Physicist and professor at a school on the north side of Chicago. Black holes, quantum gravity, cosmology. Rocky Top, Tar Heel. Science, dogs, lake photos. Faves are spooky action at a distance, boosts are Lorentz transformations to another inertial frame. Opinions are mine, not my employer’s. #Physics #BlackHoles #Gravity #SciComm #Dogs
Level 14 Prof of Physics, Neutral Good, S:11 I:16 W:15 D:11 C:12 Ch:11, HP: 68, THAC0: 11, Equipment: Vorpal Chalk, Periapt of Tenure, Tweed Jacket (Cursed)
“There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas."
Astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born #OTD in 1900. She used quantum mechanics to decode the spectral lines of stars and deduce their elemental composition, concluding they are mostly H and He, and was the first woman to be made full professor and department chair at Harvard.
Image: Harvard Observatory
I bought it for students to use, they never used it, it got packed up and stashed when the building was renovated, and I forgot it existed.
It’s a total time capsule. A 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, 1 TB hard drive, 21.5” screen, and an AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 512MB GDDR5. Nice little machine for 2011.
Going to load this up with movies and games and never upgrade the software ever.
Just found a forgotten iMac from mid-2011.
Essentially unused. Still has the OS X install dvd in the drive. Running 10.5.6 for some reason, even though 10.6 had been out for almost two years.
RFK Jr is trying to prevent these sorts of advances when he attacks funding for mRNA-based vaccines and treatments.
It was not *the* medal -- he kept that at home. Apparently when you get a Nobel Prize you are also given a replica of the medal for display.
It was a funny moment, though, when he saw the look on my face and could tell right away that I was not sure if I was allowed to touch it.
As most physicists will tell you, a clean desk is a sure sign of a sick mind.
This is the ideal academic desk. You may not like it, but this is what peak desk looks like.
Besides the famous chalkboard photo, Ralph Morse also captured a close-up of Einstein's desk.
Covered with papers and journals, his pipe laying on its side, a photo set down as if he’d just been looking at it. It is a very relatable desk.
Image: Ralph Morse, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
And here is a better view of the state of the blackboard in Einstein's office when he passed away on April 18, 1955. The image appeared in LIFE magazine.
I can see on the right side where he is comparing the number of independent components of various quantities in two formulations (which he has labeled "new" and "old") of gravity.
Image: Ralph Morse, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
