News (2014/05/29)

First of all, I must apologise for the fact that I haven't been updating my blog as much as I'd intended to over the past few weeks. As often happens, real life has gotten in the way, including (for example) my graduation. I can now officially carry the post-nominal letters BScAdv(Hons), although anyone concerned for my ever-inflating ego will no doubt be glad to hear that I have very little intention of doing so.

In terms of the blog, I'm currently working on a post on Fourier analysis and the following post will likely be on the physics of mechanical flight, by popular request. At the current rate I'm going that might not be for a while though!

In physics news, since my last news post some rumours have arisen that the BICEP2 results may not be as sound as initially claimed. Basically, Adam Falkowski has claimed that the BICEP2 collaboration have miscalculated the galactic foreground radiation by misinterpreting an image on a Planck collaboration slide, and their primordial polarisations can mostly be accounted for due to this error (a claim that the BICEP2 team strongly denies). A sceptical take on the rumour is provided by Sesh Nadathur, who argues that the issue has been blown far out of proportion. It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the coming months!

News (2014/04/10)

Two items of news to report this week (well, one and a half at least). The half-piece of news is that I'm working on a new blog post which will hopefully be posted some time next week (although it might take until the week after).

The real news is that the LHC has confirmed the existence of Z(4430), a so-called "exotic hadron". Hadrons are composite particles made of quarks (and held together by gluons). According to the quark model, hadrons can only form in one of two ways: a quark-antiquark pairing (known as a meson) and in a quark triplet (know as a baryon).

The most common hadrons in the universe are protons and neutrons which form atomic nuclei. Protons consist of 2 up-type quarks and 1 down-type quark ("uud") while neutrons consist of 1 up quark and 2 down quarks ("udd"). The names and details of quark types, which are known as "flavours", is not something I will go into here, as it is an interesting enough topic to deserve its own post (although a proper explanation for the layperson would need a little more than that I think).

The quark model is a simple one though and does not describe all of the dynamics permitted by quantum chromodynamics ("QCD", the part of the Standard Model that describes strong interactions). This leaves open the door for exotic hadrons which are not mesons or baryons. Z(4430) is one such exotic hadron.

It was first 'discovered' in 2007 (although 5-sigma confirmation didn't come until 2008) and has now been observed at the LHCb experiment at 13.9-sigma accuracy. This means the chances of the observation being a statistical fluke are $1$ in $1.579\times10^{43}$ (a very, very, very large number indeed). It is believed to be a tetraquark made up of 1 charm quark, 1 charm antiquark, 1 down quark and 1 up antiquark ("ccdu").

While perhaps not as exciting as, for example, the BICEP2 result recently, this confirmation is still a very interesting result and will hopefully spur on further developments in the search for exotic hadrons.

Learning to learn

It has happened a few times over the past couple of years that someone will come up to me with some piece of mathematics that they're having trouble with and ask me if I can help them with it. I'll have a look over it and say something along the lines of "I'm not familiar with this specifically, but I think I should be able to pick it up pretty easily". The usual response to this involves some degree of indignation.

Of course I understand why. Nobody likes to feel stupid or belittled, and this is certainly not my intention, but I can see how someone might feel that way. If I were in that position it would probably be my first response as well. But with that said, I don't think it's an entirely reasonable one.

I'm not trying to show off how clever I am. They were the ones to come to me asking for my help (and if I can I try my best to). Presumably they came to me because they expected I had some degree of expertise, but I get the impression the sort of expertise they were expecting was that of having been taught the subject previously. Sometimes this is the case of course, but mathematics is such a broad topic that you will rarely have seen everything at a sub-postgraduate level no matter how educated you are.

The point of having gone to university and graduated with a degree (even a bachelor's) specialising in mathematics or a mathematics-heavy field like physics is not to simply learn as much of a field as you can and leave it there. The point is to equip yourself with the tools to teach yourself new things, and I hope to some extent I have managed to do that. I've taught myself things I never saw at university and so I know my limitations. Some concepts and techniques I'm reasonably familiar with and others I'm not; some things take more time and more effort to learn than others. It just happens that through study and experience I've managed to achieve the minimal level of competence to teach myself what they're having trouble with.

So my exasperation does not come from a place of ignorance. I have struggled with maths in the past, I know what it's like. The fact remains, however, that my degree would be worth very little if I hadn't picked up the ability to learn high school- or early undergraduate-level maths with relative ease. If someone's problem left me just as nonplussed as they were, then I should probably be seeking partial reimbursement from my university. I certainly hope they don't take it as a personal slight; I have no doubt that if they had studied what I had then they would have just as little trouble with their present difficult as I might (and, I would hazard, quite possibly even less so).

News (2014/03/20)

I'm trying to post on my blog much more often this year than I used to, in fact as close to every week as I can manage. Unfortunately, the post I'm working on at the moment isn't nearly ready for publication, so this week I'm instead going to make a little news post, the first item of which will be the thing that I just told you (about the new blog post coming soon)!

The next item of news is not particularly new; last Friday (the 14th of March) was Pi Day. Pi Day is of course silly for a whole bunch of reasons (the main one being it's based on the completely nonsensical American dating system) so I've decided to introduce readers who may not be familiar with it to the concept of tau (τ). Tau has been proposed as an alternative to pi, and while I am not especially partisan on the matter I have to say I am somewhat sympathetic. Here is the case for tau laid out in the Tau Manifesto and for the sake of fairness a counterargument in the Pi Manifesto.

Finally, the real news comes in the form of the results of the recent BICEP2 measurements of B-mode polarisation in the CMB, easily the biggest news in physics since the Higgs was announced in 2012 and a major breakthrough for early-universe cosmologists. I will be able to do an explanatory post about the news if there's enough demand for one, but otherwise a lot of good explanations can be found around the place ranging from the somewhat simplistic to the slightly more technical. This is a very exciting time for fundamental physics and I expect to see some very interesting papers published in the next couple of years based on insights from this new data.

Finally, it isn't technically news, but if you haven't heard of them already, I strongly urge you to check out Brady Haran's science channels, especially Sixty Symbols (physics) and Numberphile (mathematics); I've subscribed to most of them on YouTube and they are absolutely fantastic.

That's all for this quick post, hopefully I'll have a considerably more in-depth number ready for next week! See you then!

A note on another old adage

Following on from my earlier musings on old sayings, another one which came to mind today was one I'm sure you're familiar with: every cloud has a silver lining. For those of you who haven't come across it, it basically means that every bad situation in your life has some positive aspect about it. Like the earlier example, this too is said far too often with far too little thought. In fact, it strikes me that there are a very many sayings supposed to make miserable people chipper that more often than not only serve to annoy them, but I digress.

I don't think I need to go into too much depth analysing the saying. The premise is fairly simple, and seems reasonable enough, that nothing is ever all bad (and I agree with that). Some people seem to take it to an odd extreme, however, and wander through their lives with inane grins, seeing nothing but argentian skies. They seem especially fond of telling others that every cloud has a silver lining, no matter what should have befallen them. Then there are those who trudge their way through life grim and depressed, sure that the sky is blocked out by heavy rain clouds, and any silver lining is merely lightning in the distance. I don't think I need to say that these people are equally as right as the other lot, in the sense that they are not at all.

If you ask my opinion, and since you're reading this I assume you do, then there aren't really any clouds and nor are there any silver linings. If things are looking bleak, it's probably because you're looking down at your own shadow. If things are looking overwhelmingly peachy, you may be staring up at the sun. As always, the key lies in the mean; keep your eyes level, focussed, forward and un-wandering, and you will see what is.

Just have a think about it

Fact: people don't like thinking. Okay, that's not quite true. Lots of people, myself included, enjoy thinking a great deal. Oftentimes you'll see me staring at some uninteresting point in space, perhaps a wall or the corner of the table or somebody's knee, and I'll have this dead look on my face and my eyes will probably seem glazed over. That's me thinking. It's not infrequently more interesting than talking to other people, depending on who those people are, of course. Even so, though I may claim the contrary, I prefer not thinking to thinking. Of course, you can't stop thinking (if you think you can, you're only lying to yourself); what I mean is that it's much easier to sit and accept something you may be seeing or reading than thinking about it. If not for that fact, it would be significantly more difficult to enjoy a lot of things, such as films, to give only a single example. And hey, there's nothing wrong with sitting back and just saying, yes, I do believe it's perfectly believable to drive a car into a helicopter. If you can't do that, you're going to miss out on a lot of cool stuff.

Be careful, though. That sort of mental relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances, much in the way that physical relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances. To give an example, it would not be overly wise to put on a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, rub in some sunscreen and sit down on your deck chair when you've only just recently stumbled into an orgy of furious bears. There's a time and a place, is what I'm getting at. The troublesome part of it is that it's much, much less obvious when we should allow ourselves to drop our guard mentally than physically, and because it's so much easier to not think than it is to think, it's tempting to simple drop our guard and leave it dropped, and if worst comes to worst, so what? We'll just deal with that later.

As you can imagine, I don't think that's a terribly bright idea. Leaving your guard dropped can make you susceptible to the machinations of vicious people, and that sort of thing can get people killed. To quote a great man, don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. That, however, is not the primary subject of this post (perhaps I will address it at another time). What I would prefer to talk about instead is the idea of coming up with your own philosophy, and by 'philosophy' I mean a comprehensive system of belief in regards to your being. I do not recall having written about this before, although I most certainly have spoken to people about it, so if you have heard this before, I most profusely apologise, although perhaps you would like to stay and read a little anyway?

I think it takes a deal of courage to try and form your own philosophy. Of course, having (to some extent, at least) done that, I would be the sort of person to make such a claim, I know, but hear me out. If you want to come up with a philosophy of your own, that means you have to look at everything you have come to know about life and the way the world works, both through you own experience and through what people have told you, and this is harder than it sounds. Imagine reassessing everything that your friends, parents, teachers, leaders, religious figures and so on have told you and being prepared to say no, to disagree, and to try and come up with something different, with solid reasoning behind it. The hubris of it! you might think. To deny the collective wisdom of hundreds or thousands of people before you and to try and replace it with something you might even claim to be superior. To not only turn your back on this sort of societal tradition but to go against it requires serious balls.

You need more than balls though. You can selectively reject what you might previous have believed and instead substituted it with your own thoughts, carefully developed by considering all the possibilities you have considered, and still be a complete moron. Rejection for the sake of rebelliousness is not only intellectually lazy but it is the antithesis of a proper philosophy, which requires the support of logical underpinnings and fundamental principles. That's why nobody respects teenagers who walk around with more metal in their face than a Holden Kingswood and more eye shadow than a cheap hooker (I'm probably going to cop it for that one).

What you need in addition to testicular fortitude is to think, because unsurprisingly, reviewing the fundamental tenets that have guided everything you have ever thought or felt or done and all of the secondary notions that have accompanied them is tough, and that isn't even the whole of the job, because if you reach the frightening conclusion that the arguments used to justify your way of life have some pretty big holes in them that can't be reasonably filled, your going to have to come up with new conclusion to replace them, and those conclusions are going to need some airtight reasoning of their own to support them. Nobody's saying everything has to be an original idea or an original argument, of course, because the fact of the matter is that someone else might already be right about it all, and there's no point punishing yourself for that. The hard part is finding out which people you think are right and adapting their thoughts for your new philosophy.

So let's say you've done all that. It's taken a lot of effort and a hell of a long time, but you finally have a mostly complete philosophy (complete enough to use until the rest of the gaps are filled at least). Congratulations! Job's finally done, eh? Well, no. This is the hardest part of all: teaching yourself to live by your new philosophy. Now, chances are your philosophy is pretty much based on how you were already rolling, so you might not have to change much at all, but if you've done the job right you'll have found yourself needing to make some pretty significant changes somewhere along the line, like having to teach yourself to think or even feel differently than how you used to, and I don't think anybody's going to be stupid enough to tell you that's an easy feat. What it requires is denying yourself the luxury of not thinking virtually all the time until you satisfy yourself that you've changed your habits, and that's the sort of thing that can't be done in a day or month or a year.

Now, maybe you've followed me this far but think I'm just putting on a show, saying how hard it is to do all the stuff I've done and such. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want to do is try to explain how challenging it is to develop your own philosophy, but also illustrate how fulfilling and ultimately how freeing it is. After all, what greater challenge is there than learning how to live? If you can overcome that challenge, you can certainly overcome any other challenge in your life. After all, that's what your new philosophy is for. So that's why I'd like to take a moment here with this post to urge you guys, as you see in the New Year, to have a go at developing a philosophy of your own. Take it step by step: read some philosophical material you otherwise would have no interest in and evaluate it critically. If you read something that strongly appeals to you, perhaps you could build from that. Just have a think about it.

A note on an old adage

There's an old clichéd saying that I'm sure you're all aware of. It goes something like this: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Now, the way I've learnt to understand it is as meaning that whenever life gets you down, the best course of action is to not to wallow but to try to be industrious and make the best of it. It's certainly good advice, but over the years the way it's been chanted almost like a mantra by people insistent on always remaining positive and optimistic has led it to becoming hackneyed and cheap, as far as phrases go anyway. In case it hasn't come across yet, that is indeed my opinion of it as well (to be honest, if you ever said it to me in person, I would definitely think less of you for it) or at least it was until last night.

You see, I was mulling over a variety of topics in a meaningless and roundabout way, as the mind tends to wander late at night, and I came to this phrase, and it occurred to me that lemonade requires more than just lemons. This wasn't the first time this had occurred to me (as I said, I never thought particularly highly of the phrase) and I had always simply attributed it to the fact that it was a stupid little statement not meant to be taken too seriously. But for some reason I decided to take it seriously anyway.

If we really should make lemonade when life gives us lemons, then we're going to need more than lemons. To make decent lemonade, you're going to need some sugar and carbonated water at the bare minimum, and if life is giving you lemons it's not about to just hand out those premium ingredients. So if you're going to make lemonade you're going to need to already have sugar and carbonated water before the lemons come, and that means you're going to have to expect lemons to come and plan for when they do. Using this interpretation, the saying not only urges you to make the best of a bad situation, but warns you to be prepared for when bad situations inevitably arise in order to do so.

Now, lemons are sour and apparently a bad thing, and represent the bad times, clearly, and sweet, delicious lemonade represents the better times, the fruits of your labour if you will. But then what do sugar and carbonated water represent? I admit that as far as ingredients go, they're both pretty tasty. Maybe in that capacity they represent the fact that you need a mixture of good and bad elements to make a truly good result. Maybe they represent the sort of conditions you need to turn a bad thing into a good one, like a good character (the interpretation I prefer). Honestly, you could make it out to be what you will, but whatever you prefer I think you have to admit that this adage in particular is a lot more interesting and useful when you look at it this way than using the simple, common interpretation.

If you tell it to me though, I'm still not going to appreciate it.