Fender

In honor of the latest dark matter announcements.

No dark matter yet

Well, the latest CDMS II results have been finally released. The final tally: 2 events with an expected background of 0.8 events. In other words, there is no unequivocal detection of dark matter. The search for dark matter keeps going.

Some day soon

Spectrasoul to close this week.

Chase the tear

Portishead channels Orbital.

WISE

The Wide Infrared Explorer (WISE) has launched. It will provide an all-sky survey from 3 to 25 microns. Not the highest resolution but it will continue to open our eyes in the infrared.

Good times

Morrisey at it again.

Long to be

Isaac Hayes to close the week. Long intro.

Bowie in italian

An old track. I prefer Seu Jorge doing the song in Portuguese and a guitar, but this is the man himself.

Proton beam

A beam of protons is going around the LHC again. Hopefully they have banned baguettes from the site.

LHC vs. the toaster

A bread crumb or a whole baguette shuts down the LHC. Urban myth or an Onion story. Hard to tell.

Ads

Old-fashioned ads. Right to the point. Ads these days are a strange mix between conceptual art and jumping puppies.

Adventures in Piracy

This must qualify as the silly news of the week. Apparently huge celebrations are being held in a small town in Somalia after the release of a Spanish vessel yesterday (sorry only in Spanish). Pirates are back in town with a bounty of 2 million euros and salesmen are trying to sell them everything from 4 x 4 vehicles to authentic DVDs. Pirates in boats, pirate parties, pirates of the Caribbean, pirate politicians. Are we back in the pirate era or maybe it never left?.

Medea

Had a chance to see Medee by the Théâtre des Amandiers - Nanterre. A take on Euripides' Medea that takes place on a refugee camp. Excellent acting and songs. If they ever come to your town make sure to go.

Silly news of the week taken from real headlines

Man shows up hungover at own funeral.

Drake

A bit of Nick Drake for Tuesday.

Sneeze simulation

Someone sent me a cool video simulation showing the propagation of the flu virus after a sneeze. You can check the whole thing here.

Lights out

Apparently, Morrissey collapsed during a concert in Swindon, UK. He's been released from the hospital but some tour dates have been canceled.

Silly news of the week taken from real headlines

The Japanese patient simulator.

Plane misses airport.

Sleepwalking Through The Mekong

I've been busy teaching gamma-ray and cosmic-ray physics. Hence the lack of posts. A bit of Cambodia via LA to close the week.

Viernes

By request, Chicha Libre from Barbes.

Africa: A Musical Journey (7) - Namibia

Crossing the Namib desert, today's selection is Elemotho.

LHC and fate

A Higgs' article featured on the news.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2991

Africa: A Musical Journey (6) - Zimbabwe

We move on to Zimbabwe and Dorothy Masuka. I didn't know she wrote Pata Pata for Miriam Makeba. And to Zimbabweans better times will come soon. Nothing can last forever.

Moon impact

NASA's LCROSS mission has impacted the moon today. The basic idea is to blow up lunar dust, fly through the plume and the check for signs of water. Press conference will start in a few minutes but the good news is that the Moon is safe for now.

Science funding

One of the latest troubling news to come out of the so called global crisis is the 15% reduction in the science budget of Spain for 2010 (You can read more here in Spanish only). Now, everyone on the government side is trying to paint the picture that the cut will not affect current plans for hiring new scientists and projects. But somehow I suspect that a 15% pinch will be felt somewhere (unless this goes to curb 15% in unjustified costs). We cannot pretend that balancing a budget with money shortfalls is an easy task, but there must be something else that can take a bite. Someone estimated that the reduction amounts to 280 million euros per year, that amounts to 4% of the money destined to the military budget, three Ronaldos, or the pension of 6 rich bankers. Fewer bombs/goals/bankers anyone?

Another Ring

Spitzer reports a new ring around Saturn. I guess we are still learning about planet/moon formation in our Solar system. Cool stuff.

CCDs

Willard Boyle and George Smith take part of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 for their invention of CCDs. Widely used in astronomy and everyday cameras, CCDs have become a staple of modern life. The prize also highlights how private investment (when done smartly) may help fund new ideas. Boyle and Smith are just the latest recipients to have worked at Bell Labs (8 Nobel Prizes in total). Unfortunately, most of their research division is now closed.

Africa: A Musical Journey (5) - Mozambique

Back in the mainland, Wazimbo from Mozambique.

Project Icarus

For $150 you can launch you own helium balloon (see details here). Although much of the credit should go for the slightly more expensive experiment carried out by Spanish students. I love cheap creativity. It's easy to be creative on a big budget, but some of the most interesting things come from having to build something out of nothing.

A new doctor

Pedro Antoranz, a PhD student in our group has successfully defended today. Congrats.

Pan African Space Station

PASS. It's on orbit until October 12, 2009. Excellent programming from the folks of Long St., Cape Town.

AIDS and Statistics

Results from AIDS tests in Thailand have been making the rounds in the news. I am a bit baffled by the statistics. Apparently 16,000 people from the general population were divided in two groups. Half were vaccinated while the other half received a placebo. They were then given condoms, taught how to prevent infection, and promised treatment in case the contracted the disease. The result that has been making the news is that 74 in the placebo got infected, while only 51 in the vaccinated group contracted the disease. Now, there is something that does not compute here. Couldn't we explain the difference simply by hypothesizing that 51 people in the vaccinated group had unprotected sex with partners with AIDS, while similarly 74 people in the placebo group had unprotected sex with AIDS carriers?. No need and no effect from the vaccine?. The only workaround is that they actually went out and proved that majority in both samples had unprotected sex with AIDS carriers. Otherwise, these results are bogus. I am not really sure how the results were computed. Am I missing something?. Anyone?.

Goodbye and Good Luck

One of the postdocs in our group Debanjan Bose has started his move to Brussels, Belgium to work on the Icecube experiment. We wish him well.

Africa: A Musical Journey (4) - Madagascar

We finally move out of South Africa and onto Madagascar's Tarika.

Africa: A Musical Journey (3) - Swaziland

Swazi producers Simza & Sabside via South African DJ Cndo.

Africa: A Musical Journey (2) - Lesotho

Moving on. Some accordion music from Lesotho.

HST is back in business

After a long forced vacation, the new Hubble Space Telescope instruments have passed the calibration phase and operations are to resume. A new set of pretty pictures accompany the story.

Africa: A Musical Journey (1) - South Africa

I´ll be posting music from each country in Africa. From Soweto, South Africa this is BLK JKS.

Fermi photons

Fermi has released photon data. You can get everything here. Still waiting for the first-year catalog.

Feynman

Bill Gates has put up a series of lectures given by Richard Feynman in a website called Project Tuva. This is part of Microsoft Research, so I think they are also trying to sell the idea of adding digital notes to videos (Youtube is already inserting ads in videos).

Fafa

Track this week is by Vieux Farka Touré.

Yosemite judge wanted

The current Yosemite magistrate judge has resigned and the position is now open. Your job: to deal with misdemeanors in the park. Your office: somewhere near the picture on the right. Plus you actually get paid $160,000 a year. Well if you are a lawyer, this is the job for you. Hope they start looking for an in-residence astro type person soon.

Ritmo de la Noche

From Murcia, Spain a nice remake by Klaus & Kinski. And some very silly dancing.

Collider

News seem to indicate that the LHC will be running at 3.5 TeV per beam. Maybe possibility of discovery by the end of 2010.

August

Corridors and streets have thinned out in August. So, this week's tune is by Ghostland Observatory.

Mirrors

Matt Mountain over at Nature has a nice plot about the evolution of telescope mirrors over the past few centuries. Not sure if there is an upper limit somewhere.

Cataloguing

In honor of ongoing work

Present
I catalogue
Preterite
I catalogued
Present continuous
I am cataloguing
Present perfect
I have catalogued
Future
I will catalogue
Future perfect
I will have catalogued
Future continuous
I will be cataloguing

TED 2009

Talks from the latest TED conference have been released. If you are not familiar with the concept, it puts together short talks (10-15 min) about various topics. The catch is that the talk has to be for a general audience and avoid busy viewgraphs. Some are more interesting than others but there might be something to learn there.

The geopolitics of astrophysics

Geopolitics have been floating around this month in different contexts. A weaker opponent challenges a larger one in order to call the attention of the world or the rap industry. A couple of weeks ago, Hao Liu and Ti-Pei Li decided to play the geopolitics of astrophysics by challenging the WMAP results. They claimed that there is a problem with the maps generated by the WMAP team that would alter some cosmological model parameters. So, it's really great that a David (Two Chinese researchers) challenges the results of a much stronger team (WMAP in this case). The problem is that the paper is really thin on the details, so I figure we will likely forget about it soon. The lesson, do challenge scientific results if you think that something is wrong but do it in a way where the readers can understand and reproduce your arguments. Otherwise, you'll basically be ignored by the rest of the world.

Never forget you

Tune this week is Never Forget You by the Noisettes.

Very, extremely large, giant and also big telescopes

With the escalating size of projects, we might soon run out of adjectives to describe future optical telescopes. At least 3 projects are on the drawing boards, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and the 42-meter? European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The first two are driven by US collaborations while the latter is the European project. Not sure how many will be built once the dust settles. It seems that the TMT is aiming for a Hawaii site and GMT for Chile which would cover both hemispheres. The site for the E-ELT is to be decided. Will this be the final frontier in ground-based optical telescopes?. In any case, with so many telescopes coming online those tiny 10-meter telescopes will be rendered useless.

Amateur discoveries

A few days ago,Antony Wesley an amateur astronomer from Australia discovered a dark spot in Jupiter showing a presumed impact of a comet or asteroid on the planet. A couple of months ago, I saw a press release discussing the discovery of a supernova by a 14-year-old student from upstate New York. Numerous other references exist in the literature about discoveries made by amateurs. Unlike other sciences, the sky is open to everyone who chooses to explore it. And it's so vast that by staring long enough you may spot something new and interesting. The feeling of being the first one to notice something odd in the sky makes your heart beat a little faster. So, keep exploring the sky, you never know when the next big event may come around.

MAGIC and M87

Science magazine reports results from Magic , Veritas, HESS, and the VLBA radio array that teamed up to observe a flare from the radio galaxy M87. With the high angular resolution of the VLBA, it was possible to see an increase of activity very close to the black hole that lies at the center of M87. The unique contribution of such detection is that it traces the origin of particle acceleration to the vicinity of the black hole. The beautiful jet that you see in the picture results from particles being accelerated to very large velocities. We just do not know how/where are the particles accelerated. We suspect that it all has to do with a black hole at the center of the galaxy. Now these results show that the the initial acceleration must indeed occur at the base of the jet rather than far away. You can read the Magic press release here.

The station's toilet

News today indicate that the main toilet on the ISS has been fixed after breaking down earlier last week. I suppose such episodes bring you back to Earth, literally. It also reminds us of the controversy regarding the station’s scientific output. It’s hard to find numbers, but NASA and ESA spend approximately $3 billion a year on the space station and related shuttle flights. This is about half the budget destined to science by these agencies. Is the ISS worth investment?.

Moonwalk

Moonwalk has become one of the most commonly used words this month. Still 6 percent of Americans think the whole moon business was faked. Is it possible that we still have little faith in what humans can accomplish?. Have you ever flown on a plane?. Have you seen the pyramids?. Have you stood on the Golden Gate Bridge?.

Barcelona, Spain

I had to travel to Barcelona for work this week. Second time in the city and it’s still worth a visit. Yes, you will find a higher tourist concentration than in many other places. Yes, Casa Battló and La Pedrera are really overpriced. And yes, the rambla is packed with tourist traps. But you should see what Gaudí did for the city. Sometimes his works give Barcelona the feel of a walking museum. If short on money, head for Park Güell which is free, or just stand outside the Sagrada Familia. Stroll around the Barrio Gotic and head for the port that gives Barcelona a nice escape. Just don’t forget to visit Madrid.

Human achievement

July 16th marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission. Four days later (July 20, 1969), Neil Armstrong would become the first man to walk on the moon. I have talked to a few people that cite the moon landing as the event that provided the inspiration to become scientists. Others say that the moon landing had no impact on their career decision. Outside the science community, it is clear that events such as the moon landing successfully capture people’s imagination. On the days of lunar missions, shuttle launches and Mars landings, astrophysical websites usually overload. The release of scientific news even when on TV are only a blips compared to the interest generated by big events. My theory is that events such as the moon landing cross to the realm of human achievement which people grade higher than pure scientific achievement. It is absolutely astounding that we are able to study the cosmic microwave background, but to many that pales in comparison with a walk in the moon. That could be you.

Funny, How?

Is humor useful in scientific talks?. Depending on the audience, a scientific talk can go like a scene taken out of Goodfellas. You either get a very interested group or you can meet a sea of blank stares that will make you feel like no one has any idea of what you are talking about. Some useful tips: try find out as much about your audience as you can and craft the talk carefully. If that’s impossible, prepare a funny story or two that helps relax the group. I have found that if you start preaching, you’ll lose people quickly (unless you are in a room full of experts and even then). With a good anecdote you may catch interest. But it better be good. Otherwise, you’ll end up staring at weirder faces for the rest of the time. Some of the most memorable talks I can recall mixed humor and science cleverly. This is more art than science. See what works and keep it. Throw out lines that fall flat. Change it from time to time or everyone will know your repertoire.

Lou and Laurie

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson played Madrid recently. Naturally for this week’s tune we must take a walk on the wild side.

GRB GTC

A couple of weeks ago, I participated on a very deep optical observation at the position of the gamma-ray burst GRB 090709A with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). This observation is important on two fronts. One, this is the first astrophysical circular based on images obtained with the newly-minted telescope. And two, GRB 090709A is quite an interesting event that has revealed quasi-periodic oscillations in its gamma-ray light curve. The detection of oscillations implies that we have either detected the compact object (in this case a neutron star) responsible for gamma-ray explosions. Or alternatively, given the non-detection of a host galaxy on the GRB 090709A GTC image, that we caught a galactic transient well above the plane of our own Galaxy. Exciting results either way.

Casa de Calexico

By special request, the music pick of the week is Joey Burns’ Calexico.

Radio quiet

Pulsars are the astrophysical equivalent of lighthouses. Rapidly spinning balls of neutrons emitting a beam of radiation. Their initial discovery was made through the detection of radio pulses. So, naively it was thought that all pulsars would be detected with radio telescopes. However, the Fermi satellite has recently reported the discovery of a number of pulsars that are seen in gamma rays but display no sign of radio pulsations. Our contribution to this research came nine years ago, when we found that the pulsar in the upper left corner J1836+5925 was indeed radio quiet. This discovery supported the notion that a larger group of radio quiet pulsars would eventually be found by Fermi. Through further studies of these objects we hope to discover why certain pulsars remain radio quiet. Stay tuned.

Ice cube

Ice Cube is an experiment under construction at the South Pole. Hence the name. Their main aim is to search for neutrinos, subatomic particles that are expected to be created during nuclear fusion (like that powering the sun), as well as in stellar explosions (supernovae and the like). Problem is that neutrinos are very hard to catch because they interact very weakly with human-made detectors. Ice Cube hopes to capture a neutrinos through their interactions with atoms in the ice sheets, which might eventually produce photons that instruments can actually detect. Debanjan Bose, one of the postdocs in our group, has received an offer to move to Belgium and join the neutrino search. We wish him well.

Most useless paperwork

Somehow I had missed this bit (in Spanish only). Thanks to Apuntes Científicos desde el MIT. Mexico held a contest to let its citizens nominate the most useless paperwork at the national, state and municipal levels. Usually bureaucracy tries to guard against such criticisms because it may be seen as a sign of weakness. (That’s my take on it). Otherwise, I see no reason for the lack of complaint boxes in every public office. The “box” could be visited routinely to identify serious problems. Now, will they eliminate the most useless paperwork or simply replace it with a new useless idea. We shall see.

God Help the Girl

Stuart Murdoch's latest pet project is worth a listen.

Money-vation

nature.com is offering a number of cash rewards for readers who solve specific problems posted in this website. The basic argument is that money will provide extra motivation for people who seek a quick economic reward. The money prize isn’t new. But two questions come to mind: Will future research be economically driven?. Will be see ads plastered on the side of the Large Hadron Collider or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope?.

AGNs on the Plane

On the Galactic plane that is. Part of my ongoing research focuses on the identification of gamma-ray sources discovered by the Fermi telescope. The sources are first observed at energies a million times greater than medical X-rays. The next step involves finding the actual source of the energy release with optical, radio, and X-ray telescopes. Of the 205 sources spotted by Fermi so far, 37 have no obvious counterpart at other wavelengths. As part of our work, we have recently found that at least 4 of these sources correspond to massive black holes or AGNs that lie behind the Galactic plane. You can read the article here.

A new eye for Spain

Today is the official opening of the Gran Telescopio Canarias or GTC as it has become known. This is a massive 10.4-m optical telescope with 36 segments at La Palma that should provide excellent optical/infrared imaging for years to come. Great achievement.