Symmetry factor

Just wanted to share… I was recently pointed to this “article” — it is pretty funny, a nice parody on how normal research papers in theoretical high energy physics are written…

To all readers of my blog: have a happy New Year! And while you are at it, check out new 2007-year review by JibJab.

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!

There is a curious article that I read on CNN’s website. It is called “Chimps on treadmills offer evolution insight” (given here via Reuters, as CNN promptly removed it from its website (to conserve diskspace?)). The basic premise of this investigation (here is the original article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) was to study energy consumption of humans vs. primates in a treadmill exercise. The conclusion was that “…people walking on a treadmill used just a quarter of the energy relative to their size compared to chimpanzees knuckle-walking on four legs.” Which in turns implies that this reduced energy consumption steered pre-humans to evolve into bipedal humans.

As far as physics is concerned, the conclusion of this study is “nearly flawless.” An analogy can be found in quantum mechanics: a particle trapped in a “false vacuum” state will eventually leak out into a lower-energy “true vacuum” state. So, in a sense, it is nice to have minimization of energy as a guiding principle of evolution. But surely not a dominant one. Otherwise people would still have been jumping on trees — why walk (and use more energy) if you can just sit on a tree! Well, maybe that is how prehistoric sloths evolved into modern-day sloths… but yet again, maybe all technological evolution is built on a principle of Total Laziness (minimization of energy) — people got tired of walking — so they invented horseback riding; they got tired of rough riding on those smelly horses — so they invented cars; … well, you got the idea…

There is a lesson that can be applied to everyday life: if you exercise regularily and want to use your treadmill time more effciently, walk on all four of your limbs. And don’t tell me that evolution is not applicable to today’s world.

Just wanted to share some phrases by physicists that caught my attention during a recent conference I went to (CHARM-2007):

“The errors are consistent within the error” (comparing recent experimental measurement with the older one).

“I cannot measure [...], I don’t have my own accelerator. But you do!” (theorist replying to a question from an experimentalist).

“Don’t listen to what I say, listen to what I think!” (from an experimentalist who misspoke about a result, but caught himself while doing it)

“I’m not sure how to get to my conclusions now” (from a speaker having technical difficulties with a remote that advances slides)

Also, this phrase was repeated to me — it is from another meeting. That meeting wasn’t even a conference, it was a meeting on super-B factory. One of the proposals call for essentially moving SLAC’s experiment (BaBar) to Europe, reassembling it there in the new, undevelloped site and finally upgrading it to high luminocity. So a question was posed: why bother digging a new tunnel in Europe, de-assembling an experiment in the US and reassembling it back when you can just upgrade it at SLAC, one well-known physicist said: “We don’t do this anymore” [in the US]. Sadly he was referring to (almost) an executive decision to stop flavor physics programs in the US…

Ok, I know I’m late with this one by, oh well, about 6 months. But I just found this on the famous JibJab site. It’s a review of year 2006, done in the usual JibJab style (see this one for 2005). Pretty much sums it up…

It’s spring — prime time for a college newsletter. Ours is called CLAS Notes (CLAS is for College of Liberal Arts and Sciences). It’s a nice newsletter which has interesting stuff about stuff that happens in our College. Nice read. This year, however, our editor decided to include a new section — grants and awards (presumably awarded from the time previous newsletter was published). Closely examining it I realized that my funding comes from a slightly unusual source, Nutrition and Food Science, given that I’m a particle theorist, mainly working on dynamics of heavy quark systems. Check it out (click on a picture to make it bigger):

Wow! Now, tell me that I’m not doing biophysics! Actually, I’m in a good company — my colleague from condensed matter physics, a couple of computer scientists, several mathematicians and even a professor from English Department! Now, it is understandable why I was ascribed that source of funding — I myself saw “Quark” in a cheese section of our grocery store a couple of days ago. But apparently one of research directions of our English department is relation of poetry and food, I guess..

P.S. In reality my funding comes from the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy (have to acknowledge them in every publication)…

I already blogged about Apple’s new products here. How about this one:

(thanks, David, for sending this one). Now, I know, it’s not physics…

Ok, I just had to post this. Here is a funny YouTube video of Jim Carrey (you know, “Ace Ventura” or “The Mask” or excellent “The Truman Show”) “talking the talk” on quantum physics on Connan O’Brien show (see Update at the bottom):

I wonder who wrote it for them? Maybe it was similar to this…

Update: I think NBC removed this video from YouTube. However, you can still find it here. Happy viewing!