More cosmic topology from the Compact Collaboration: we show that the global structure of space can induce parity violation in cosmological observables — which usually requires small-scale parity-violating particle (micro-) physics.
Statuses
Paul Krugman correctly pins the blame for the Tory disaster on austerity, and worries that “Labour’s stated plans lack any ambition to reverse austerity.” (They always bought the false narrative of necessary cuts rather than bold spending even with low interest rates.)
R.I.P. John J Quenby, emeritus professor of Physics at Imperial College. John had a wide-ranging career at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics, with interests from cosmic rays to dark matter and gravitational waves, and served as one of the first heads of Astrophysics at Imperial.
Remember, not everyone has the same cultural background: Today, I explained that I was going on “sabbatical” to my Chinese grad student. Which, of course, required discussing the sabbath, and then the Bible, the Abrahamic religions, the book of Genesis, and the 10 commandments…
An unanticipated downside of large British electrical plugs is that a slug can crawl up inside and electrocute itself, as I have just learned from experience. Do not ask about the sizzling and crackling noise.
It’s the summer solstice so time for my annual reminiscence of seeing Sun Ra and Don Cherry celebrate the rising sun from Battery Park in Manhattan with @disquiet in 1989.
I still haven’t made it to Stonehenge for the celebrations, but Lisa has (more on this later).
Just off the “phone” (well, zoom) with the Naked Scientists podcast/radio show (don’t worry — audio only) talking about cosmic topology.
Swan school (Barnes, London, UK)
The NY Times on the Simons Observatory: A New Search for Ripples in Space From the Beginning of Time
Am quite proud of myself for marking a bunch of undergraduate project reports from a campsite in Cornwall.
More topology, this time from Scientific American.
Exam #2 of 2: Information Theory.
Invigilating my first of two exams today: Astrophysics. Good luck to the students!
(For North American readers: “invigilate” = “proctor”.)
Yet more on our work on the topology of the Universe: The universe may have a complex geometry — like a doughnut.
On our recent Compact Collaboration PhysRevLett: Anticipating future discoveries: Scientists explore nontrivial cosmic topology
Former Imperial College Astrophysics PhD student Alfredo Carpineti quoted about last night’s spectacular aurora in this morning’s (New York) Times
So: I think I just finished writing a book.
An overview of our recent work on the topology of the Universe, highlighted by Physical Review Letters.
From scratch, more or less.
If you take the literature at its word, some things are so improbable, they’re practically assured.
— The Paranoid Style, “I’d Bet My Land and Titles”
Yet another test, this time with formatting and a link.
This is test. Do not adjust your sets, &c.
RIP Daniel Dennett. His books on mind and evolution helped me understand the world.
I just received a referee request from a high quality journal.
I know it’s an excellent paper — since I’m one of the authors.
@help: I’ve just moved to a new self-hosted WordPress blog, and I am trying to set up the micro.blog iOS/macOS apps to post directly there. but I always get the message “An error occurred. Please try again.” Any ideas?