Norwegian Wood

From the press release:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2006 jointly to

John C. Mather
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA,

and

George F. Smoot
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

“for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”.

手头上正好有俞永强的热大爆炸宇宙学, 翻开一看, 竟然有一章详细的介绍宇宙微波背景辐射(cosmic microwave background radiation), 里面还提到了1989年NASA发射的COBE(COsmic Background Explorer)卫星, Mather和Smoot的主要结果都是由COBE完成的. 唉, 想当年选这门课的时候, 就去了第一节课和最后一节. 记得考试的那天, 在文史楼一楼的那间阶梯教室, 开考前五分钟, 进来一对男女, 坐下, 发现四周同学都在忙着背书, 一问才知道今天考试, 接着又走了出去…

three comments:

1. COBE的那个黑体辐射数据, 是我见过的理论和实验最吻合的数据.

2. 浏览到Mather的主页, 他的介绍是: 1974 Ph.D. (Physics), Univ. of California at Berkeley (4.0 GPA), 呵呵, 很少看到把GPA放上去的.

3. 终于明白了最近网上流行的一个类似卡通的图的来源.

这个网站有不少蛮不错的漫画, http://www.xkcd.com/.

The Nobel Prize in medicine for 2006 has been awarded to two US scientists who discovered a phenomenon called RNA interference, which regulates the expression of genes. From the official Nobel Prize website:

“for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA”

The Nobel Prize in Physics is scheduled to be announced tomorrow today. Who do you think will win? or what field of physics will be honored this year? I won’t bet any money on AMO, as they’ve got two of the last five.

2005: Quantum optics and precision spectroscopy
2004: Asymptotic freedom in strong interaction
2003: Superconductivity theory
2002: Neutrino and X-ray astronomy
2001: BEC in dilute gases of alkali atoms

Condensed matter area might be a good bet, or maybe some astronomy related field.

今天星期一, 11点钟例行的组会.

下午有个报告. 系里还在interview新教授, 今天来的人是天文方面的. 本来没打算去的, 前几次去听天文的报告, 每次都听得直打瞌睡, 云里雾里. 吃完中饭, 硬被laura和jason拉着去了, 结果感觉还不错. 报告题目是Probing galaxies and their dark matter halos with gravitational lensing. gravitational lensing最近比较火, 主要在于能够用它探测到天文望远镜不能直接观测的东西. Einstein的广义相对论说重力其实就是空间-时间的四维空间在质量密集物体附近的弯曲, 如果在某处有星云这样的大质量物体的话, 我们在地球上观测比这些物体更远的天文物体, 观测的图像将会有系统性的扭曲, 由此可以计算出在星云位置的质量分布. 一般的天文望远镜只能观测那些会发光的天文物体, 对那些没有辐射的, 像dark matter, dark energy之类的东西就无能为力了. 所以最近不少天文学家都在用gravitational lensing寻找dark xx存在的证据.

听完报告后想起前不久在cv上看到的一篇证实dark matter存在的文章, 很值得一读. 不过看后感觉给dark matter所赋予的性质太玄乎了, 很有点像当年发现电磁波时的以太…

update: another good article from cv about dark matter.

- Poincare conjecture proof completed and the guy who rejected Fields medal
new york times
new yorker

- Give your name pad “planet” back, Pluto!
bbc news
new york times

- and finally, they say dark matter exists.
cv 1, 2

10月4日, 瑞典皇家学院公布了今年的物理学奖的获得者: Roy J. Glauber (1/2), John L. Hall (1/4),和Theodor W. Hänsch (1/4). 官方的公布:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2005 with one half to

Roy J. Glauber
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
“for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”

and one half jointly to

John L. Hall
JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA and

Theodor W. Hänsch
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
“for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”.

最新一期的Physics Today有篇八卦老爱的文章, 很不错.
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-9/p43.html

话说当老爱搬到Princeton高等研究院后, 也开始随流和污, 给Physical Review投文章了. 1936年, 他和Rosen(EPR的那个R)合作了一篇文章, 标题是”Do Gravitational Wave Exist?”, 内容是说实际上gavitational wave的存在是有疑问的. 老爱于1916年将gravitational wave的概念引入广义相对论后, 虽然缺少实验的证据, 但在理论界, 大部分物理学家都认为gravitational wave的存在是理所当然的. 所以当老爱的这篇文章到了Physical Review总编手里后, 尽管文章是出自老爱之手, 而老爱历来是宁缺忤滥, 但这等重大的事情还是小心为妙, 先送到审稿人手里审审再说. 结果审稿人也不给老爱面子, 发现文章犯了个很初级的错误; 稿子被送回到老爱的手里, 并附带了一份10页详细的修改建议, 诚恳的希望老爱再斟酌斟酌.

文章引录了老爱当时的回复原文:

Dear Sir,
We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.
Respectfully,
P.S. Mr. Rosen, who has left for the Soviet Union, has authorized me to represent him in this matter.

嘿嘿, 大意就是说我好心好意寄文章给你, 是让你发表的, 可不是让你给我检查正误的. 我堂堂老爱的文章, 还需要人来审吗? 你这真是给脸不要脸啊, 得, 咱不发你这里了. 你们自己好自为之吧.

不久之后, 这篇文章发表在另一家刊物上, 标题改成了”On Gravitational Wave”, 内容做了大幅度的修改, 纠正了原来的低级失误, 结论是gravitational wave还是存在的. 文章没有引用说参考了Physical Review的建议.

当时我文章看到这里, 顿时热血沸腾, 我kao, 这要是放到现在, 给方舟子之类的人写篇报告, 标题不得是”老科学家恬不知耻, 公然剽窃他人建议”之类的啊. Physics Today在纪念老爱奇迹年100周年之际发篇这种爆炸性的文章, 整个物理界不都得翻天啊. (嘿嘿, 我还是习惯以小人之心揣测他人之腹).

文章接着给出了解释, 原来老爱懒得要死, 那修改意见连看都没看. 老爱之所以发了点脾气, 是因为早年在德国, 文章一般都是直接发表的. 那时候德国科学期刊的文章退稿率低得吓人, 大概就5%-10%, 稍微有点名气的人, 文章一般都是不需要审的. 当时期刊编辑的态度是宁肯发篇错的文章, 也比什么都不发好. 这也解释了为何老爱当年初出茅庐之际, 以一个专利局无名研究员的身份, 竟然在Annalen der Physik上连发5篇颠覆整个物理学的文章. 要放到现在这种审稿人制度下, 审稿人一看名字: 不认识, 内容: 光速最大, 还不得一个”bullshit”给打发回去啊. 号称当年Planck还跟当时的主编Drude怒过一把, 原因是Drude把一篇Planck认为是垃圾的文章给发了. Drude后来解释说那个作者当面找到Drude求情, Drude当时心一软就答应发表了! %^&*@*!?

在20世纪初的德国做研究真是幸福啊…