Symmetry factor

The 2009 meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of American Physical Society (APS) will be held on campus of Wayne State University in Detroit. How do I know that? Well, I am a Chair of the Local Organizing Committee. And Executive Committee of DPF has just accepted our proposal to host this meeting.

So, what kind of meeting is that? Well, this is the main event for the DPF, usually attended by about 500 physicists working in, well, field of particles and fields (and also strings). We are looking forward to hosting this meeting. Here is the Local Organizing Committee:

Alexey Petrov (WSU, co-Chair), Claude Pruneau (WSU), David Cinabro (WSU), Eizabeth H. Simmons (MSU), Gordon Kane (Michigan), Paul Karchin (WSU, co-Chair), Rene Bellwied (WSU), Robert Harr (WSU), R. Sekhar Chivukula (MSU), Sean Gavin (WSU), Sergei Voloshin (WSU)

Please consider attending this conference to hear first results from the LHC, new results from Fermilab and B-factories and recent advances in theory. If you want to dispel some of your stereotypes about Detroit, this would be great time to do so.

This morning I learned that former Vice President Al Gore not only invented the Internet, but also won a Nobel Peace Prize (the later claim is not an urban legend but indeed true). Well deserved!

This morning the 2007 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg “for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance.” Fert was the first to correctly explain the effect and Grunberg holds a patent for its practical applications. GMR (i.e. large change in resistance in the multilayered structures upon changing magnetic field — i.e. upon changing the direction of electron spins in the structure) is a very useful thing that allowed increasing density of information stored on computer hard drives and layed foundation for spintronics. So this year the prize is awarded in accord with Nobel’s will that the interst from his account that is supposed to be “…annually distributed in the form of  prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have  conferred the greatest benefit on mankind…” except for the “preceeding year” part.

Interestingly, Thompson Scientific confirmed its reputation for predicting it incorrectly. Now, to be fair, they did have Fert and Grunberg in contention for the 2006 Nobel prize…

This year the Ig Nobel prizes were awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research earlier than the regular Nobel Prizes. I was looking for some space themes (after all, 50 years ago on Oct. 4 was the day when people sent the first artificial sattelite in space), but alas… Nevertheless, here are some of the laureates:

MEDICINE: Dr. Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer for their report “Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects.”

PHYSICS: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for studying wrinkle patterns in sheets.

BIOLOGY: Dr. Johanna E.M.H. von Bronswijk for her census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, bacteria, algae and ferns found in our beds.

CHEMISTRY: Mayi Yamamoto for developing a way to extract vanillin — vanilla fragrance and flavoring — from cow dung.

LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles for demonstrating that rats can’t tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backward and a person speaking Dutch backward.

LITERATURE: Glenda Browne for her study of the definite article “the” and the ways it causes problems when alphabetizing.

PEACE: The U.S. Air Force’s Wright Laboratory for their proposed “gay bomb,” a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other.

NUTRITION: Brian Wansink, whose experiment with a bottomless bowl of soup showed that humans eat more when presented with more food.

ECONOMICS: Kuo Cheng Hsieh for patenting a device that drops a net over bank robbers.

AVIATION: Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek for discovering that hamsters recover from jet lag faster when given Viagra.

I don’t know of any practical use of putting hamsters on Viagra (I think they do well without), but the prize in chemistry has enormous economic and philosophical value, as it shortens the “circle of life” famously described in the movie “Lion King.” I can also relate to the literature studies and suggest the author to enlarge her study by investigating the troubles that article “the” brings to (the?) Russian-speaking population. Contrary, the nutrition prize is given for an obvious result. Gosh, even Ig Nobels become controversial!

Fifty years ago, on October 4, 1957, Soviet Union sent the first artificial satellite, the Sputnik (see the picture below, it is, of course, a mock-up from the National Museum of Air Force in Dayton, OH), into space.

It might be interesting to know that initially, the first artificial satellite was not supposed to look like the one on the picture above. The first satellite, which at the time was known as “Object D” (and later became known as “Sputnik-3″), was supposed to be a cone-like object with a multitude of scientific instruments installed. That “Object D” was a very ambitious project that by and large resembled the modern-time scientific satellites and was supposed to carry instrumentation to measure cosmic rays, solar winds, upper atmosphere, etc. The reason why it was called “D” and not “A” or “B” is simply because the rocket itself, the workhorse of Soviet space flight, the R-7, was first developed as an intercontinental ballistic missle, so “A, B, etc.” were reserved for its warheads.

Yet, plagued by delays with production and installation of scientific instruments, “Object D” was not to become the first artificial satellite. The US announced that it would soon launch the first artificial satellite, so S.P. Korolev, the head designer of the Soviet space program, decided to go with a simpler design, which pretty much included only a radio transmitter. This object, called PS-1 (Простейший Спутник-1 or Simplest Satellite-1) is the one that actually went up and transmitted the famous “beep-beep-beep”, paving the way for dogs and humans in space…

By the way, for those who are intereted in the Soviet/Russian space program, there is an excellent reference: Russian Space Web. There is also a very nice BBC/1st Channel movie “Space race” which tells a story of a competition between Soviet and American space prgrams. Enjoy!

P.S. It is interesting that according to CNN, S.P. Korolev was nominated to receive a Nobel Prize, but that nomination was rejected by Nikita Khrushchev as he (Khrushchev) claimed that this was the achievement of all people. I thought that even Korolev’s name was top-secret, so noone in the West knew who was behind the Soviet space program until Korolev’s death…

It’s this time of the year again. The Nobel Prize in Physics will be awarded by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and Nobel Foundation on October 9 2007. Who will get it? That’s the question. Once again, Thomson Scientific is trying to predict the outcome of this year’s selection. They try to combine “worthy discoveries” with number of citations and “predictor prizes” to form their predictions. Or maybe they just want to show that the actual selection process is nothing of the above (after all, they totally got it wrong last year)? So far, their top three candidates are:

1. Sumio Iijima (carbon nanotubes)

2. Arthur McDonald and Yoji Totsuka (neutrino physics)

3. Martin J Rees (cosmology)

Personally, I think that the chances of Sumio Iijima look better then the rest — they just gave out an astrophysics prize last year with AMO and particle physics in the preceeding years…