Canto XV

Nobel Prize in Physics was just announced. It was given to two Americans for the COBE satellite, which made the first precise measurements of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). This led to the strongest evidence of the "hot big bang" scenario of the early universe, which is why they were awarded the Nobel. A very good choice because the follow up for this experiment is WMAP which has made plenty of news and done a lot of good physics, and the next generation experiment after that is PLANCK which will continue this work. I can't stress enough how important it is to accurately measure the CMB, it provides a beautiful window into the the early stages of the universe.

The guess around our office was that it would go to the two groups who measured the accelerating universe looking at type 1-A supernova data, which showed that there is a cosmological constant ("dark energy"). Still observational cosmology, and I think there's little doubt that the accelerating universe will win a Nobel one day. Americans continue their dominance in physics.

It's been a week, but not a whole lot going on. Last week my biggest thrill was successfully path integrating something. Not just a regular integral mind you, a path integral. Essentially, the idea is to look at the energy of an object for a given trajectory from point A to point B that it takes ("path"), then integrate over all possible paths to find the quantum mechanical probability for it to travel from A to B. This is not a well-defined mathematical object and it often leads to infinity as the answer ("divergences"), which then need to be cancelled out. But when it all works out and you get a nice, finite answer, it's a great feeling. That problem sucked.

The weekend was great, I could use more like it. Saturday was flag football (we lost 60-something to 0, but I had a nice pass defensed in the end zone. They scored the next play anyway.), followed by college football (Oregon rout of ASU, Ducks looking good heading to the Cal Bears this weekend. I've got a breakfast riding on it with a certain Berkeley alum.), then went to the Red Sox game that night (Sox up 4-3 going into the 9th and lost 5-4 with a blown save. Oh well, it was fun anyway.), and finally wound up at a CTP buddy's "housewarming party" for an hour before I had to get home and crash (Not a real housewarming party - he didn't move but his old roommate did and his new one would actually let him have a party.). Sunday slept in, watched the Jets lose in spectacular fashion, then did some stuff around the house like take down the air conditioner. All in all, not too bad.