008-06-14T23:32:00.005-05:00

This is Wheeler Peak (the one further away, with the snow on top) in Taos, New Mexico; the highest point in New Mexico. Elevation: 13,161 ft. Total distance: ~6.5 miles. Evidently, there's even a book at the top of the peak to sign your name in when you make it up there. Well, ladies and gentlemen, expect my name to be on that list soon. Here are some other particularly beautiful shots of the peak and from on top of the peak.

Oh, and check out this awesome 11 picture panoramic view from the peak. I'm going to try and make an even better one! Enjoy.

(This one is one of my favorites; the lake just makes it so much better.)

ATTENTION, ATTENTION:

2008-06-10T20:16:00.004-05:00

Evidently, as of today, no BEER is safe from being vetoed according to presidential wanna-be John McCain. That's right, he will veto EVERY SINGLE BEER that comes across his desk and will make them famous. Yet another famous (infamous?) slip-up from everyone's favorite scholar. It seems as if the Republican Party is just going to try to replace one gifted rhetorician with another (pardon the misnomer). Things just get better and better...

Arc de Triumph, Elevation: ~8500 ft.

2008-06-10T19:53:00.005-05:00

On Sunday, I had the fortune of having a little adventure up to a nearby natural arch-way about 8500 feet up. What a climb! It most certainly took a while to get up there. I must say, the view was incredible from the top! Overall, the total distance traveled was around 4.5 miles. Not too bad for an afternoon! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

It was really quite funny: I almost fell off the cliff taking some of these shots, but hey, you only live once! The risk was worth it though. But you really have to

And yes, that IS a real curb with no Photoshopping required. I saw it in the grand state of

Now that I'm done being lame, I thought I'd show off a couple of other pictures from my trip to the arch. This one is a cactus growing out of the side of the arch that I thought was particularly beautiful; it looks almost like it's not real:

And another incredible view from the top:

Yet another fun adventure to add to the book...

And all the little ants go marching...

2008-06-03T22:43:00.006-05:00

"But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me"

- Richard Feynman

A few days ago, I was reading the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" notable for its humorous anecdotes and "adventures of a curious character" told first hand by the man himself, Richard P. Feynman (see above). It's fascinating to read about all of the hilarious situations the man found himself in, and yet the stories still give quite an intimate view into the life and times of one of the most famous theoretical physicists in history.

I was reading the story titled "The Amateur Scientist", in which Mr. Feynman describes his childhood adventures having a "lab" at home, and how those experiences stuck with him and continually influenced him for the rest of his life. The experience that I find myself entangled with is his dorm-room experimenting with a colony of wandering ants when he was a graduate student at Princeton University. A particularly humorous experiment came along when these ants were wandering around his windowsill and the ever-curious Feynman decided to test whether or not they had any sense of geometry when it came to finding food. The question: how do they know where to go? Can they tell each other where food is, like bees can? Do they have any sense of geometry?

To make a long-ish story short, this experiment turned into an entire day's affair in which Mr. Feynman used a lot of little strips of paper with folds in them to pick up the ants and "ferry" them from one place to another. (I found this particularly hysterical due to the mental picture of this 20-something graduate student picking up ants one by one and literally moving them to where the food is, and elsewhere, in his dorm-room.) After a while, the ants finally began to congregate where the "ferry terminal" was as they figured out the direction the food was in. A good result for this "amateur" experiment!

He goes on to describe numerous experiments testing these ideas, including the use of microscope slides, more bits of paper, string, and a lot of sugar (it turned out that breathing while performing the experiments most certainly did not help this endeavor). He even attempted to make them go around in a circle, proving to be frustrating:

I tried at one point to make the ants go around in a circle, but I didn't have enough patience to set it up. I could see no reason, other than lack of patience, why it couldn't be done.

Later on, his friends (the ants) found their way into his food stash, leaving a trail across the middle of the room and out the window. Well, for such a nature-conscious individual, this created somewhat of a dilemma:

In Princeton the ants found my larder, where I had jelly and bread and stuff, which was quite a distance from the window. A long line of ants marched along the floor across the living room. It was during the time I was doing these experiments on the ants, so I thought to myself, "What can I do to stop them from coming to my larder without killing any ants? No poison; you gotta be humane to the ants!"
What I did was this: In preparation, I put a bit of sugar about six or eight inches from their entry point into the room, that they didn't know about. Then I made those ferry things again, and whenever an ant returning with food walked onto my little ferry, I'd carry him over and put him on the sugar. Any ant coming toward the larder that walked onto a ferry I also carried over to the sugar. Eventually the ants found their way from the sugar to their hole, so this new trail was being doubly reinforced, while the old trail was being used less and less. I knew that after half an hour or so the old trail would dry up, and in an hour they were out of my larder. I didn't wash the floor; I didn't do anything but ferry ants.

What I find so interesting about it is his observance of the seemingly chaotic happenings in nature, and how he systematically came to his own conclusions about what was really going on. Somehow, this trait has been lost in our society (including the scientific one). The simple passion involved in figuring things out for ourselves and just simply observing what is happening around us is now implicated as nothing but a triviality of human curiosity that should be thrown out and/or ignored. Why bother? We can have everything done for us; after all, the ends justifies the means, right?

This is a common trend that is plaguing our "modern" society. Dr. Feynman is, and will (I hope) continue to be, a role-model not just to young scientists, but to anyone willing to sit down and simply enjoy the wonderfully (albeit sporadically frustrating) complex, yet at the same time simple, processes occurring in nature. Dr. Feynman took pleasure in just the idea of science in general, not just physics. At one point he even found himself giving a lecture in biology to a group of research biologists at Cornell University! It did not matter that he was a physicist; he was a scientist, and that was it. Simply a (self-described) curious character and no more.

When Professor John A. Wheeler at Princeton University (whom Dr. Feynman studied under and admired greatly) passed away about two months ago (April 13, 2008), the physics community suffered an incredible blow. I proceeded to ask myself: "Self, who is going to replace these intellectual giants as our new generation moves in?"

Unfortunately, we will eventually lose more of today's great minds. The problem is, I cannot think of an answer to such a question. Who will be the next "genius"? Who will stake their claim on the shoulders of giants along with Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Wheeler, and Feynman (the list goes on)??? Today, the sciences are so convoluted with specialization and political red tape (yes, we deal with it more than most would think, perhaps more) that no one takes the time to step back and see the big picture, much less appreciate it. So, science is not done for the sake of science, or progress, or just plain curiosity anymore; it is performed for monetary gain and the construction of devices meant only to harm

members of our own species.

Does no one see the insanity in all of this? How did we become so paranoid and self-absorbed?

It's funny; now every time I find myself pondering some problem, even just for fun, or see a colony of ants meandering its way easily down a sidewalk, I will remember Dr. Feynman and the scientific aptitude and appreciation that he always stood for.

The Adventures of a Curious Character

A Wonderful Memoir of John Archibald Wheeler

You've GOT to be kidding me!

2008-06-02T20:14:00.005-05:00

It has now (finally) come to my attention that the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees have deemed further research and development of nuclear fusion energy unworthy of being funded. The Fiscal Year 2008 omnibus funding measure contains a grand total of

$0.00

for the U.S. contribution to the ITER project. For those of you who are unaware of what ITER is, allow me to enlighten you:

ITER stands for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and the actual reactor concept is called a tokamak, a contraction of the Russian for toroidal magnetic chamber. The tokamak has been the most successful attempt at Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) due to the structure of the magnetic fields used. These magnetic fields have two components, the toroidal, and poloidal fields, with the resultant field winding around the torus, as shown below.

The field in the toroidal direction is produced by currents in external coils typically an order of magnitude larger than the poloidal component. The existence of these components gives tokamaks their favorable qualities of stability characteristics. A plasma flowing in the toroidal direction may drift towards the outer wall, but the poloidal field adds a magnetic pressure which counters this drift and balances the outward force from the toroidal field.

The objective of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful purposes. Its inductive operation is expected to produce significant fusion power (~500 MW) through the D-T (Deuterium-Tritium) reaction with high fusion gain Q~10 for 300-500 s. A future goal for the ITER project will be steady-state, high gain operation lasting for ~3000 s. Impurity levels are generally determined self-consistently by plasma processes, such as sputtering, screening, transport and radiative cooling. As an example, excessive impurity levels would limit the fusion reaction through dilution and radiative cooling, which would then reduce the impurity concentration to an equilibrium level. Since helium particles (alpha particles) are created in the fusion reactions, determining the impurity levels will be more complex in fusion plasmas. ITER will also, for the first time, have the ability to produce a burning D-T plasma where the majority of the heating needed to sustain the fusion reaction is self-produced from fusion-generated alpha particles. To produce and control such a self-heated plasma has been an important goal in the more than 50 years of magnetic fusion research.

Here's a cross-section of the ITER reactor so you can get an idea of the magnitude of this project:

In high-resolution even! And if you look carefully, you can see the small shape of a person at the bottom of the reactor. That is how incredibly huge this thing is.

So, my question is this:

WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?

It isn’t enough that gas prices are making basic transportation unaffordable and borderline impractical, the ignominiously pompous leadership of our country has decided that investment in the future of the world’s energy sources is not worth the time, money or effort. Why is this? Because our wonderful Congressmen have a “disagreement” with President Bush’s leadership and therefore will not fund any of the ventures that he deems a top priority. (Not that this is necessarily the President’s top priority; he makes it his top priority because the ITER collaboration is an international treaty, not because it’s actually important to him.)

A talk by Breese Quinn, a Professor at the University of Mississippi, summarizes some wonderful achievements from the past two years:

- Largest IPO in history conducted
- New research University with a 10 billion dollar endowment (point out it took MIT 142 years to get there)
- 200,000 students to study abroad, with most on government scholarships
- Government investment in non-defense R&D set to increase by 25% over the next few years
- Multi-year initiative to make the country a global nano-technology hub

What do all of these achievements have in common?
NONE OF THEM HAPPENED IN THE UNITED STATES!

Seriously, not one. Read the talk for yourself, page 3. (I’d like to give credit to Gordon Watts over at Life as a Physicist for pointing out this presentation.) I tend to agree with his statements on the matter:

I had no idea that the R&D federal tax break had been allowed to expire. What was the white house and congress thinking? Is there really a second side to that story? Another one good for a chuckle was that US companies spend 3x more on litigation then on research (what is it in other countries?).

I also liked one of the panel summaries: Lots has happened in other countries (300K downloads of the Gathering Storm report outside the USA), but here we are fat-dumb-and-happy and fighting election cycles with sound bites.

So. How do we fix it? Lobbying congress seems only marginally effective (if even that). Clearly we have to keep it up, however, if we aren’t to loose ground. Why haven’t business’ screamed bloody murder about the R&D tax cut being removed? Big companies like Exxon, Microsoft, Google, etc., have huge research budgets, don’t they?

Very good questions, Mr. Watts. Don't expect very illuminating answers any time soon; they're all too busy counting money to bother with energy policy.

Check out this letter to see what the Fusion Power Associates had to say on the matter back in January when the original protests began. How does one even begin to rectify such mistakes? I don't believe there's any way to quantify it, but the American public should not have to pay the price for idiotic political agendas.

I think I'm gonna go for a walk before I have a heart attack. Seriously, I can feel my pulse in my eyelid.

I can't climb that...

2008-06-01T12:08:00.001-05:00

What a beautiful world

2008-05-24T19:02:00.003-05:00

Welcome to Jemez.

Elevation: 9,500 ft.

Population: Not very big.

This place is amazing. There is so much to see, so much to appreciate, about nature, and out here there’s no contamination of the natural state of the land. At least, there’s not much. I’d say it’s pretty interesting when you’re still seeing snow at the end of May.

After just two days I’ve already had a lot of fun. Today, my friend Miranda (see below), took me out to Jemez to see the mountains and different trails. Looks like I found a place to go cliff diving and rock-climbing as well! This is gonna rock. As you can see, the mountains are certainly a sight to behold.

(She’s doing the whole “Vanna White” thing....well, kind of...)

Anyway, there are some things in this world that words cannot do justice (nor pictures), but I am living in a majestic place right now. I don’t understand how people can just pass these things by without a second thought, even after living here for years. It’s unfathomable that one can “get used to” seeing these things after a while. No matter how many times I see them, they still astound me.

There is NOTHING in Texas...

2008-05-24T18:01:00.014-05:00

...or Oklahoma, or Arkansas, any of them! All the way across the country there wasn’t very much to see, and yet there was. There’s something intrinsically beautiful about the simplicity of it all. The landscape of Mid-America affords some of the most beautiful views you can lay eyes on. For example, I’ve seen some gorgeous sunsets before, but in Oklahoma, the sunset’s illustrious reds and oranges are awe-inspiring (See below).

The trip went incredibly well overall. Totaling at ~18 hours, I’d say I made pretty good time! I have quite a few pictures; too many to post, in fact. Maybe I’ll add a little slide show up top in a bit. If there’s one thing you have to see, though, it’s the hokey hotel I picked for the evening when I stopped in Oklahoma City. Man, I know how to pick ‘em. Check this out:

It was a nice place to stay, but the decorations were hilariously odd. At least the courtyard was a nice area.

Don’t ask me what’s in the tower, because I don’t know. Anyway, here I am in what they call “Atomic City”, New Mexico. I must say, it’s a gorgeous place. I’ll definitely be adding more pictures and such as I go, but the trip was a lot of fun, even if I was by myself. Oh and by the way, at least I know where Vegas is:

I think I was in the wrong state though...no matter, my street was just down the road anyway:

Yeah, I know, it’s awesome.

T-00:16:56:30 till liftoff

2008-05-19T14:24:00.007-05:00

I know this wasn’t necessarily front page news or anything (unless I’m mistaken), but evidently the LHC at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland is going to create a black hole that will destroy the earth (and yes, I’m a little behind since this issue was brought up weeks ago; I just started this blog, don't e-mail me). Our friends over at Backreaction wrote a well-informed and comprehensive article on this little issue. But everything will be alright, because Nostradamus evidently predicted that this would happen and we’d see the end of the world (since it hasn’t happened the other 5000 times it was supposed to, the 5001st time is a charm...right?) Hats off to Sabine Hossenfelder for her article, my understanding of the physics going on here is not nearly as well-founded as hers. So go check it out when you get a chance.

So I’m packing...still. So far, it’s been kind of fun figuring out what will actually be useful to me on the trip and going through all of my belongings. Anyway, the tension is certainly mounting. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning (hopefully) and plan to be on the road for the next two days. Talk about having a lot of time to yourself; driving this far on my own is gonna be an interesting experience, to say the least. Just thought I’d go ahead and update everyone.

Check list:

- Travel Authorization and other paperwork [check]

- Packing list written out and organized [check]

- Organize belongings to take with me [check]

- Pack belongings to be taken [check]

- Drink margaritas on the rocks with funny umbrella straws with friends [In transit]

Looks to me like things are in order here. All questions can be directed to my personal assistant Manuel, who will respond promptly with inappropriate Spanish slang words and bad grammar. (What do you expect from a guy who gets paid with beer and pizza?....honestly)

T-03:08:53:22 till liftoff

2008-05-16T21:12:00.005-05:00

Things are beginning to come together here lately, and the anticipation continues to mount. I figured the roadside warning pictured above was rather appropriate for the occasion. If you’re looking to learn how to drive, don’t go to Idaho; evidently they don’t understand cause and effect.

So I realized something today. I realized that I never realized (redundant, no?) the incredible amount of junk residing in the closet of my old room at home. I literally spent about 3 hours total today just throwing things away. That doesn’t include the amount of time spent wondering what to do with this item or that item. It is astounding how much stuff one can accumulate over the years. It is also incredible how liberating it can be to just get rid of all of it. To me, having the memories each thing reminds me of is enough, and wow there are so many good memories. But enough of that for now, there’s still more to be done! It’s gonna be interesting to see how the basement gets sorted out once my parents move out of their house...

There’s a fascinating study (recently revised) I’ve found regarding the exchange of angular momentum between a photon beam and a plasma vortex (See arXiv:0804.3221v2). The nature of this interaction is still new to me, so I don’t claim any expertise, but it seems that the study might have a few implications in laser-plasma coupling as well as diagnostic studies of plasma vorticity. I’m still not sure what use it serves, though. The authors cite mainly two ideas concerning the use of their results, but the conclusion is still not very enlightening:

"To our knowledge, this is the first theoretical work dealing

with photon OAM in the context of plasma vorticity. We have

studied the propagation of electromagnetic wave beams in an

isotropic plasma, and we have discussed two distinct physical

conditions: a helical disturbance in static plasma, and a

rotating plasma vortex. We have shown that, in both cases, a

cascading process of OAM transfer between the plasma and a

photon beam can be achieved. For static plasma perturbations

with a finite helicity there is no photon frequency shift. Only

the total angular momentum of the photon beam is modified.

In contrast, for a rotating plasma perturbation without any helical

perturbation, photon OAMstates are excited with photon

frequency shifts that aremultiples of twice the plasma rotation

frequency. These distinct features can be used as an additional

diagnostic method of the plasma properties, and can be useful

in the context of both space and laboratory plasma."

My question: What is it about OAM transfer that affects the photon beam’s properties? And why is it that these static perturbations modify the total angular momentum of the photon beam? I may be a bit off my rocker, but there are still some aspects of quantum mechanics that aren’t so clear this early in the game. I’m going to go back and re-read this again, to make sure I didn’t miss something. Perhaps the gods of quantum theory will be generous this time around...

Down the rabbit hole

2008-05-15T22:52:00.004-05:00

Question: Why is it that life gives us so many multiple choice tests when the one choice you can actually make splits you in two?

Answer: Who knows?

I’m going on a trip. It’s going to be a very long trip. It’s a little odd moving from your closest friends and family to a remote location for 3 months, filled completely with people you don’t know and never have known. It’s no problem. I like new places, new people, different scenery. The only issue I have is this: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SUCH A LONG DRIVE!?!?!?!? 1248 miles! Are you kidding me!? Why’d they have to put the desert so damn far away?

Now that I’ve moved past that, here’s what I want to say for my first official post:

Allow myself to introduce.....myself.....*ahem*...

I’m a budding Theoretical Physicist making his way into the world. Fresh out of school, I’m leaving for Los Alamos, NM next week to play Nuclear Physicist for a few months before it’s time for me to continue my studies. I’m starting this little website to chronicle this journey I’m about to make, along with all of the other (mis)adventures I have along the way. If I like it well enough, I just might keep doing this for longer! Thanks to a shiny new camera and a bad habit of taking pictures of everything (seriously, everything), this should be quite an interesting little project. Hopefully, those who find this digital appendage of mine will find it to be interesting, playful, creative, or {insert good word here} rather than just another simple waste of space on the web like so many other sites out there. You’ll find a smattering of fun stories, interesting facts, tongue-in-cheek humor, not-so-interesting facts, a LOT of physics talk, a LOT of pictures, and many other everyday trivialities one might find obsequious at the worst, and phenomenal at the best. So, maybe this gives you a slight overview of what will be here so you will at least know whether or not you want to come back. Also, maybe this site will give those (ready to be stupefied, I’m sure) willing to stick around an idea of what is happening in my little corner of the world of physics.

Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to check out the links to my theorist friends (and others) as I post them along the way.

Welcome to the life of a wayward wanderer...cheers