Super-B Accelerator Moves forward (does the US move back?)

As described in the following press release (see here). The Italian government has confirmed that they will be moving forward on the construction of the high intensity electron/positron collider known as SuperB.

Expected to produce 1000's of B-Mesons and Tau particles every second this will allow physicists to study the very rare decays of these B mesons as well as study CP violation to a much higher degree of accuracy than previously possible.

The U.S. meanwhile is still holding in the background awaiting word if we will even have a say in the future of particle physics. With the awaiting word of the Tevatron extended run (see P5 report recommending the extension of the Tevatron here) and knowing that many of the components for the SuperB will come from the short lived PEP-II experiment at SLAC just reinforces that while the rest of the world is looking forward to the future of science the US is increasingly looking like it playing a "wait and see" game.

At least this physicists may end up having to look for jobs in Europe and add to the potential brain drain (all though in my case a very small drain) facing the US.

Why I love my wife

My wife saw a box at work and said to her co-worker "I'll bet I can fit into that box"

So this professional and elegant women decided to climb into a box in front of her boss during the workday to demonstrate her ability to fit in a box!

This is what love is for me!

Getting to meet some academic hero's!

It the past few months I've been very lucky/fortunate to get to meet/ask questions/listen to talks by some of my all time academic hero's. I thought I would share a few of those encounters/people here and include a chance for people to find out more about them:

Raman Sundrum
In September I got to attend a Fermilab Colloquium given by Raman Sundrum entitled "Warped Dimensions".

This was a really great talk about the possibility of general relativistic "warping" of higher dimensional space-time (don't worry if those words didn't mean much...they don't to most...but his talk would have you feeling like you maybe understood). The best part of his talk was how through simple illustration and explanation he gave access to the complicated and often misunderstood work of higher dimensional space-time and what this manifestation of this would be in accelerator based physics experiments.

I include and example image from his talk to show how a simple picture often is worth a thousand words.


Steven Levitt
The next academic hero of mine I got to meet and ask questions from was professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Steven Levitt. This was during a screening of the new movie Freakonomics that the U of C put on. Interestingly, they made this a "Pay-what-you-want" experiment as part of the screening process. Turns out that people paid basically what you would for a movie ticket (around 7 bucks if my memory serves) with some people paying as much as $100 dollars.
Not only am I a huge fan of Freakonomics books, and follow the blog (found here) and the new'ish podcast (found here) and have had the good fortune to see many lectures given by Prof Levitt, but I am also a fan of the method.

The extreme curiosity that Prof Levitt exudes through his work and when meeting him in person is something I myself strive for in life. To me his ideas of pursuing what is from data and example instead of the way we would like to think it is, is a wonderful approach for all scientists and curious minded people.

Also see the movie, even if you've read the book the visualization of the ideas and filmwork done is really good. An interesting side note: Prof Levitt during his Q&A at the screening revealed that very little of his own work went into the movie and in fact great portions where it seems that he is narrating was actually cobbled together from old lectures and he never actually gave his voice to that portion of the film

Peter McIntyre

Now this academic hero is kind of a cheat on my part because this is one person that not only have I got to meet and see lectures from, but I've also had the good fortune to work for and take courses from. Prof McIntyre is a professor at Texas A&M (my current school) and is by far and away one of the most brilliant people I've ever met.

One colloquium that I attended of his while at Fermilab was about a 100 TeV Proton/Anti-Proton Collider that he wants to see built in Texas. (Just for scale the best the LHC is going to do is 14 TeV....that is like saying if the tallest building in the world in 140 stories that the next building should be 1000 stories tall)

This is a man of great physics vision. He was one of the first people to imagine building a circular collider and to use Anti-matter for its collisions. From his mind (and that of many others) was the birth of Fermilab.

But his amazing-ness doesn't stop there. He works on 16 Tesla superconducting magnets, puts together plans for Thorium driven nuclear power, designs wave breaks to protect the Texas coast from hurricane driven waves, and manages to teach and inspire new generations of physicists.

He was a leader in proposing the now failed SSC tunnel at Texas...which would have pushed the US to the front of the world of particle physics for many years...instead of battling the LHC for years.

I took a introductory Quantum Mechanics course from him my first year in grad school and it was the hardest thing I've ever done...and the most rewarding course in terms of what I learned.

My hope is to be as well rounded, brilliant, and influential in my career as he has been in his.

Doing less bad is still no good (Final in the series)

Well, here are the results after 41 weeks I have driven 8945 miles and averaged around 218 miles per week.

This number is about 100 miles more per week than I thought and driving has cost me around $900 in gas this year (not including other car related expenses).

I drew a trend line on the graph to see the thing that I realized myself, namely that I am cycling less and relying on my car more. Part of this has to do with the fact that we've been trying to (and now successfully) sold my wifes car, so we've put more miles on mine that was originally getting split between the two cars. The other side of this is that I've haven't been biking to the lab and instead opting to drive every morning.

So I am laying down a challenge to myself, starting next week, for 4 weeks I want to give up my car! It is going to be an interesting challenge especially since we've been enjoying a weird break in good weather that I am sure will crumble during my biking trial. But I want to try to reverse my trend and set a good example for commuting without a car.

The significant down side is the added time. Driving to the lab takes 30-40 mins. The train + bike takes about 70-80 mins. So it means waking up early/leaving early/ and more planning of my days. But, I want to try it...so we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully I'll be able to post miles biked vs miles driven in the coming days.

LHC sees Lead-Lead Collisions

As many of you know the Large Hadron Collider has switched from colliding proton on proton to using Lead Ions on Lead Ions.

 

A great article from the guardian (found here) describes the type of physics that can be probed from colliding heavy ions at high energy that is often hard to tease out of collisions like proton/proton or proton/anti-proton like the what is done at the LHC and the Tevatron respectively.

This is another really big landmark for the LHC and the next era of particle physics. I can't wait to see what results come from Alice and LHCb with these collisions.

See live event collisions from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) webpage here

http://cms.web.cern.ch/cms/

Deep Water Soloing Competition

In what is the greatest idea I've ever seen to introduce the world to the sport of climbing, the worlds first "artificial deep water soloing" competition took place in Bilbao, Spain.

Sure enough who came to win the whole damn thing and be the only climber to actually top out on the routes...but the U.S.'s own Chris Sharma!!!

The two routes they had up were rated 8b & 8b+ (read 5.14 climbs) there was a spectacular dyno in each and the climb was around 50 feet straight up.

Could be all the practice that Sharma got projecting "The Arch" in Mallorca that made this such a breeze for him...could also be that he just remains a beast of a climber.

Did I mention that I got to go to the arch: It was on our honeymoon and it was incredible!

Hellaween IV (B-Boy Mahem)

Heather and I got to go last weekend to one of our all-time favorite things around Halloween time, and that is the break-dancing battles that go on at a youth center called Alternatives.

The above is a preview from last years. The amount of athleticism and skill it takes to do these moves cannot be under represented, nor the great music that the DJ's put together. This isn't your typical crap that is played on dance music radio...there is some great stuff in there along with things I've never heard before.

You can get a flavor for it below. Bottom line...never knew much about B-boy culture before moving to Chicago, and I'm glad we have some friends that exposed us to it. 

Freakonomics The Movie

In the past few months my wife has started a job with the University of Chicago's Business School and has absolutely loved it.

One of the neat perks for me is being one step closer to one of my "academic crushes" (so to speak) the author and professor of economics Steven Levitt.

A few years ago him and Stephen Dubner wrote the best selling books Freakonomics and his studies quickly have become one of my favorite pieces of intellectual candy ever!

This year they have turned the book into a movie. As they begin screenings of this movie in different theaters around the US the movie has become available for 24 hour rent on iTunes. Additionally, Prof. Levitt is going to be doing a screening and Q&A session for the business school...and because my wife is super awesome and works with super awesome people I will get to go to this screening and actually meet Prof Levitt. Needless to say I am really pumped about this!

Last night, as part of Heather's work the people on her team watched the iTunes rented version of the movie and I got to get a sneak peak. The movie is awesome! Broken into different sections mirroring the book, each section is shot by a different director, but the feel and the energy of the movie are wonderful! Even more, the visuals and interviews give you a much more real sense of the facts being examined.

More so, the ever charming and insightful team of Dubner and Levitt keep the film light and entertaining. One fact that Heather points out, and a reason I look to Prof Levitt as an example of an academic I admire, is the pervasive attitude of being humble and modest while still being undeniably brilliant.

Often academics are very smart people, the problem is they know it and want everyone else to know it too. However, Prof Levitt and Mr Dubner both seem to be simple "seekers of truth" and are happy to just report what they find with a sense of true academic objectivity.

If you have the chance to see this movie don't miss it, share it with friends, and enjoy Freakonomics!

Proof we have some funny friends!

Yesterday was my friend Sham's 26th birthday. To celebrate we all got together for a surprise party in the basement / bouldering cave of a mutual friends. Now since Sham is lactose intolerant and many of our other friends are vegetarian/selectatarian/picky eaters the challenge was set forth to make food that all could eat.
The challenge was met and destroyed by all...a funny outcome was this Vegan Ninja Cake!
Thanks to Joey and Justin for reminding me that my friends are creative and funny

Who knew I would have to hate Insane Clown Posse?

So as I was skimming along trying to get some physics done (validating data sets and the like) an article comes along my Facebook news feed from the blog Cosmic Variance.

Insane Clown Posse Channels Walt Whitman

Now if you are puzzled by the article I do suggest you go and read it...a brilliant piece of work. But what really got me was this, pardon the pun, insane rant put on by a member of Insane Clown Posse against science.

That's right, these two douche bags that like to paint there faces like clowns and rap about violence against women and other such "wonders of the universe" have a thing against scientists!
To quote these idiots:

Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying and
getting me pissed.

Wow! Not only don't they know something that has been simple scientific knowledge for the better part of 200 years, but they go on to say during and interview:

“I did think,” I admit, “that fog constitutes quite a low threshold for miracles.”

“Fog?” Violent J says, surprised.

“Well,” I clarify, “I’ve lived around fog my whole life, so maybe I’m blasé.”

“Fog, to me, is awesome,” he replies. “Do you know why? Because I look at my five-year-old son and I’m explaining to him what fog is and he thinks it’s incredible.”

“Ah!” I gesticulate. “If you’re explaining to your five-year-old son what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because they’re just like you, explaining things to people…”

“Well,” Violent J says, “science is… we don’t really… that’s like…” He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, “OK, an analogy”: “If you’re trying to fuck a girl, but her mom’s home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom’s home? Fuck the mom. See?”

Now, if it wasn't bad enough that these guys seem incapable of completing a sentence without swearing and saying something idiotic, turns out they are evangelical Christians who also hate knowledge!

This is basically where I draw the line, you want to believe in your religion to the exclusion of other facts....fine. (I happen to believe in a religion too...) You want to paint yourself up like a clown and rap for a bunch of idiot 15 year olds who don't get enough attention at home...go knock yourself out.

But when you do all this and attack knowledge as if it is something bad to have...well now you are hurting a great many more people and making everyone else stupid in the process

Fog is just water in the air, magnets aren't magic they are simply a property of the way atoms align in a material, and knowledge will set you free!

Two Climbing competetions and a Microphone

 

Where it's at? Well, the last 3 weeks have been really busy for me including two bouldering competitions!

The first one was at my home gym Vertical Endeavors in Warrenville, Il. I had placed this competition in the middle of a 4 week training cycle to try to get myself ready for early October. It was a great competition with about 80 competitors. I ended up finishing 10th place in the male advanced category which put me about 20/36 over all. Not a stellar performance but still good for me, and compared to two years ago when I placed in the intermediate division I was very pleased. Results found here

Then October 2nd my friend Sham and I traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota to compete in Octboulderfest and the Vertical Endeavors there. I had been to this gym once before but I was certainly not in the home field advantage. Worse, because of the night before (read party with my brothers friends), a nagging sinus infection, and sleeping on the floor I was in anything but prime condition.

I finished 13th in male advanced (despite them slaughtering the spelling of my name) and 24/35 overall. What is really interesting about this result is in order to get my 5 scores I had to complete and easy intermediate problem...so even with one terrible score I still did just a little worse than the previous comp! 

All-in-all they were great comps, the ABS (American Bouldering Society) reps at both comps were real boobs that made the prize portion take forever...but they are volunteers so I guess I can't fault their lack of organization too hard.

Now I'm prepping for the next outdoor session and training hard...but more on that later

LHC is ramping up!!!

There was a great email circulated today about the most recent fill done at the LHC. (A fill is an occurance when they stuff the accelerator full of protons and start circulating them around at near the speed of light to cause them to collide at the detectors)

The short and sweet of it is the technicians and scientists that are in charge of revving up the accelerator are starting to understand their machine better and better which means they can squeeze and pack in more protons, which means more intense beams, which means MORE DATA PER FILL!!!

Now they aren't near there design specifications...but this last fill makes a major stride toward achieving that goal!

----- Original Message -----
From: Rolf Heuer

Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 9:39 AM

Subject: A game-changing fill for the LHC - Une exploitation qui change la donne
pour le LHC

A game-changing fill for the LHC

A long period of machine development paid dividends last night with a game-changing fill in the LHC. As I write this, the fill, which started colliding at 19:00 yesterday evening, has just wound down. Both ATLAS and CMS have posted integrated luminosities of over 680 inverse nanobarns, and the initial luminosity for the fill doubles the previous record at 2´1031cm-2s-1.

But it’s not the records that are important this time – it’s normal that in the
start-up phase of a new machine, records will fall like autumn leaves – what’s
significant here is that the LHC’s performance this fill significantly exceeded some crucial design parameters, opening up the path to much better still to come.

Last night’s fill was the first with 56 bunches arranged in trains of eight bunches
per train. The significance of bunch train running is that we can configure the
orbits such that more bunches collide in the experiments, so even though the number of bunches may not be much higher, the collision rate is. For example, last night’s 56-bunch fill had 47 bunches colliding at ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, with 16 colliding in ALICE, whose needs are lower. This compares to a maximum of 36 colliding bunches out of 48 total before we introduced bunch trains.

A big jump in luminosity was clearly expected in moving to bunch trains and
colliding more bunches. What came as a pleasant surprise is that it was accompanied by an exceptional beam lifetime of 40 hours, and less disruption to the beams caused by packing more protons into a smaller space (in technical terms, the beam-beam tune shift was much less destructive to the beams than anticipated). This result means that the LHC operators have more leeway in operational parameters in the quest for higher luminosity.

The plan for today and the weekend is to run for one more fill with 56 bunches in
trains of eight before moving on to 104 bunches in 13 trains of eight, with 93
bunches colliding in ATLAS and CMS. Ultimately, the LHC will run with 2808 bunches in each beam, so there’s still a long way to go. We’ll get there slowly but surely by adding bunches to each train until the trains meet in a single machine-filling train. That will take time, but for the moment, last night’s fill puts us well on the way to achieving the main objective for 2010: a luminosity of 1032cm-2s-1.

Rolf Heuer

Urban Assault Chicago 2010

Last weekend my wife and I competed for the third time in the New Belgium Brewery Urban Assault Bike Race. Did I mention we wore banana outfits!
It was a super fun race once again and really well organized.








I've got the map of the ride shown here:


View Urban Assault 2010 in a larger map
My only complaint I have about the whole race was the second mystery clue which read as follows:

GiRL

smILeS

NeEDEd 

It was clearly an anagram which was meant to tell you to find the next check point. However, in the heat of the race and the pseudo-colors which turns out didn't mean anything we never did decode it. So we missed out on finding the final check point...but even with that we ended up pretty good in the race times finishing 52nd in the Co-ed division (out of 102) and 127th overall (out of 170) These numbers are a little skewed since our time was really fast but we end up lower because we didn't find one of those beads!

After the race we hung out, Heather drank beer (me not drinking gives her extra tokens), got all the free cliff bars I could handle, and got to compete in their fun side games.

One such game was for only the bearded/mustache men and was to entice the crowd for applause by demonstrating our dancing skills.

Now as any of my friends/relatives/acquaintances/near by observers will tell you I suck at dancing! But something about a 2 hour bike race + banana costume make me forget this fact and I just went after it.

Now my skills didn't impress too many, but the banana costume must have and I won a gift certificate for the effort and Heather's adoration for being such a big buffoon.

All in all, a great race on a beautiful day put on by a wonderful company done with the most wonderful bike partner I could even want, my wife!

To give credit these photos are online from the photographer at the race Harlerz Photography.

p.s. The solution to the anagram was Dillenger and you were suppose to go the Biograph Theater at 2433 North Lincoln Avenue (which was ridiculously close to the start of the race...we could've won this for sure), but a good time was still had by all.

The Tevatron and Run III

Tevatron Accelerator

This is a re-post from my other blog: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/author/jonathan/

There has been a great discussion raging at Fermilab surrounding the recent report given by the Physics Advisory Committee on August 31st. In this report the committee considered the impact of extending the life of the Tevatron through 2014 in what is being called around the lab Run III.

Basically what has been outlined is trying to answer the difficult question of whether or not the immediate physics payout of extending the life of the experiments and most likely doubling the data sets out weighs the potential impact on the future experiments at Fermilab. In addition, the performance of the experiments (CDF & D0) in terms of hardware, man power, and analysis reach have to be considered when viewed in light of the draw for many scientists to move onto other interesting experiments happening at Fermilab (NuMI, Project X, etc…) and elsewhere (CMS, ATLAS, and the like…)

What faces the lab, the director of Fermilab (Pier Oddone), and the scientists that work in the world of particle physics is a really difficult one. What they have to do is look into their crystal balls and ask the questions:

1) With the LHC going into a 15 month shutdown at the end of 2011, what will the data the is already on tape look like and what kind of physics reach will it provide us?

2) With the ever improving performance of the Tevatron and the experiments at Fermilab what is the likelihood of having a discovery with a larger data set (read: Find the Higgs or exclude the Standard Model flavor in the low mass ranges)

3) What does the funding question look like for the other interests of the lab in light of the extended running of the Tevatron? Not to mention the timeline / manpower / and resource availability!

These are just some of the big issues….there are clearly 100’s more that me as a lowly graduate student am probably not even aware of! But from my own perspective I see the PAC report as a great sign! Their conclusion was simple:

The Committee strongly endorses the extension of the Tevatron run for three years during 2011–2014 under either funding scenario presented in the charge. The Committee is aware that the development of the future programs might be severely affected and projects delayed by the Collider run. The Committee recommends that efforts be made to mitigate the effects. While the Tevatron run extension would take advantage of a compelling opportunity, the long-term plans of the Laboratory and of the field, as outlined by the P5 report, should be pursued vigorously.

I was really excited to hear this! As a young researcher on the verge of graduating I saw this recommendation as an opportunity to continue my with a post-doc at Fermilab working at a time in particle physics where the chance of a real discovery (Higgs/SUSY/Beyond Standard Model) is a real possibility and to be able to contribute to the American thrust of physics in the global arena during the shutdown/upgrade of the LHC.

There is no question what the future of high energy physics will be, and that is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for many years. There is also no denying that Fermilab is looking to the future with the intensity frontier in such experiments like NuMI and Project X. However, we are at a time where the physics possibilities are so great, the timing too perfect, and the reach of our experiments so close, that I think it would be a shame not to extend the run and take this chance to make a major discovery!

Higgs Exclusion that could be extended (or discovery made) in the low mass region still to be explored

I encourage everyone to read the PAC Report and get excited for the potential reach of the Tevatron! Coming back out of our summer shutdown we are already colliding with inital luminosities near 250 nb-1 and delivering 5000 nb-1 per store. There are so many exciting hints and clues in the analysis in the pipeline at CDF that adding more of this quickly accumulating data will help shed light on all the great mysteries.

Recent result from D0 showing hints of new physics to still be understood in the asymmetry of matter and anti-matter

So, when asked: “To run or not to run?” The answer is TO RUN! At least in this humble blogger’s opinion

CMS Luminostiy Online

So for all of you who are from outside of particle physics a little explanation is in order.

When we want to know how much data we are recording in our particle physics experiments we often talk about this in terms of "Luminosity" which has strange units of inverse area and time.
Without giving too much of an explanation this is basically a measure of how many collisions we are having and how much data we are recording.

The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment currently operating at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN has posted their Luminosity plots online here:

http://cms-service-lumi.web.cern.ch/cms-service-lumi/overview.php

So you can actually see as the improvements in the accelerator and the operation of the detector improve the recorded luminosity and delivered luminosity (recorded being what the detector captures and delivered being what the accelerator pumps through the experiment) increase at nearly a exponential rate!

Not to brag too much but the same plots of the Tevatron at Fermilab can be found here:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html

All I'm saying is our inital Luminosity at the start of a store (when the particles start colliding) is pretty impressive when compared to all the data the LHC has taken so far...but they will catch up!

Here Comes the Sun

This is a great documentary outlining the reality of where technology and industry really are in reference to making solar power a real thing in the near future.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/here-comes-the-sun/

I've often found myself driving and biking around Chicago wondering why these buildings aren't installing solar panels on their roofs in order to cut down their own energy bills.

Even more, since the way I've had it explained to me, the energy produced by the panels acts like water in a pipe....when they aren't consuming this energy it will flow onto the grid making the cost of everyones energy go down.

This documentary shows me that my thoughts aren't too far off and the day of the sun will be here soon (I hope)

2010 Hadron Collider Physics Summer School (Live and Streaming)

The fifth annual CERN / Fermilab Hadron Physics summer school is currently going on right now at Fermilab in the Wilson Hall High Rise.

This annual summer school is a great opportunity for young physicists to listen to lectures about the field of high energy physics both experimental and theory. Furthermore, these  lectures are designed to give someone with limited experimental knowledge some real understanding of how these accelerators, detectors, and analysis computing take place in the real world of particle physics

This summer series is going on August 17th - August 20th and is available streaming online:
http://www-visualmedia.fnal.gov/live/2010HCPSS_Live.htm

As well as the slides from the various speakers are publicly available here:
http://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=3532

So even if you aren't able to be at Fermilab for these lectures you can still enjoy them. Much thanks to the Fermilab visual media services!

Important Results coming from the Tevatron

I think this article from Femilab Press room is one of the most important results to recently come out of the CDF/DZero experiments at the Tevatron.

With the recent combination of results and update in new high data set experiments the Tevatron has extended the exclusion of the possible mass range to the Standard Model Higgs Boson to an even larger range than before. If you take this result and couple it with other measurements this make an excellent case for one of three scenarios as I understand it (Warning: I am not working directly on a Higgs search at CDF so this is just to the best of my understanding as a rising physicists)
1) The Higgs boson is a low mass boson (between 120 - 160 GeV) and and thus has a very difficult signal to see (and will be a nightmare to detect at the Large Hadron Collider because of the increase in background production at the higher energy) and will require more data to see at the Tevatron in addition to more sophisticated analysis techniques.
2) The Higgs boson is a non-Standard Model scenario and thus has some weird decay/signal mechanism that either is overlooked or hasn't been produced yet....(I don't know what this could be but a SUSY like Higgs doublet would be one such weird scenario)
3) We've got this all wrong and we need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to our understanding of nature...(not all that likely, but I think the most interesting of the possibilities)

Stay tuned as the results update

Muddy Buddy 2010 Results!

We finished Muddy Buddy 2010 in 1 hour flat!

 Heather and I managed to finish the Muddy Buddy race in the Co-ed flight in almost 1 hour exactly! We managed to run into a few people we know from our local gym who also happened to be in our same division so we got to hang out and compete with them. 

The first place in our division was around 45 minuets and there we ~ 140 some teams we were going against, and with a time of 1:00:14 we were around #54'ish overall.

I was really happy with this result and Heather and I had a blast. The biking was WAY tougher than I ever expected and if it wasn't for the bike loaned to us by Silviu there is no way we could have ever finished it. 

Some of my memories from the race include the first obstacle, which was an 8 foot climbing wall (which was easy for us climbers) but had a cargo net on the other side. Instead of trying to turn around and gently climb down I just launched myself landed with a foot through the net, took a 360 degree tumble and made it to my feet. I was greeted by an organizer saying "That is one way to get down..."

Then started the really hard biking section with lots of mud and uphill portions. Unfortunately, a girl in front of me gave up on the biking uphill at the wrong time and jumped off her bike right in front of me. I greeted her with a handle bar in the rib (and I felt awful about it). Luckily she was fine and I started running with my bike until I could get traction. 

Finally, on the last portion of the bike I did there were some crazy steep downhill portions and I witnessed a girl grip down too hard with her front brake and eat it right over her handlebars. Luckily she popped back up and said she was fine! I ran into her at the last obstacle (a giant inflatable slide) and she was trucking along and psyched about her fall.

This race was just TOO FUN and the organizers have the format down cold! Heather and I got super muddy, raced really hard, and enjoyed sunshine and food after the race on this beautiful farm.

Now that this race is all over we are gearing up for Urban Assault in September and re-focusing on work/family/and Lollapalloza which is this weekend!

Muddy Buddy Chicago 2010

In two days Heather and I are getting ready to do Muddy Buddy race!
This is a race that some friends of ours told us about last year and couldn't say enough what a great time it was. So this year Heather and I have decided to give it a go and have been training and preparing for it!

The race starts at 7am and is about 5.5 miles long. The race starts with one team member on the bike and one team member getting ready to run. At the first mile the person on the bike completes the obstacle then starts to run. The person who was running does the obstacle and then gets on the bike. You repeat this process all the way to the end. There you wait for your team mate and complete a long crawl through the mud pit all the way to the finish line.

While we own a number of bikes and are enthusiastic bike riders, neither one of us owns a mountain bike. However, this is another example of the miraculous ways our community comes to help us and our friendSilvau loaned us his Trek Mountain bike!

So armed with this nice bike we'll see how we do, how much fun we have, and how dirty we get!
Stay tuned for results and pictures!

Live Web Cast of Talks for ICHEP 2010

I wanted to share this link that will let the general public watch and follow the proceedings from talks that are currently going on at one of the world's most important Particle Physics conferences ICHEP (International Conference in High Energy Physics) 2010

http://webcast.in2p3.fr/2010/ichep/index.php?live=go

Lots of great results from CMS and Atlas as well as some exciting things coming from CDF and D0!

Enjoy!

Fermilab 2010 Triathlon Results

Well my results are in for the Fermilab Triathlon and it is basically what I expected. I managed to finish 15 out of 20 individual competitors owing much of it to my terrible swimming.

It took me 29 mins to swim the 800 meters (which was the slowest out of all the swimming times put up that day I'm sad to say). The average time for the competitors was 21 mins with the fastest being done in 10 mins flat!

The biking I did much better finishing all 20 km bike ride in 42.5 mins (which was the 7th fastest time for all the biking...and I did it with a fixed gear bike! The average time for biking was 45 mins, so coming in 3 mins faster was a good result, and the quickest time was done in 31 mins!

Finally the 5 km run I finished in 29.5 mins (which was the 12th fastest time...so not quite as fast as I wanted, but by that time the struggle in the pool had taken its toll). The average time for the run was 28.5 mins with the fastest being done in 19 mins.

Most importantly, congratulations to the winner Mika Versterinen who finished the whole thing in 1 hour and 3 mins! (My total time was 1 hour 45 mins...so I got smoked!) And thanks to the Fermilab Graduate Student Association for putting on the super fun event.

Secondly and maybe even with greater importance, Thanks to my wife Heather who came out early in the morning, volunteered to count laps in the pool for the other swimmers, cheered me on at every transition, and kept me full of bananas and water till I was done!You are the best wife a man could hope for and push me to do better at everything I try!

All the results will be posted here http://www.fnal.gov/orgs/gsa/calendar/triathlon/tri10/

Doing less bad is still doing no good (Part 5)

Well, here it is. After 1/2 of the year here are my results in monitoring how much I drive my car every week.
25 weeks in I have driven 4518.6 miles averaging 181.7 miles per week. That is about 81 more miles per week than I would have guessed initally and WAY more than I want do every week!
If I break this down into monetary terms (something that should persuade anyone) and I estimate that gasoline in the Chicagoland area has been (as estimated by IllinoisGasPrices.com) has been around $2.90 per gallon and I'll give my Chevy Aveo the benefit of the doubt and say I get 30 miles to the gallon all the time...that mean I've spent $436 in gas this year! Not to mention oil changes / maintenance / insurance / parking etc...

Now, my goal is to get my average miles per week down below 100 miles...however I work at Fermilab finishing my PhD, which is 26 miles from my door. I should really be going there at least 3 times a week even though I can do a lot of work from home (it is important to have your face shown and to be where the action and expertise is).
If I use the metra and my bike it is about $5.50 each way (a little less if I buy a ten punch pass...and don't lose it) plus about 8 miles of biking each way. So if I just bought metra tickets and came to the lab 3 times a week that is 33 dollars a week plus 48 miles of biking coming to (in 25 weeks) $825 plus 1200 miles on the bike...double what the car costs in terms of gas...that seems unreasonable!!!
So the answer (since moving isn't an option nor is getting a different job) must be a hybrid solution where I refuse to use my car in any other capacity than just going back and forth to work (as long as gas stays under 3.50 per gallon or so) occasionally biking to the lab using the Metra with a ten punch pass (lower rates that way) and finding a reasonable substitute (carpooling with my lab mates / rock climbing people) to help keep my miles per week down.
So while I'll continue to plot my progress and keep this online I think this analysis has taught me two things
1) My expectation for what I do week-to-week only favors the good weeks and ignores the bad ones! I drive way more than 100 miles per week...but not every week...and the weeks I'm over, I'm WAY OVER.
2) The solution to this problem is non-trivial and should be a working hybrid that needs constant attention.
I think I want to get an odometer for my bike to start to see how many miles I in truth bike every week...to see if using my bike more is a way to offset the total miles I travel.
Expect more interesting plots with bike miles included to come!

Fermilab Triathlon!!!

This year I am participating in the Fermilab Triathlon put on by the Graduate Student Association of Fermilab.
This is their 9th annual event, however my first (last year I went to Thailand during this event).
The event is broken into three parts as followed:

• 800m Swim in the FNAL pool.
• 20km Bike on an out and back loop on FNAL roads (see below for race route).
• 5km Run on a great loop course consisting of both paved roads and prairie paths (see below for race route).

What has me excited about this is that I am a terrible swimmer...but the chance to get to do it in a pool in the relaxed environment of the Fermilab Village. Then it is on to a bike path that I've ridden a number of times including a loop around the accelerator ring and then a jog around the lakes and houses in the Village where I got to live and run for an entire year.

Now since this is my first serious race of this sort I'm not expecting to do very well...in addition I am riding a my fixed gear bike....there is no way I can beat someone who is on a serious race bike...but I'll bet I make someone look twice at how much they spend on their bike!
Even more than all of this...the GSA puts this on FOR FREE! All you need is a Fermilab Id and the willingness to have some fun!

Two Things I'm Reading Right Now

So since I am desperately trying to finish a PhD in particle physics and my research goes in spurts where I have weeks like the last one (60+ hours of work) followed by weeks like this one (stumped on a problem that has me baffled) I find myself with some odd time to catch up on reading as well as research. So I thought I'd post two of the things I am reading right now.

1) Dark Matter: A Primer by Katherine Garrett, Gintaras Duda
This seems to be a nice introduction to the story, case for, and current research in the phenomenon known as dark matter. The reading is a bit dense for the non-scientist, but someone with upper level undergraduate or beginning level graduate knowledge in physics should be able to follow and enjoy what seems to be a well layed out paper on the subject with lots of good references to follow up with.
I try my best to troll http://arxiv.org at least once a week. It is a great way to stay on top of what is being published in my field
(http://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.2483)

2) Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Beynus

I'm only ~100 pages into this book and I'm already pretty hooked. This books seems to be all about the idea of extending our research into the problems that we face with industrialization, pollution, and expanding population by taking points from nature instead of trying to control nature.
Answering problems of energy, agriculture, and other wide subjects by asking, "How does nature manage to feed/power the entire bio-sphere without people intervening? And, where do humans fit into this plan?"
I'm always fascinated by people that take on the tough questions by asking the simple ones...and this book is all about it.

So, there it is...the things I do in addition to research that take away from me ever getting done in time ;-)

Chicago Naked Bike Ride!!!

Biking is one of my many passions. Being naked...not so much. However, when my wife told me about the Chicago Naked Bike Ride this weekend I couldn't help but join in.

Needless to say it was a lot of fun!!! Around minute 4:39 you catch a glimpse of me and my wife riding by...near the tall bike and the completely naked man with orange hair. Now we didn't go totally nude, instead I was in boxer briefs (looking like a normal cyclist in stretch shorts) and Heather went in her 'newly weds' bikini.

With slogans like "Less Gas, More Ass", "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, that oil spill has got to go!" and the ever simple "F--k BP!" the ride was full of scenes of fun and freedom. While I do support biking instead of cars, and going nude to make a point...I don't necessarily agree with blaming BP for our oil spills. At least not so much as most of the riders did. Instead I blame us, our dependence on cars / oil based products / and the agriculture we've grown around oil based pesticides and fertilizers.

Now, I don't offer any solutions (yet...I'm still educating myself on the problem at large and my own contributions) nor do I think riding naked around Chicago really solves anything. But if you are going to make a statement you might as well have fun with it...and this was fun

Doing less bad is still doing no good (Part 4)

Well, here it is. 19 weeks into the year and the fluctuations are still present on a week by week basis, however they seem to be getting worse.
Granted there is some strange activity in my life in the last 4 weeks. I got married (which required more driving then I ever thought it would), then went on a honeymoon (which I did no driving in my car...but did drive while I was in Mallorca), then the week I get back BAM, 500+ miles going back and forth to Fermilab at 5am (no trains / cycling that early).
So what to derive from this...through 19 weeks I'm averaging 180 miles per week roughly...which is 80 more than I wold have guessed initially and I am biking WAY less then I want. Time to get serious about biking instead of driving and now that good weather is here I can see if I can drive down my average.

D0 sees new physics!!!

So some big news from Fermilab was just recently released. (See press release here). The interesting thing here is that the result gives an indication of why we observe an abundance of matter over anti-matter in the universe. In one interpretation (and this might be a bit of an over-reach) this could be experimental evidence for physics that isn't explained in our current best theory of particle physics (The Standard Model) and help explain the existence of everything we observe in the universe!

With such big claims I think this result deserves a little bit more of an explanation. So one of the big mysteries in particle physics is why do we observe so much matter in the universe (basically everything we can see with our telescopes) and observe so little anti-matter IF the universe started with the Big Bang in which the universe was created with a sea of matter and anti-matter and was governed by the laws of particle physics in the early universe.
Basically, up till these very new results (with the exception of the B_s results discovered at Fermilab) there was no experimental evidence that matter and anti-matter behaved differently in any way significant enough to account for the HUGE difference in the abundance of matter over anti-matter that we see in the universe. However, this new result is a big clue along that path showing a very significant difference between the symmetric theory known as the Standard Model and what we observe experimentally.
Now the D0 experiment had to use some really sophisticated techniques to do this experiment and using aspects of their experiment that CDF (its sister experiment at the Tevatron and my home) is not capable of doing.
So what does this mean...could mean a lot of different things. But I'm a big fan of making a measurement and letting it speak for itself. So here is what we can say, this is the first statistically significant evidence that the Standard Model gets the CP violation wrong, Fermilab/D0 were the first to get there, and there is evidence that our Standard Model isn't the whole story and we need to keep looking because the new physics we have been searching for to explain the universe is right around the corner!

Bike Map Routes come to Google

 Thanks to my friend Mairead for pointing this article out to me from the NewYork Times

Google now has bike routes suggested and plotted for a great deal of American cities. Particularly exciting to me was to see that they already had many of the paths I take back and forth from Fermilab to the Geneva train station plotted out. This is obviously an improving tool so some of the less traveled paths aren't on there yet, but I was able to plot a route all the way to Milwaukee using this tool and found two possible courses

I smell a long well plotted bike trip very soon! To check it out look at this map in google and click on more, Bicycling


View Larger Map

Getting lazy in my posting

So even though I have a lot to say about my wedding and what I've got going on right now...I'm getting lazy and have already mentioned some of it on my more professional blog Quantum Diaries

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/

I will say this much...I am the luckiest man alive with the best wife/family/friends I could ever hope for...and now I have the photos to prove it!