If the above paragraph contains information which you vaguely think would be nice to understand, but it does not make much sense to you, please read the following one, which tries to explain what I am talking about.

CDF is a multi-purpose detector for high-energy particle collisions. It detects the products of the interaction between protons and antiprotons, which are launched against each other in large numbers by the Tevatron accelerator after having been pushed to the speed of light, reaching the energy of 1 TeV each- the equivalent of more than a thousand times the proton mass.

A store begins with the injection in the Tevatron (a 6.3km long ring, located 30 miles west of Chicago) of typically ten thousand billion protons, and a few hundred billion antiprotons, in opposite directions. They circulate and intersect in the core of our detector, where at a rate of about 2.5 million times a second they produce particle collisions. Since as they collide the protons are removed from the beam, the density of the beam decreases with time in a store, such that after 10-15 hours the store is ended, and a new injection begins.

During the store, CDF collects the data by selecting the most interesting ones among the 2.5 million collisions every second. This is demanded to a three-level trigger system: Level 1 does very little very quickly, identifying the most energetic collisions and those containing electrons and muons -particles which are rare and interesting in the proton-antiproton collisions we produce. Typically Level 1 filters about ten thousand events a second, which are passed to Level 2. Since the input rate is now much lower, Level 2 has several tens of microseconds to reconstruct the particles produced in the event, and decide whether the physics is worth saving or not. The few hundred best events are then passed to Level 3, which does a much more detailed reconstruction and selects about 100 events a second for offline analysis.

"Only 100 events a second ? Why can't you collect all of them ?" you might ask. Well, it would be very demanding to build a system saving to disk a Terabyte a second (the amount of data produced before filtering). But it would also be silly, since most collisions produce physics we know inside out -low-energy interactions we have studied at lower-energy machines.

A run is not a store. A run may coincide with the duration of the store only if nothing happens which forces us to stop data-taking and fix it. Usually, this happens every hour or so, but today we got lucky and we had a very smooth running for the entire duration of the store. So, in the end, we can claim a very high collection efficiency, and a single run with lots of data. This means that all detector components worked without a glitch, without the need of intervention on the part of my crew, and we are just happy.

So in the end we collected more than three inverse picobarns of data. Picobarns are a measure of cross section: a very small area. We say that proton-antiproton collisions at 2 TeV energy (the one produced by the Tevatron beams when they collide) produce pairs of top quarks with a cross section of 6 picobarns, for instance. That means that if you collect an integrated luminosity of 3 inverse picobarns, you are likely to have captured 18 top quark events in your dataset. This would be true  if your triggers were smart enough to save all of them. Triggers are never 100% efficient, but I am confident that at least 10-15 top-antitop pairs have been logged to disk during this store. Enough for a top quark discovery (if there had not been one 13 years ago) ? Well, not really, because those 15 events are buried in a large background -as stated above, we wrote 4 million events to tape tonight. Once you select the most top-like events, you reduce your backgrounds but signals get small too, and maybe two or three would make it to a "golden dataset". Still, this was definitely a good night of data taking for the CDF experiment!

You know, this morning when I woke up Ohm's Law was in my mind. No, not the law, but just those two words. Before Paper 2, I was thinking, "Ohm's Law, Ohm's Law". No, not the law, but just those two words.

So I memorised Faraday and Lenzs' Laws, but never Ohm's Law. I only knew, "Ohm's Law". Just those two words.

How stupid of me. 2 Marks! D:

So yeah I just woke up/had dinner. Slept from 4/5+ I think, and I think I was dreaming about Physics. Idk; I woke up with Physics stuff in my mind, like Power = WorkDone/Time and all, and woke up feeling tired, like I've done a lot of work Hahaha.

HMP Now, >( I SHALL SLEEP BEFORE ONE TONIGHT :D

McAlpine didn't hit the big time, however, until the third aforementioned piece, "Large Hadron Rap," which, in simple-but-not-dumbed-down terms, explains the particle physics experiments to take place at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, where McAlpine has been interning in various writing and communications capacities.
The rap video--featuring her fellow CERN interns dancing in the gigantic particle accelerator some 300 feet underground on the French-Swiss border--has been viewed on YouTube more than 3.3 million times and has triggered almost 1,000 viewer comments.

It is wonderful to make to making the rap from physics.

Open Access web pages

Please do let me know if you have any feedback on these pages either by leaving a comment to this entry or by emailing me on k.stone@imperial.ac.uk.

So last night before I went to sleep I was thinking about the... Worthiness? Rather, how worth it was to stay up (almost) all night to study for the exam.

Say, for Chem. I stayed up till I-forgot-what-time, and ended up not being able to do the paper anyway. For Bio I was a little luckier, but for Physics, after that few hours of (almost) hardcore mugging, it seemed like nothing went to my head, and no new insights were gained.

So I was thinking, as I walked to my room, went to get ready to sleep, pack my bag and all... And there, the magic word appeared. Actually it didn't take that long to appear, but yeah, and I guess all these midnight-oil-burning are just, well, for consolation.

For me, there isn't any other word that can represent that. Consolation. Making me think, "yes, I studied. Yes, I know the equations, I'll be able to figure out some solutions tomorrow/later." Well of course I'll be feeling regretful that I hadn't started earlier, but that consolation is good enough, apparently.

Haha, I don't know my point, but I guess all in all Physics was rather bad. I didn't mind Paper 1, and Section A was relatively okay - relatively, as compared to Section B, of which I didn't know more than half I presume.

Heh in the morning RuiMin was at the bench, and I laughed the moment I saw her because I just read one of her smses and didn't expect that crazy person to be there, since she doesn't take Physics. But yeah she was there and I was kinda high and abnormal and we laughed quite a bit, over what I don't know. Ha.

Oh oh my dreams! Yes, dreamS. Just that 2 hours (or less) of sleep, and I had so many dreams. I don't know which came first, but

1) I dreamt my mum was being very hip! HAHA. She was like telling me a lot of stuff about herself and then she was telling me that if I learn to play the trumpet she'll bring me to somewhere (Europe, I think) or something. And hahaha apparently in my dream she played some brass instrument, and hahaha it was pretty cool.

2) I dreamt that it was night, and my brother and I were staring out of the house, and we saw that there were burly people lugging half-opened tuba cases (yup with the instruments in them) and they looked pretty scary and there was a group who walked and behind them was a playground - yes they were dragging it. And then all of a sudden there were noises in the house, and apparently I was holding some hanger of clothes and those burly creatures took away my hanger and all, and I quickly went to take my phone for safekeeping as they rummaged through the house - and the house was beautiful I say. I think it's not the first time I'm dreaming of that house, because, well, it seemed familiar. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me, leading me to think I'd dreamed of it before, as in Deja Vus. But yeah the house had glass doors and was landed I think and was nice and cars can drive in up to a certain entrance of the house. Yeah so apparently among those burly men I saw people I actually knew. I can't remember, but I think I saw Russell and was asking him what was happening, and he just shrugged. Hey, it was scary alright. Lol.

3) I dreamt that my tooth dropped! Like wth! And haha, initially I didn't remember I had this part of the dream, but during Phys Paper 2 my tooth suddenly ached and felt a taddddd bit shaky and I was immediately reminded of the dream. It just floated to my mind suddenly, and yeah. How freaky =/

So yup, in that short span of 2 hours there were 3 dreams, and I can remember them pretty vividly heh.

After school, ate with Valerie/Sunny and left school at 12 for SCGS and met Vanessa and passed her stuff/received stuff and bused and all. Took 28 and heh although the journey was quite long, it saved me a lot of walking and I'm happy ;D Fine, and lazy, too. Heh. And and nearing home this lady, before alighting, told me there was something on my hair and Val saw and went "oh my gosh" and I was like really freaked out. Haha it turned out to be a praying mantis-like insect, but gross as it sounds, it was rather pretty :) The colour and all, haha. And at my stop I didn't recognise the stop, and almost missed it ==

Bugs come out at night. Last night there was this bug that walked across the laptop, and it looked like a ladybird - I Am Not Kidding. I was freaked out. I mean, it was tiny (like around the size of an ant) but it looked like a budding beetle and there were spots on it and I was disgusted and got a container from the kitchen to capture it. So I left the container, face down on the table, and now the container is just a foot away from me, face up, so it seems like my mum let the bug off, perhaps accidentally since it was so tiny and unnoticable. >(

I'm sorry for the incoherence and boredom. :D Sleep now, wake up, Music, Sleep, and we shall attend Assembly tomorrow Hahaha.

Two days, two days! :D

Oh, right. So many people were so happy after Physics today, saying "Physics is over! I'll never be doing Physics again!" and I guess I'm still uncertain. I'm pretty sure I might like Physics better than Biology, if I had the time and discipline to learn it. But I guess those two are stuff I always lack - I know we are to make our own time, but heh if I haven't got discipline even, how is that possible? So, yeah.

Sleeeppp, goodnight!

Don’t become a physicist!

Here are the numbers. Universities spew out twice as much physics PhD as there are jobs for them. Are you now wondering why physicists are the lowest paid professionals in the world? A physicist studies Newton’s laws and earns a starting salary of less than $30,000 if he can find a job. A law student studies Roman law for a few years and earns a starting salary of over $160,000. Law firms fight among each other to grab each and every graduate. After all both are law students. If you like law why go into Newtonian law. Just study corporate law and be rich.

Academia is legal

In any case, physicists themselves are the victim of the professional physics propaganda that is perpetuated in the media about heroic theoretical discoveries by physicists. They are recruited into the profession by this propaganda. Behind the glamorous facade there is the ugly physics hierarchy as strict as the Vatican and the military. This hierarchy is like the famous Higgs field but as the physics student swims upwards in this hierarchy she gains not mass but authority. After two decades of learning a useless legal language called physics the doctoral candidate gets his license to practice and starts looking for a job to do data reduction or at best to work on some obscure topic defined and paid for by the military. What happened to the promised fundamentally heroic discoveries? They don’t exist. So the disillusioned physicist after two decades of studying legal Newtonist religion in all its incarnations and becoming a secular priest of Newtonism becomes a chauvinist bureaucrat defending Newton’s 18th century religious ideologies as science.

Conform

The picture of scholastic physics described here by an insider under the guise of giving advice reveals that physics is another name of the old hierarchical bureaucracy called scholasticism. The advice to the new members of this bureaucracy is simple: if you want to advance in this hierarchy you must conform.

PhD Wall

Physicists are employed by the scholastic corporation and they must abide by company rules. The corporation outlives any physicist and no physicist can change the corporation. If they do not conform physicists will be out and unemployed.

Also take a look at this table showing the similarities between physics and the Church. 

What Dr. Carroll proves in this post is that physics is an organism. He recognizes that there is a bureaucracy and there is a hierarchy. Physicists are professionals who must move up the hierarchy continuously or drop out. How? He doesn't say. I'll tell you. The currency of academic physics hierarchy is authority.

Physics is not structured like minor-league/intercollegiate-sports system. Physics is structured like the military and the Catholic church.

Law, the medicine, the military, the church and physics are hierarchical bureaucracies based on an absolute respect to rank and seniority. Anyone who even thinks of questioning authority is pushed out of the brotherhood. Excommunication in physics is as real as excommunication in the church. Science on the other hand is defined as questioning authority.

Any climber in the hierarchy who reaches academic bottlenecks with less authority appropriate for her rank and seniority will be told as Dr. Carroll nicely put it "you have passed your sell-by date, no more jobs for you." Just like in the military.

I am glad that now there is a verification by an insider that physics is a rotten unhuman organism feeding on human intelligence.

Why is this relevant?

• Proposition: Similar organisms behave the same way

If the physics profession has an architecture which is identical to the architecture of the Catholic church, that is, a hierarchical bureaucracy based on sanctity of rank and authority then both practitioners will behave exactly the same. And they do, as I've written yesterday.

Compared to Hollywood Academic physics is fringe entertainment.

So, physicists who are reading this what do you think?

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1663964&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Hmmm, well, guess what? They just may be able to do that after all. Can I prove it? Well, not in the way others might like to see it proved, but I can draw a few connections. Here is one. I took a few books out from the library a week or so ago. One is shown in the full collage below (Apples are from Kazakhstan) and one is shown with a quote from the last page of the book, also scanned for your convenience, from Predictably Irrational.  "Think how hard physics would be if particles could think."

And here is the full collage of the day. The text used for the anagram above is outlined in turquoise blue. Enjoy.

Kinda harkens back to my physics of the impossible posts, don't you think?

We as a species spend a lot of time, write more books speculating on this topic than money we use to bail out failed firms.

I spent years chasing down this subject and thought there was an answer.  The answers that were given turned hollow after a while so the quest started again.

After a while it gets exhausting looking for the pot o gold at the end of the rainbow because every time you get close it disappears, the rainbow that is.

Meanwhile you start wondering if your life wouldn't have been better spent enjoying life.

We only have one and we never know how much time we have.

Knowing what I know now, I may or may not have proceeded on this quest.  I learned a lot about myself and others.  Will it be of any use?  Who knows.

Albert Einstein liked the harmony and order of life, physics and his concept of divinity.  He was no fool.

I wonder if he knew about black holes when he was alive.  Apparently black holes do not follow the harmony and order of physics and life.  A black hole consumes everything in its path and nothing exists.  We do not know one hundred percent for sure as we have never been close to one.  I for one don't care to be.

Even geniuses can not be sure why we are here and I am far from a genius.

Me thinks that if geniuses can't figure it out, scientists and religious people are in total disagreement, who am I to wonder?

I think I will enjoy the time I have left and not worry about why I am here.

For those who need a review of frictional forces, please refer to your Physics text on page 141; there is a summarized section on the topic. Friction is covered on page 137-141 if you need a more thorough review.

Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics" seemed to hit the nail for me. I started reading it about 15 minutes ago, and two pages in, I already feel like this book has much to teach me. Here are some of the quotes that got me thinking.

'It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequienly take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times or different cultural environments or different religion traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow'

- Werner Heisenberg

'Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you ... Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone, one question ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.'

- Carlos Castaneda

There is so much to learn, so much to understand, so much to assimilate. Being a physicist makes it easy for me to relate to that. For example, if we were to put a lone proton in some empty space, we would see an electrical field created by the proton. But as soon as we introduced another charged particle into the region, things change. The electrical field changes, the two particles experience a force and the more particles we introduce, in varied patterns, the more changes. Thus with each additional piece of knowledge, one needs to assimilate it into what one already knows and believes. Knowledge doesn't exist in isolation. It exists in a framework that we describe as opinion.

A wonderful way to revise, but also a wonderful resource for any new teachers.
Why couldn't this have been available when I was starting out?

I'm hallucinating, probably, but I'm thinking that after Physics (later) my mum would bring me out and maybe have a meal or something - something so simple, yet I have no idea why I'm excited about it. It's just, anticipation - and the feeling of I-Don't-Care-If-I-Flunk-Physics.

Physics has never been such a torment for me. For now - due to lack of time, which is, ultimately, due to MY Lack of Discipline - I'm just blindly memorising stuff like

P = IV = I^2R = V^2/R...

You know, these stuff would have made so much sense, and I would have been so enlightened (now I'm honestly not being sarcastic here). But now it's just like, a Duty to memorise all these, and it's like I'd never want to touch Physics again - so there you have it; in less than 10 hours that'd be the last of Physics I'll be touching. I think.

I don't know for sure, but currently I just feel like escaping.

Pois bem, pessoas, pessoinhas e pessoas...grandes(?), cá estou eu novamente, agora para falar sobre uma framework muito interessante e bacana que já faz muito sucesso pelo...exterior¬¬. Box2D é uma framework de física fantástica, eu pelo menos não tenho muito o que dizer dela, pois ela realmente não deixa a desejar se você quer fazer jogos com uma física muito boa e interessante, recomendo essa framework. Vale a pena dizer que ela já recebeu vários ports, incluindo até mesmo para nintendo DS.

Para quem procura uma boa framework de física vale a pena dar uma olhadela nessa framework e também no fórum(a comunidade realmente é bem atenciosa).

Pois bem, aqui está o site do Box2D.

Ainda essa semana colocarei o necessário para se criar um mundo, e talvez com algum objeto em cena.

Muito Obrigado pela atenção e tenham um ótimo dia(música do seu notíciario preferido).

The Standard Model is complete but for one particle, the Higgs boson. But this missing link is vitally important one: according to this fantastically successful model -- it has passed all previous experimental tests -- the Higgs is the reason that all the other particles have mass. This may sound strange -- after all, it seems common sense that particles should just have a mass by themselves, by virtue of being there. However, common sense is an uncommonly poor guide in the realm of quantum fields. Without the Higgs particle treating them each differently, all the particles we know and love would look much more similar.

• Old application materials.

Nesse espírito, posto que também estamos na fase de empregos em Física também, resolvi não só atender ao chamado do Ben, mas também seguir o exemplo:

• CV ver2007 (PDF, 56Kb);
• Projeto de Pesquisa ver2007 (PDF, 206Kb).

É preciso notar que os PDFs acima foram feitos em Novembro de 2007. Fora isso, é sempre bom se colocar uma Cover Letter no meio do material que será enviado — a que eu usei está logo abaixo.

Pra quem não sabe direito como começar, uma boa dica é SPIRES Jobs: notem que é possível se fazer várias combinações com as opções dadas pelo SPIRES, e.g., Theory/Math Postdocs em qualquer lugar do mundo. Atualmente, existem grandes vantagens, como acompanhar o link anterior via RSS. Fora isso, a grande maioria das aplicações podem ser feitas online, ou via formulários eletrônicos (onde vc põem todos os seus dados e uploads os documentos necessários), ou via email (onde vc manda tudo anexado, PDFs preferencialmente). De resto, o negócio é fazer o dever-de-casa mesmo: ir pros websites dos lugares pra onde vc quer ir, pesquisar sobre os professores e suas áreas de estudo, contactar (email) aqueles que vc mais gostou, e assim por diante.

Alguns exemplos bem práticos:

• Positions — Perimeter Institute;
• Memberships — IAS.

Em ambos os casos, o processo é todo eletrônico. É importantíssimo se lembrar que, acima do equador, o ano letivo é transladado de 6 meses (Setembro—Junho; ao invés de Fevereiro—Novembro, como no Brasil). Portanto, não se esqueçam que os deadlines são por volta de dezembro—janeiro (para começar a trabalhar em setembro do ano seguinte). Entretanto, alguns lugares têm adiantado os deadlines; via de regra, é bom manter as seguintes datas em mente: 01, 05 e 15 de novembro; 01, 15 e 31 de dezembro; e 31 de janeiro.

Então, apesar da grande maioria das universidades mundiais anunciarem no SPIRES (link acima), sempre há excessões. Portanto, é importante prestar atenção e ficar ligadão mesmo: esse é um processo meio longo e extremamente estressante e chato — ninguém sai ileso dele. Mas, se vc prestar atenção e não deixar a peteca cair, dá pra levar tudo na boa, sem grandes traumas nem nada. (Por isso que poder fazer RSS das ofertas é essencial! :wink: )

Bom, acho que esse é o 'grosso' da coisa… mais detalhes (incluindo as possíveis dúvidas e perguntas) ficam pros comentários. Quem quiser colaborar nesse esforço, é só deixar os links (CV, Proposta de Pesquisa, etc) nos comentários. Pra quem quer fazer o CV em LaTeX, aí vai a dica:

• Writing the curriculum vitæ with LaTeX (e, pra quem quiser complementar a leitura: LaTeX curricula vitae with the CurVe class — notem, porém, que o link anterior é mais novo e mais completo).

É isso aí… divirtam-se! :twisted:

Dear Mr./Ms./Dr.,

I am presently a graduate student at Brown University, in the group of Professor G. Guralnik. I am writing in order to apply for a postdoctoral position in your group.

My thesis work focused on deepening the understanding of non-perturbative QFT: its Solution Sets (configuration space); Symmetry Breaking and Phase Transitions; Topology Change. I was able to show that the Solution Sets of QFTs can be studied via topological methods, namely Morse Theory, where the classical solution has one given topology and its quantum corrections are "handles" attached to it. Therefore, the quantum corrections are a sequence of surgeries between the initial and final cobordisms — given by the classical and quantum configuration spaces, respectively. Moreover, using this construction I was able to see more clearly the role played by a polynomial constructed from the potential energy: the ramifications of its discriminant, at the roots of this polynomial, are related to the singularities of the Higgs Bundle built from this theory, making a connection with the Geometric Langlands Conjecture. In fact, each branch [of this ramification] is related to a different solution of the QFT in question having its own topology, distinct from the other ones. Furthermore, I was able to apply such results to Quantum Gravity problems, such as the Bottomless Potential in String Theory (2+1)-dimensional Gravity and the Chern-Simons ansatz in String Field Theory. In addition to these results, I was also able to devise a numerical scheme to handle simulations of Lorentzian QFT, avoiding the so-called "sign problem". However, although successful in some cases, this method encountered some difficulties that we expect to surpass with the availability of better hardware.

During the course of my studies, I have become interested in Solutions Sets of QFTs, Symmetry Breaking and Phase Transitions, Topology Change, Noncommutative Geometry, Twistor Methods, Quantum Gravity and Structure Formation in Cosmology.

In addition to this letter you will find my Curriculum Vitae and a short research statement. Also, I have arranged for 4 recommendation letters to be sent to you by:

Professor G. S. Guralnik, Brown University, Providence, RI. USA.
Phone: +1 401-863-???? or +1 401-863-????
Email: ?????@het.brown.edu

Professor M. Spradlin, Brown University, Providence, RI. USA.
Phone: +1 401-863-????
Email: ????????@het.brown.edu

Professor A. Jevicki, Brown University, Providence, RI. USA.
Phone: +1 401-863-????
Email: ?????@het.brown.edu

Professor I. Dell'Antonio, Brown University, Providence, RI. USA.
Phone: +1 401-863-????
Email: ???@het.brown.edu

Please do not hesitate to contact me should any questions arise. I look
forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Catholic

Catholic means "general and universal." Physicists are more obsessed with the absolute general and absolute universal than the Catholic church. So we can as well say physics deals with catholic physical laws.

Catechism

"Laws" sounds suspiciously like catechism. Because by laws physicists mean a combination of rules and mechanics. Look at Newton's laws in the Principia. They are called axioms of motion. Newton's laws are definitions that physicists market as the true laws of nature because they've built a mechanics, i.e. catechism, around them.

Orthodox

Orthodox is the corresponding word for physical. Orthodox means the correct opinion. Turning axioms into true laws of nature is orthodoxy. The word orthodoxy correctly summarizes what I was trying to write here about physicists' habit of claiming that their opinions are the absolute correct opinions.

Catholic Orthodox Catechism

So, Catholic Orthodox Catechism describes physics rather well.

What about experiments?

This is a nice mapping but the problem with claiming that physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism is that physics is said to be an experimental science. Physicists claim that physics is true not because it is their opinion but because physics is the true laws of nature discovered by physicists by experiments and codified into physics in rigorous equations. We must seriously investigate if this claim is professional propaganda or if it has any truth value. For now, the question I want to ask is not Does a physics experiment reveal any truth about nature? but this: Are there enough evidence to start doubting the claim that physics is an experimental science? I believe that there is plenty of evidence that physics is not an experimental science in its essence, not accidentally, but in its essence.

Experiment is definition with a gadget

Physics propaganda says that physics is an experimental science. Does this claim change the fact that physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism? No. In academic physics experiment is 1) a definition with a gadget or 2) a test of catechism. Remember catechism is mechanics. In either case physicists use experiments to prove ideology. So we must not say that orthodoxy is physicists' opinions but physicists' definitions. Physicists transform legal definitions into orthodoxy through mechanics. So it is true that academic physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism despite the claim of using experiments.

Mechanics are fits

It is a true observation that physics hosts a range of equations that have no experimental correspondence. Such as the string theory. Quantum theory has its origin in experiments but later acquired a vast system of philosophical baggage. There are also mechanics such as the standard model but as fitted observations they reveal no truth about nature.

Atomic materialism

In addition there is the fundamental ideology of physics which is religious to its core. This is the dogma of atomic materialism. Physicists assume atomic materialism as an unquestionable truth and fit observations into this ideology. Even when observations tell physicists that there are no particles and physicists had to model observations as fields, operations or probabilities -- not as particles -- physicists will still interpret their observations as material particles. This is Catholic Orthodox Catechism, not to say scholastic punning of a very low grade. Physicists fit every observation into the fundamental dogma of the existing orthodoxy.

The dogma of Nature is Physical

Bohr's observation is also relevant here because physicists have been ignoring his advice not to confuse the map with the territory:

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.

Bohr is saying that physics must not be turned into a Catholic Orthodox Catechism by asserting with authority that nature of physics is the true nature and that nature is physical. The dogma of "nature is physical" or "physics is nature" is a strong assertion that map is the territory. But Born is telling physicists that the "physical" model is not the modelled. Circle is not the orbit. Do not reify your models and then claim that nature is your model. If you do that you will turn physics into Catholic Orthodox Catechism and yourself into scholastic doctors of philosophy.

Crystalline spheres

Packaging ideology as reified truth is nothing new. Professional ancestors of physicists have been doing this for millennia. Until Tycho Brahe they have been assuming that stars were attached to crystalline spheres. Physics today is full of crystalline spheres. A quantum world that exists independent of the model is a crystalline sphere. A scientific questioning of physical crystalline spheres and quintessences should be welcomed by physicists not objected to.

Physicists themselves question reified reality assumption

Therefore physicists' dogmatic assumption that there are absolute true and general physical laws that exist in nature and that they are hidden like Easter eggs and physicists go find them must be questioned. Physicists themselves are slowly realizing that this is the case and they are starting to question their 18th century religious dogma of reified reality, for instance, with these experiments.

Related:

• Physical laws and heretical theories

I hope that both presidential candidates know at least as much as what's described in the book. And naturally it would be wonderful if the vice-presidential candidates would know it too, although that's probably too much to ask. Well-informed voters would change the political landscape. Did you know what some nuclear power plants have inherently safe designs, that is if something goes wrong the nuclear reaction will actually stop? (Hint: the Chernobyl plant was not designed that way.) Did you know that solar-powered cars simply can't drive fast enough? (But solar-powered drone airplanes work perfectly.) No worries, you will after you read this book.

Great book, very untechnical and easy to enjoy.

Kelvin having also apparently contravened the laws of the physical universe can only have attracted more unwarranted scientific attention, and he and I would both like to apologize for any distress caused. I am pleased to report that he is now behaving more normally and provoking less anxiety both for me, and - I imagine - any passing scientists. If, however, any such passing scientist would like to point out any errors made by Kelvin or myself, we would be delighted to be given the opportunity to rectify them.

Also, if any competent, suitably qualified person would like to explain the whole surface tension thing in words of one syllable* (*all values approximate), I'd be extremely grateful.

It is incredibly difficult, in my opinion, to express why you love what you love in a coherent manner. For inspiration, I looked at example personal statements. None of them, even though they were allegedly good ones, rang true to what I want to say. I don't want to talk about my lifelong interest in physics, because that firstly would be a lie. I thought I was going to be a school psychologist from the time I was in third grade until 11th grade during physics. I also am ambivalent about the lifelong passion idea; I know it's true for some people, but at the same time, I've met so many people (like Middle Eastern dancers) who are just as passionate and enthusiastic about their thing and they haven't spent nearly as many years loving that. It just seems like an irrelevant detail.

And then there's the question of what makes me unique out of the other applicants (why would they want me over someone else). Only two things come to mind: earning an MS and having varied research experience. I'm not sure that this is enough. I haven't published papers (the nature of my research has not, unfortunately, led to that), worked any place incredibly impressive, etc. I'm hardworking, capable, easy to get along with, and so on, but that can be said about many people.

I'm glad that I started now vs. later. On my calendar, I decided to work on my personal statement every Saturday.That isn't to say I'm not going to think about it on non-Saturdays, but I've decided to specifically devote time on Saturday to it.  I'm hoping to knock this thing out by the beginning of Nov.

Harald zur Hausen took half the nobel price in Medicine for discovering the link between the human papilloma virus and cervical cancer.  The remainder of the prize was shared between Francoise Barre-Sinousse and Luc Montagnier for their role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared equally between three Americans, Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tslen.  They were cited for their discovery and development of a green fluorescent protein GFP.

The Nobel prize in Physics was shared between three.  Japanese physicists Makoto Kobasyashi and Toshihide Maskawa were awarded one quarter of the prize each for “their discovery of the origin of a broken symmetry that predicted the existence of at least three families of quarks”.  The American physicist Yoichiro Nambu received the remainder of the prize for “the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, the French “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization” took home the Nobel prize in Literature.

Martti Ahtisaari of Finland was awarded the Peace prize as a sort of lifetime achievement award.  The citation reads “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”.

The Economics prize was awarded to Paul Krugman of Princeton University for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.