Petition to reverse recent funding cuts to Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics and Astronomy

Unfortunately my first post to this blog is motivated by difficult times for physics in the UK. As you will doubtless all be aware the UK funding body covering Astronomy, Nuclear and Particle Physics (STFC) has announced severe budgetary reductions affecting each of these fields. It is feared that grants may be cut by up to 25%. This being a particle physics blog I have no doubt that the readers are aware of the specific problems this has caused for our field. However, I wanted to bring home just how many people are affected by this across the broad spectrum of UK contributions to physics, from stellar observatories to power stations. If you share the feelings of many in the community that these changes simply can't go uncontested then please consider signing our petition on the 10 Downing Street website. Hopefully, if enough people sign up, in conjunction with the letter already sent to the government on behalf of the community, we will cause those responsible to think again before they seriously damage the future prospects for physics in the UK. Thanks for your support!

Exciting News from Fermilab

The new combined CDF/DZero Higgs limits were released last Friday. I would give you a URL to the results, except they haven't appeared on the Fermilab website yet.

This is because there is some even more exciting news than that. Here in the States, there is a television show called "NUMB3RS" (catchy title) about mathematicians and theoretical physicists who run around solving crimes. As a physicist who hasn't seen the show, this seems rather unlikely to me, as the last crime I solved was "who stole my orange juice?" Then again, I'm no theorist, so what would I know?

Anyway, according to 'Fermilab Today' (http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/) a recent storyline involves one character (played by Peter MacNicol) considering leaving his exciting life of crime-fighting QFT in order to join the DZero experiment.

That's right, DZero.

The character gives his reasons for joining the experiment, hoping to discover the Higgs boson, concluding "What can be more spiritual?" I have to say, I can think of quite a few things that are more spiritual. In fact, I think I have had more spiritual moments in Bracknell - in BRACKNELL - than I have at DZero.

Don't get me wrong; the work here is rewarding, and I do see the mystery and the wonder of trying to work out why the universe is like it is. However, as the old saying goes, "The nearer the church, the further from God." Once you really get involved, you start to lose sight of the big picture; you get bogged down in all the little details. And besides, once Mr. MacNicol starts using ROOT, I can guarantee he'll feel a lot less spiritual.

Anyway, there are some fairly revealing quotes in the 'Fermilab Today' article. The first is from Darien Wood, the DZero spokesperson:

"We can always use more 'brilliant but socially awkward' physicists to help us find the Higgs"

I choose to paraphrase this as:

"We are so understaffed at DZero, we are willing to hire actors to pretend to be physicists"

Better yet is Alan Stone's reaction:

"In every episode, there is a crime. One can imagine the kind of story line they would need in order to film here (in Fermilab). There's just no possible positive spin."

To me, this seems like an oppurtunity for a great story, not a problem. Consider this: a starry-eyed theorist comes to DZero to find the Higgs. However, after a couple of weeks, he realises the frustrations due to the Object-Oriented graphics and analysis software he has to use. Eventually, he is drven mad, and flies to Switzerland to get revenge on the creator of the software. Then, the other mathematician-detectives come to CERN to investigate the grisly murder: you can just imagine the close up on the lead actor's face as he says: "Well, that's something to narrow this down... whoever did this certainly doesn't like ROOT."

The Rest of Last Week

Sorry for the silence, it has been a while since I had the time to sit down and try to satisfy Patrick's cravings....

---

Tuesday

Get into College by 9am to do 1st Year Lab -- this is one of the 5 days this term that I have to come in so early!

These teaching labs can be as fun or as boring as the students want to make them, but I am impressed by them more often than not, and this group is exceptionally good, and right now they are discussing amongst each other about the experiment and hardly need my help.

Having said that, when asked to measure the index of refraction of a mystery liquid, one of the pairs of students tell me that they got 1.2 -- since a liquid with an index of refraction of 1.2 would be a rather special thing, I ask them what their error on that was, hoping for something like 0.1. Their answer: "we haven't done that yet!"

Over lunch, have a quick look at the previews for tonight's match. We won for the first time in ages on Saturday, and looking forward to it tonight. Our opponents are one of the few teams below us in the division, so we've got to win!

A couple of more tutorials from 2pm. The students will soon be writing an essay on a topic of their choice, so we go through some tips I have on making their writing more interesting. This may come across as profoundly ironic to readers of this blog.

From 4pm, we have our regular T2K Imperial group meeting. This time of year is fun because we usually have a few 4th year students doing their projects in our group, and we treat them as full group members, which means that they give regular reports on their progress like everyone else. Patrick and Paul are working on two separate projects, one on T2K nd280 physics and one on some detailed characteristics of some novel photosensors, and we hope that by February, they'll have answers to a some questions that we don't know yet.

You would have to ask the students themselves if they think it is just as fun for them....

Morgan and Joe are dialling in from Chicago again, which is good because it makes us feel good about being in London over the winter.

The group meetings sometimes run quite late, because they are the best forum for proper discussion (ie grillings), where we sort out misconceptions and disagreement. Today however, I was able to adjourn the meeting quite early, which gives me time to travel down to the stadium and stuff down a nice big serving of jerk pork, before seeing us come back from behind to win.

Now I think about it, this is the first time I've seen us win this season....

Wednesday

Today is one of those special days during the week when I have hardly anything scheduled except time for getting some research done. There is just one meeting, but apart from that, I have hours to get through my todo list at my leisure.

...except something unexpected crops up, and I lose a few hours doing things far removed from unravelling the mysteries of the neutrino sector of our model of the universe. I even had to excuse myself from the one meeting.

I wanted to go home early to pack my bags, or rather my single carry-on back of less than 10kg, but end up returning home at only about midnight. Which sounds fine except that I have to leave for the airport at 4am....


Thursday

This is the day of the second trip mentioned in a previous comment. The flight leaves at 7.30 from Stansted, so I get up at 3 and take the bus up to Liverpool Street Station at 4 and then the Stansted Express.

The flight is not bad at all considering I paid 6 pounds for it, and once we arrive, it only takes about a minute between going down the stairway and walking out of customs into the sun and warmth of Valencia.

The meeting is hosted by the Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular of the University of Valencia, and we immediately sit down for lunch which includes tortillas (omelettes), Iberico ham, all sorts of other yummy things, and beer. Having only slept a few hours, and being the sort of person I am, I refrain from touching the golden stuff.

I had scheduled the lunch at 11.30 so that we could have a long afternoon session, but the consequence of that was that the cafeteria had to open early specially for us, sorry!

There are about 15 people present at Valencia, and a similar number dialling in via a teleconference service, from across Europe and North America. We have to juggle the needs of everyone according to their time zones, which often can result in a total mess, but today, after some initial glitches, things go pretty smoothly. The fact that we are having arguments (constructive ones, mind you) over the conferencing system indicates that it is working well. Most of our meetings are teleconference only, but having a core face-to-face location makes things so much more productive.

This meeting is about making sure the software for the T2K nd280 detector is ready to real physics work. The software is the result of the effort of many people across the world, and encapsulates our knowledge of our experiment, so it is a big job to get it done, and to get it done right.

One of the most important items I put in the agenda was "Hot Chocolate and Churros", but for all the IFIC's hospitality, it does seem that was asking for too much!

Instead of specifying an end time for the afternoon session, I thought the best way to get the most out of the day was to continue until a Spanish person told us it was time for dinner. That duly happened at 8.30pm, so we pack up and trek across to the old town, where we indulge in loads of paella, a local speciality. I personally like Paella Valenciana, with chicken and rabbit meat, but today we are having seafood and vegetable paella. Positively yummy.

After dinner most of the group hit the bars and dives for some heroics on the town, but I, being the sort of person that I am, head straight for my hotel for a quiet night's sleep....

Friday

I get up early and walk to the tram stop well in time to make it for the start of the second day at 9.30am, but I wait and wait and no tram comes.

When one finally does arrive, I find that I am on the same tram as all the students who only went to bed just a few hours earlier, and I reschedule the start of the meeting to 10am.

Today's lunch is Paella Valenciana, so I have two platefulls. Yummy.

We continue till about 6.30pm, sorting out what we can do and can't do over the next several weeks and months. We have our work cut out for us, but it will all be worth it in the end!

This is when my week officially ends....