How to become famous. And other links February 14, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Near Physics, Particle Physics, Physics, Science.2 comments
I actually don’t know how to become famous, it’s just a catchy title… anyways, besides other things, I wanted to share an encounter that my collaborators and I had with the popular press after we wrote this paper. I got a phone call the next day after the paper appeared on arXive from this journalist, who wanted to talk about it. Since I’m on sabbatical, I only got an e-mail from him a day later asking for the interview and phone number of my postdoc, Cosimo Bambi, who eventually talked to him and quite successfully (he was named a head of our little collaboration — excellent publicity for him, I’m quite happy about that)! So, at the end, this article appeared in New Scientist… and then got reprinted here and here, and here and …. (interestingly, Russian versions are a bit better in the description).
Another thing I wanted share is this. Being in Michigan, one feels the problems of US automobile industry almost firsthand. One thing that I heard on the radio yesterday is that General Motors had one of the worst years in their history loosing 38 billion dollars last year. That’s $38,000,000,000! In one year. And still going! Now, International Linear Collider will cost about 15 billion dollars. With approximately only 1/2 paid by the country who’ll be hosting it. And spread over at least 10 years. And might not happen if funding is not secured. My message is that $15B is a big number for an average person, but not so big for a company, let alone a country (or several countries)…
2008 Detroit International Autoshow February 6, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Cool non-physics stuff, Near Physics.1 comment so far
No (fundamental) physics in this post. But since I went to see new cars at the 2008 Detroit International Autoshow a couple of weeks ago, I figured some report is in order. Here are some pictures that I took during that show (this is a tiny portion of them).
There were many Chinese companies – last year I only saw one, while this year featured at least five! They make cars that look ok and would probably cost less than US-made vehicles. Some of them also look goofy (this is an electric vehicle):
The prize for the weirdest concept car goes to Mazda this year. It is a winner hands down. Do you see Xylon theme (I bet the designer likes the show “Battlestar Galactica”):
Here is another view:
The prize for the coolest new concept goes to Saturn for their Flextreme plug-in – they even thought of a place for a Segway! I like Saturn vehicles more and more with each coming year.
Some companies are quite close to having “the real thing” — here is a “personal” hydrogen station for a Honda’s fuel cell car. If you have about $500K you can buy it now…
But the prize for the coolest thing I saw at the show doesn’t go to a car. It goes to a TV. Look at the picture below – some flat screen TV’s. So what? Well, the deal is that those flat screen TVs show their programs in 3D, without any glasses or anything — that’s why the lady below is holding up a hand – the image of that yellow thing sits in her palm!
I was told that there are only 11 of those TVs in existence worldwide — and onStar has 7 of them…
I’m already looking forward to the next year’s show!
2009 Presidential budget request and other stuff February 5, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Near Physics, Particle Physics, Physics, Science.add a comment
I just came back from a trip to the East Coast – which explains me neglecting this blog for a while. I gave talks at the Johns Hopkins University and Univ. of Massachusetts – those places are rather close to my heart as I spent some time in both of those universities at various points in my life. It was fun to give a talk about black holes in one of those places…
Anyways, while I was out, the 2009 Presidential Budget request appeared. And it looks good for the physical sciences. Now, for DOE details can be found here. The DOE portion of the budget (in millions of dollars) for high energy physics looks as follows:
2007 actual__|__ 2008 est. __|__2009 est.
__733________|__ 688________|__ 805___
This is a healthy increase! Why am I not jumping in joy? Maybe because numbers also looked very nice in the last year’s budget, but at the end they turned into a complete disaster… and a year before… there is still quite a bit of road ahead…
Another curious thing that happened last week (besides NY Giants winning SuperBowl) was me getting into a car accident. Nothing serious, a tire, rolling on an I-95 freeway (!) hit my rental car on the front driver side. Now, what are the chances of that! All of that happened just north of the Giant’s stadium in NJ — and since I was hoping for the New England Patriots to go all the way this year — I start to suspect something…. 
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Added 1: New York Times has an article about that here.
Added 2: U.S. Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL-13) sent a letter to the President urging him to include $300 million for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science in his upcoming fiscal year 2008 (FY08) emergency supplemental appropriations request. Full text of the letter could be found here. I don’t know if those letters have any physical effect or could be gauge-transformed to zero.
