Mt John News V

I'm now up to roughly 21 complete postdoc job applications for the year end! Employers looking for a hard working, mature, friendly, intelligent, categorical M theorist will have to get in quick!

Supernovae Seminar

Next Thursday, the astronomer Robert P. Kirschner visits the South Island to talk about supernovae observations, without necessarily committing to the Dark Force.

Supernova samples are now large enough that systematic errors dominate over statistical uncertainties, so better understanding, not just a larger sample, is required to make progress on this question. New observations carried out at near-infrared wavelengths promise to reduce these errors and lead to a more certain knowledge of the nature of dark energy.

Mt John News IV

Without realising it, I submitted a paper some months ago to a respectable journal that uses blind refereeing. As far as I know, this is the first time I have sent a paper for blind review. Yesterday I was told that, with minor changes, the paper was accepted for publication. For the first time in my life, I found that the referee's report was constructive and polite. The world indeed works in mysterious ways.

Mt John News III

Now that most physics jobs require three references from professionals who are familiar with one's work, I am struggling to apply for anything. As far as I can tell, only two current applications of mine are complete. Thanks all the same to those who have helped. On my return from Australia in December, I have lined up a mountain job for the Christmas and New Year period: warden of French Ridge hut. Those of you who have visited this spot will appreciate the inevitability of an improvement in my fitness. This midsummer, I will fall asleep to the sounds of rumbling icefalls.

Quote of the Month

In the 1975 book by Maurice Pope on the history of decipherment (of Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform and Linear B) there is a quote by the esteemed Professor Hyde, from 1700:

Travellers' graffiti ... a monument of ill writing and inexpert sculpture ... late, insignificant and scarcely worth the trouble of solving.

This was his assessment of the great Achaemenid tombs of Naqsh-e Rustam, which he visited. They date back as far as 1000BC. Having stood beneath these tombs once myself, I can testify that only a fool would think them insignificant to the age of decipherment. With three parallel texts, the tombs were a key element in the eventual decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform, and this in turn led to an understanding of other, far more ancient forms of writing, back to the evolution of writing from symbols and accounting systems in the dawn of history.

Anyone can be wrong.

LHC Era Begins

As the LHC begins operations, real tests were run on the beam through LHCb. The LHCb RICH detector has also seen its first particle from cosmic rays, as the two rings shown here.

Multiverse Mania

Matti Pitkanen points out that any reasonable quantum cosmology involves a multiverse, in some sense. Unfortunately, the word multiverse is too widely used in the painfully ludicrous context of stringy landscapes and the Dark Force, and this classical geometry essentially defines its meaning. If AF ever lapses into some strange use of the word, without clarifying its meaning, then you have permission to swear in the comments section.

It is quite difficult to figure out which multiverse advocacy group is the most impossible to forgive. Certainly the so called theoretical physicists are high on the list. But are the philosophers any less guilty? At least the physicists have the excuse that they were never required to take courses in the history and philosophy of science and, in true 20th century camaraderie, were rewarded for playing the game and forgetting about the problems that they were actually supposed to solve.

A professional philosopher of physics, on the other hand, should be able to dismiss the objective, observer independent multiverse with three words that they learned in kindergarten: I am thinking, therefore I exist. Descartes, and many others, must be turning in their graves, to see science so debased.