This is an extra homework that some students of the General Relativity class did to make up for one that did not count earlier in the semester. While writing it, I realized that this universe is in fact, Heaven! You know, we become beings of light, and live forever, etc…
I thought it would be fun to share its final form:
“You work in the design section of the company that manufactures universes. (This is Continue reading ‘Project Heaven’
So last week we had a visit from Kelly Stelle (he’s part of the high energy theory group at Imperial College) who gave us an excellent talk about aspects of supergravity. His work connects to the fascinating ongoing story about finiteness, and the new techniques being used to do the multiloop computations (see a recent Scientific American cover story about some of that – it is misleadingly packaged by the magazine, as usual (preview here), but the article itself, focusing on the computational issues, is nice).
After his talk, I gave him a tour of the campus, and as we passed through the Doheny Library to view the lovely interior, we stopped by the ongoing construction of the Mosely Snowflake Sponge fractal that I told you about here.
They’re making a lot of progress.
We spent a few minutes folding some business cards to contribute some component cubes to the construction, and I took a snap (see photo on left) of Kelly at work. We made two or three cubes each…
Here’s a shot of one of the completed modules Continue reading ‘Fractal in Progress…’
On the Red Line on Saturday (on my way to test out the Expo line – see earlier post) there was an unusual spectacle in one of the carriages. This woman had some headphones halfway on, and was singing Beatles songs at the top of her voice! She was at the start of “All My Loving” when I got on (I’ve written some of the lyrics down to remind me of the moment). After their initial surprise, people were doing that typical “I don’t see anything unusual” look, trying not to notice her by looking everywhere but in her direction.
I imagine they thought she was crazy. Perhaps she was, or perhaps she was just having an odd day, but for sure she was also just enjoying herself immensely, not Continue reading ‘All My Loving…’
The new line rocks! I went down there with my Brompton on the earlier side of things, this morning. I took the Red Line and changed seamlessly to the Expo Line at Metro/7th, and it was an excellent ride. I really do think (as I said in the previous post) that this is part of a major transformation for the city. This is a transformation with regards things like energy usage, congestion, community, air quality and all those wonderful things public transport helps with.
Of course, at the outset there is something truly right, to my mind, about being able to easily connect from downtown to Exposition Park and the Science and Natural History Museums, the African American Museum, and of course USC – All major Los Angeles institutions clustered together and now connected back to the newly beating heart of it all. From USC, I can now easily connect to the music center, LA Live, MOCA, any number of my favourite restaurants, bars, cafes, and other places I love downtown, and then float on home on the Red Line, or off to Pasadena or Boyle Heights on the Gold Line. This is so exciting to see come to pass. I’ve been dreaming of trains running along Exposition Boulevard between USC and the Museums and the Rose Garden for many years now, and it is now a reality. Stepping off the train today at the Expo Park/USC stop was just magical.
I recorded some footage of my travels on it today for you and edited it all together into a ten minute film. You can see it in the embed below. Consider it an invitation to Continue reading ‘Now Arriving…!’
Only ten hours until the Big Transformation! The Expo line will open to the public at 5:00am tomorrow (Saturday). I think that this first major thrust to the West, connecting downtown to USC, Exposition Park and the Museums, and points West to Culver City, should be truly transformational for not just the locations involved, but the city at large.
I hope it will change minds about what is possible for public transport in Los Angeles in a huge way (the old “it doesn’t go anywhere” complaint will be heard a bit less maybe?), and connect and enrich all the neighborhoods involved. (And yes, on the personal side of things I hope it ends up, in combination with the Red Line, being better than just sitting on the bus all the way. We shall see.)
There’ll be a special schedule for this opening weekend, with the line (free to travel on for the two days) stopping at 7:00pm. I was a bit scared by this for a moment, Continue reading ‘Only Ten Hours…’
It was a perfect day for cycling, back on April 15th when the 4th CicLAVia took place. (Sorry it took me a while to report on it.) A lot of people turned out, and it was as good as it has ever been! We set of from the HelMel area again and went to Bolye Heights and back, breaking for an excellent lunch at Guisados again. Just like last time. The photo below featuring the 4th Street bridge over the LA River is my favourite single photo of the event this time:
Of course, there’s not just the one photo for you. I took hundreds of other great ones Continue reading ‘CicLAVia April 2012′
You see such lovely things along the side of the street if there’s time to notice. (Click for a larger view.)
This is one of the many reasons I often walk each day to and from the bus stop or subway station. You miss this stuff in a car (or sometimes even when on a bike).
By the way, I’ve updated my earlier post with photos from the LA Times Festival of Books, as promised.
-cvj
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This is rather nicely done*… Stay with it beyond the opening bits, and enjoy the breakdown! Click on the embed after the fold:
Continue reading ‘Higgs Boson Explanation, by PhD Comics’
Er… it is National Physics Day today, apparently. National Science Foundation says so, so it must be so.
Bad me for not knowing. In my defence, I try to live every day like it is National Physics Day. International, even.
Continue reading ‘National Physics Day’
It is the 22nd Anniversary of the launch of the Hubble space telescope today! As you know, this instrument has produced a wealth of scientific information over the years, as well as lots of wonderful pictures for everyone that broadened and deepened our sense of wonder about this remarkable universe we find ourselves in. The Hubble site is here.
Phil Plait has re-posted his 2010 post “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble”, Continue reading ‘Happy Birthday Hubble!’
You know, I’d love to pretend that I’ve just come in from hanging out at the Edison, or the Blue whale, or some other fun place, feeling a bit concerned about my morning class on how to write equations for the shape of the universe (we do some cosmology in the General Relativity class tomorrow)… but instead I’m up at almost 1:00am because of a persistent dry cough, indigestion, and a noisy mockingbird in a tree just outside. Are these connected? I do not know. All I know is I cannot sleep.
So I blog.
It has been, once again, a crazy week. There are times when I wonder if this has become the norm, which usually leads me to valiantly fight a bit to ensure that is not the case, resulting a a withdrawal from a lot of stuff to regroup. I hope to do that soon. Although I’ve said yes to so many things, it is looking like July or August before that can happen. That’s bad.
Right now I can only remember back as far as Wednesday, where the day began with a last check of the midterm I wrote for the GR class (second midterm for them) before setting it at 10:00am. (Perhaps the most interesting thing on it was perhaps the computation of the surface gravity of a static black hole, working in Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates…) At 10:25 I snuck out of the classroom to meet with a screenwriting student who is working on a screenplay featuring a physicist character. She was seeking some advice and wanted to exchange some thoughts about the work she’s doing… I got to gripe a bit about my pet peeves about scientist characters (not just the scarcity of well drawn ones – although things have gotten better in recent years) in TV and film. Somehow the rest of Wednesday (after the seminar ended at 1:40) is a bit of a blur, but I think it did involve me leaving campus to head home to hide and do a bit of finish work on a page I mentioned in the last post. Maybe. (Oh, there was also the official opening party for Umamicatessen (new restaurant downtown) in the evening, that kept me out to almost midnight. I’ve been meaning to blog about the place since the official “soft” opening party about two months ago, but had not got to it yet.)
Scene from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2012. More to follow below.
Thursday saw me start the day way too early (as described in that post), and the Continue reading ‘Late Night Review’
I’m supposed to be writing a talk, but it’s too early to start on it. I’ve been woken up early (5:00am) and kept awake by ideas swirling around in my head, and a mockingbird’s singing – it is nesting in a tree near the house, and I think I may be doomed to listen to it every night until the Fall…
Tuesday of last week saw me hiding and working on The Project. This time, it involved a bit of stalking. Last year I wrote a story which mostly takes place in a family home, between a brother and sister. I had a very particular shape for the house in my mind. They move from room to room, and spend a bit of time on a patio at the front. This time, I decided to build the entire house and populate it with all that I needed so that I can use it as reference to design the backgrounds for the story. Some weeks before I’d started looking a bit more closely at some houses I’d seen in the area as models. It is almost like the house which existed in my head was out there somewhere in the city, and I just had to find it. Somehow it was intended to be a typical smaller Los Angeles single family home, and if I looked for it, there it would be. I saw a number of houses on my walks that looked suitable enough, and was going to choose one of them and make modifications… and then one day I found it.
I’d been walking past it every day for several weeks, and had not really been in the right mode of thought when doing so, and so had not looked at it in the right way. Also, I’d been distracted by a rather larger and grander (too grand) house almost across the street from it. As soon as I thought about what I’d designed last year, and so rejected the house across the street, I realized that this one was the house I’d been looking for all along. So I took a couple of hurried surreptitious reference photos (while walking past pretending to be fiddling with my phone), and went home and laid out some of the dimensions I’d guessed for it.
I worked up some made up floor plans (based on my story’s needs and my memory of the interior of houses like this that I remember, and then I decided to build it Continue reading ‘Making it Real’
This was a fun assignment. I’m giving a talk (“Graphic Adventures in Science Outreach”) on Friday to my colleagues and friends at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and they asked me to send a graphic to them to use for the poster. So I spent a bit of time digging into my database of drawings for The Project and threw something together pretty quickly. I rather like it. (You will maybe recognize that drawing from an earlier post – I added in an earlier stage, and then a drawing of a hand I’d done for something else…) By the way, it is not an event open to the general public and is by invitation only, so just showing up won’t get you in.
-cvj
Ok… probably not to me, but I have been banging on about the idea for some time, since my 2007 post on Paris’ Velib, so maybe mine was one of the many voices that came to his ears eventually… So they are going to finally start a bike sharing program in Los Angeles! News story here, and the Mayor Villaraigosa will be talking more about it at the start of today’s CicLAVia.
This is fantastic news!!! With this, the opening of the Expo line in a couple of weeks, and a number of other things, it feels like a lot of my dreams for LA are coming true….
-cvj
Don’t forget (if you’re in the Los Angeles area), 10:00am to 3:00pm tomorrow is CicLAVia. This is the fourth one. The weather looks like it will be perfect for cycling, and there’ll be even more stops for food and drink than before. More information at their website here (click here for the expanded route that debuted last time). See earlier posts (linked below) on the previous events, and I’ll re-embed one of the time lapse films I made so you can ride along with me:
See you there!
-cvj
I just learned from Amy French in a comment on the post on the production of the “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” play that got cancelled) that the short promo film she did for the play is on YouTube. It has two of the principals on screen. It’s short and fun!
Here is is: Continue reading ‘Picasso and Einstein: Face Off?’
Don’t forget the big event of the Spring! The LA Times Book Festival is the weekend of the 21st and 22nd April, and we’ll be hosting it on the USC campus. The website is here for more information, and start booking your tickets (free) for the various panels you plan to visit.
I’m also looking forward to the Book Awards on the night of the 20th. It’s always fun and interesting, with a great reception at the end (see links at end for previous posts). I’ve no idea if I’ll get tickets to all that this year (but I hope so, since three friends of mine are presenting [update: see here to purchase some]), but in any case it’ll be interesting to learn the results of the awards in the various categories again this year.
The list of nominees is here. Here’s the list from the Science and Technology Continue reading ‘LA Times Festival of Books 2012′
Prepping for a Sunday roast (I decided to have for a few friends over for it at relatively short notice):
The result (just as they were about to be carved, and the cornmeal-walnut-celery-etc stuffing removed):
Continue reading ‘Sunday Roast’
9:30am, my office. Phone rings. I get it on the first ring.
Hello?
Oh. Is that… Professor… Johnson?
Yes.
Oh! I was not expecting to… Well I’m watching this program, and had some questions…
I see.
Well, when you say…
Well, who am I talking to?
Oh, I’m [name].
Hi.
Hi… So, when you say millions of years, even billions of years in these programs… do you mean earth years? or, um, do you mean space years?
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean the regular years. Earth years, if you like.
Oh. So these things are really that old.
Oh, yes. They are.
I have one more question.
Of course, please go ahead.
Michio Kaku says that the universe is full of many things and all you have to do is ask for something and you’ll get it. How do you go about doing that?
Uh… Well… I’m not sure I understand what that means…
Well, you know we come from supernovae…. and… we’re from space… and there are maybe lots of gods out there that we can ask for things…Kaku says we can just ask the universe. How does one do that?
Well… I am not sure what he had in mind. It might be…. might be best to ask him…. But maybe what he meant is that the universe is a very big place, with lots of things going on, and maybe he meant that there are all sorts of things you could find out there because it is so big and diverse… But perhaps he did not have in mind that a particular person could go out and get any of those things… but you might want to ask him. I can’t say for sure.
Oh, ok.
But I can tell you what I think. I think that while the universe is a big and exciting diverse place, it is still the case that a given individual only has limited access to all those things in it. It is a big place, and so you mostly only have access to what you can get to locally. Travelling around it takes a long time…
Oh, I see. Well, thank you.
And… thank you, by the way, for watching the program. I am glad you enjoyed it.
Yes, I love these programs.
I’m glad to hear that. I hope you continue watching and do tell your friends about them too. All the best.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
I enjoyed that chat. I love it when people are inspired to step away from their Continue reading ‘Inquiries’
Tuesday evening was fun. My dear friend Amy French, who was hired to direct a production of Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” had been been rehearsing her cast for a few weeks. She invited two people to come along as guests one evening to talk about Picasso and Einstein – their work discussed in the play (Cubism and Special Relativity), and the impact of their work on the world. Megan Mastroianni from the Art History department (see her in the center of the photo above – you can click it for a larger view) came along to talk about the Picasso aspect, and I talked about Einstein. It was a lot of fun, and verity informative for all concerned.
The cast were all assembled, and Einstein and Picasso were even in costume, as we Continue reading ‘Picasso and Einstein’
(Well, it’s not really the correct use of the term in the title, but I’m going to stick with it.) It has been a busy last several days, and so I’ve been quiet here. The last couple of days I’ve been at a conference in Pasadena. I’ve been enjoying the conference. There has been a host of interesting talks, and interesting people to talk to, including old friends I’m getting to catch up with a bit. It has been quite tiring though. I evidently don’t have the stamina I used to have for a schedule of eight talks in a day. Perhaps I never did.
On Thursday I managed to get an hour of David Gross’ time to sit down with me and Continue reading ‘Conferring’
So this morning I splashed on some flat colour on the woman’s side of things.
I did not finish the guy and so have left him out. (Click for a larger view.)
And there you have it… a little bit of the production cycle on The Project over the last several posts.
-cvj
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I decided when I got home to spend the evening doing a bit of refining of the previously mentioned roughs and start trying out a new inking idea (working on Continue reading ‘Ink Happening’
Oddly today I had a meeting in a skyscraper in downtown LA that I’d been studying last year because I was doing a drawing of it for The Project. Funny old world. I really enjoyed being in it because from the meeting room one can view the classic public library building, a favorite of mine, from the 41st floor, and also check out the scene in the Standard rooftop bar (been a while since I’ve hung out there).
But the most unexpected thing of all was when I returned to ground level. I was walking on my way to the subway and slowed to enjoy a view of the public library, only to be faced with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in two forms, Schrodinger’s equation, and an atomic spectrum (Rydberg, Bohr, etc) that one can derive from the latter, engraved into the wall! Hurrah!
The thing is, I can’t remember whether I’ve seen this before. I’ve passed there so very Continue reading ‘Downtown Quantum Mechanics’
A process update, since some of you are curious about The Project.
While hiding in the desert on walkabout recently, I finished writing a story I’d been working on (one of a few I worked on), and started thumbnailing parts of it and refining the pagination of it. Thumbnails are just little sketches of how a page might be laid out, maybe focusing on how the eye might move about the page, how the words and pictures might flow, etc. There were some pages I was immediately interested to try out, and so I did larger versions of them in rough here and there (and for some other stories too)…. For one of them, I have a really exciting exchange (about symmetry and beauty) over a notepad, and I sketched over oatmeal one breakfast time a mannequin construction of the layout. (See earlier for introduction to my mannequin friends.)
Well, on Thursday and Friday I finished the rough pencils for the whole page, featuring those two figures, now given flesh and bone. Today I did the main figures for another page, with a variation on that pose of the mannequin drawing from the desert. (Vellum helps here.) I thought I’d share (click for larger view):
They’ll be refined later on, with things like scaling of various bits and pieces fixed Continue reading ‘Process’
Finally!
The Expo line will be opening (after an incredibly long testing phase) on April 28th. I’ll be there, Brompton in hand, to test it out, I think. A couple of articles on it appeared in the LA Weekly and the LA Times.
I’ve been excited about this for a while, not just because there’ll be a station across the street from my office, essentially (and the fact that when phase two is completed in 2015, or thereabouts, I’ll be able to step out of my office and board a train for the beach), but because I Continue reading ‘Opening!’
Well, you’ll either get this or you won’t (helpful remark there)… but if you do, you’ll see that it is very clever and hilarious*:
-cvj
*Thanks aef!
My friend the science writer Casey Rentz wrote a nice piece about the Science Film Competition and showcase last week for Scientific American Blogs. She talks a bit about the issue of science in film, the competition, and points to some other science plus film projects too. See here.
-cvj
Well, that turned out to be a very productive Walkabout. I set up an office there, taking some of the essentials of the things I was working on and disappearing for most of the week. No computers, just pens, pencils, and paper. My office? A chair and a shelter made of thin fabric, string, two poles, and some large stones to weigh down the pegs against the wind. The shelter was against the sun, since I was in Death Valley, camping. As I sometimes do.
My routine was simple: I’d wake up at about sunrise or shortly thereafter and after a visit to the restrooms across the way to freshen up a bit, I’d get my old whisperlite stove going to make some water boiling for tea. Once that’s done, I’d make a pot of oatmeal for breakfast and sitting eating it while flicking at the gnats that seem to begin to swarm during the morning’s first heat, I’d watch the morning move along for a while, with campers across the way getting ready for their day’s hikes or drives in the area. (My hiking boots and other gear were with me just in case I wanted to hike, but that was not my focus, and I didn’t in the end.) Next I’d make a large pot of coffee (sweetened with dark brown sugar), have a cup of it then and there, and pour the rest into a thermos flash for consumption during the day. Then I’d wash up everything, put them away, and take my work materials to my office, situated just behind my tent. By then, most people have left for good or for the day in the neighboring campsites, and it is quiet, except for the large ravens that tour the Continue reading ‘And Back…’
Yes, two of your favorite things, right?
I thought so. Well, consider signing up to my friend Amy Rowat’s special new course at UCLA on the subject. It will feature many fantastic chefs from some of the finest restaurants around the city and beyond, as well as some excellent food writers. The course will have a wealth of wonderful information (like at the answers to why carrots are sweeter in the Winter), and hands on practice to get involved in. I think the course is only open to UCLA students (who should be sure to register fast to get on the limited list), but there are four public events (I think you might have to register for those too, as space it limited). See the list of events here. I’ve mentioned Amy and her work here on the blog before, soho and have a look at the earlier post for more about her work at UCLA, and go here for more on the Rowat Lab. (See also a recent article featuring her lab’s work on food science in UCLA’s Prime magazine’s Winter 2012 edition.)
Now, even if you do not make it over to UCLA, you can check you the excellent Continue reading ‘Science and Food!’
My friend and colleague the author Aimee Bender wrote a piece for AFAR magazine recently about the process of her rediscovering Los Angeles over the years. Seeing it from outside the car, on foot, on a bike, and on the bus. You know, the way you see it a lot here through your Asymptotia-tinged spectacles. It appears in the March/April issue, and you can see it here. (I must say, that British guy she runs into seems like hard work… geez…!)
-cvj
On Sunday night I needed to throw together an illustrative graphic to communicate some of the design I want on the film I mentioned earlier I’m working on.
There was a meeting the next morning, and so I wanted to pretty it all up and put some narrative text on the side, as part of a larger report. This is part of what I came up with. I’ll spare you the text, and the later images I’ll perhaps show later.
I’ve no explanation other than it is (if filmed) a sequence involving watching a hand Continue reading ‘Storyboard Extract’
This is another lovely short film* by Cristóbal Vila, this time about numbers and nature. As a big fan of the golden mean and the Fibonacci sequence (and Penrose tilings – you’ve read me go on about all that here before), I love the way this is all pulled together:
-cvj
*Spotted at Lines and Colors.
Saw these on campus the other day. I’ve forgotten what these are called, but I am always impressed with them.
They are part of a set of ornamental plants that in another, closely related, universe would (along with their neighbors) perhaps feature more on our dinner plates than in gardens, I fancy. I must try to find their name at some point.
But the point here is that I’ve never really studied their flowers before… They’re amazing and unexpected in form!
-cvj
It is Spring break. I’ll be off planet for a while. Until my return, there are some posts scheduled to appear (below this one, for a while), so stay tuned! I’ll let you know about my travels when I return. Comments are suspended until I return, due to the frequency Continue reading ‘Walkabout’
Ever heard of the Mosely Snowflake Sponge? There is one being constructed on campus here at USC right now! (The image on the left is the poster for the event.) The fractal was discovered by engineer Jeannine Mosely, and she did a similar construction (of a different fractal, the Menger Sponge) some years ago out of folded business cards (see here for some great images!), and the same thing is being done here. You can learn more about the project here. Margaret Wertheim, of the Institute for Figuring, is running this project, with the help of Tyson Gaskill. Everyone is invited to join in. You can just show up and fold a few cubes as you pass by. I took a picture and made encouraging remarks on this visit. (My defense is that I’d just given an hour and a half presentation, it was getting late into the night, and I was tired.)
There’s Margaret and Tyson working on constructing it, alongside a colleague of theirs Continue reading ‘A Snowflake on Campus’
Just got back from stalking the biggest rock star in town. It is the centerpiece (wrapped in white material for the trip to reduce damage) of what will be the Levitated Mass piece by Michael Heizer, at LACMA, and it has been trundled over the last ten days or so from Riverside to Los Angeles in little late night journey, and as I speak is heading to its resting place at LACMA down Wilshire Boulevard. The picture is it when it was passing USC (my place of work) at about 10:45pm Friday night, trundling down Figueroa. This $10 million operation (involving a huge entourage Continue reading ‘Rock Star!’
A lovely short film* by Cristóbal Vila, celebrating Escher and a number of lovely mathematical ideas and objects that you might know and love:
-cvj
*Spotted at Lines and Colors.
Speaking of film projects involving science, I’m involved in two new ones I’ve been meaning to tell you about. I’m working on producing a short film about the Aspen Center for Physics, to be used in the upcoming 50th Anniversary celebrations. My partner in crime on this is Bob Melisso, who I’ve worked with before a number of times, and it’s already been interesting, and fun. I think that the final piece ought to be interesting at the very least. I’ve been trying to work in a very particular look and feel for the film that reflects something about the nature of the work that goes on at the center (both its content and how it is done), and so there’ll be lots of chalk, scribbling on boards, reflections on the creative process and how a place like the Aspen Center helps, and so on and so forth.
We’ll be shooting from time to time over the early and middle Spring, and doing the Continue reading ‘Documenting’
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