I learnt a new word recently, courtesy of PhysicsWorld. Yoctosecond. That’s a period of time equal to ten to the power of minus twenty-four of a second. Or 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 seconds. As in "I’m just popping out – I’ll only be a yoctosecond." Physicists (or anyone else for that […]
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You heard it hear second
I’ve got better things to do at the weekend than following CERN’s tweets about the LHC. Consequently this posting is about 24 hours out of date. Oh well. The LHC has circulating beams in it again, with not a time-travelling baguette in sight. http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR16.09E.html
Continue readingHappy Birthday
PhysicsStop is one today! That means I’m a year older than I was when I wrote the first entry, give or take a few nanoseconds as a result of special and general relativistic effects while on aircraft journeys. Eeek.
Continue readingMiscellaneous thoughts on physics research
Last year, according to the American Physical Society, there were over a hundred thousand articles published in physics journals
Continue readingEquation of time strikes again
Horrible…dark…mornings…..Can’t….get….out…of…bed……. It’s close to four weeks since the winter solstice (for us Southern Hemisphere types) and it’s already noticeable that the evenings are less dark that they were a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about the mornings. This is the equation of time kicking into play again – the darkest morning […]
Continue readingThe problem of longitude
OK, so you are in a ship in the middle of the sea, with no GPS (it is the eighteenth century after all) and you want to know where you are. It’s a tricky problem – get it wrong and you end up, like Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and a fair portion of the English fleet […]
Continue readingGreenwich
If ever you find yourself in London, I would very much recommend a visit to Greenwich. It’s a great day out – and includes attractions such as the Maritime museum, the old Naval College, and what remains of the tea clipper Cutty Sark after a recent devastating fire. But for a physicist like me, Greenwich really […]
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