It’s Over August 30, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Marseille.add a comment
Well. This is it. I’ve been living in Marseille, France, for 14 months now. And tonight is the last night. Tomorrow we all board a plane for Ottawa. A week later I’ll be back in Seattle busy preparing for class. It has been a great year.
I’d like to thank everyone that hosted me at CPPM, the in2p3 lab at Marseille. Especially Laurent, Lorenzo, Remi, Georges, Cecile, Jessica, Karim, Sylvain, Mossadek, Eric, and Fanny (without Fanny I’d still be stuck in some line waiting for France to let me in!). There are many others as well. Without their help I never would have learned nearly as much as I did, nor would we have had such a great time.
And thanks to DOE and IN2P3 for providing some funding, which made this possible. Without that this never would have happened, especially considering how weak the dollar was this year!
We are going to miss Marseille!!
Political Spam August 29, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics.add a comment
I’m getting some political spam. It is for some bill to stop oil speculation. I don’t think there is very much oil speculation going on — in fact, I think that is a distraction from fixing the real problem (energy efficiency, etc.).
Normally I would just hit the delete button.
But I find this spam more than a little annoying because I think the only way I could have gotten onto their mailing list is due to one of the candidates/congresspeople I’ve donated money to or given my email address two (a total of four). I’m annoyed because that means one of them supports the idea that oil speculation is something that we need to spend time thinking about. So many things to waste time on. 
Cyprus August 28, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Cyprus, travel.add a comment
We arrived back from Cyprus over the weekend. That was 6 days. While this was a vacation for me, it was a conference for Paula. We were in the town of Nicosia, which is the capital. While there are many tourist spots in Cyprus, Nicosia is not one of them. Nice town — but it is a working town. And without a car, it is pretty hard to get around. And Cyprus is hot. We were warned about 40-45 C, which is killer, but I don’t think it ever made it above 40 – but it was always above 39. And very humid. The 10 minute walk between the hotel and the conference over flat ground is enough to drench you.
But the vacation was nice. First, we stayed in the Cyprus Hilton. Under normal circumstances we could not afford this place – but it is right next to the university and was the conference hotel. Whew. This is the sort of place that after you check in everyone calls you by your first name — even though you are sure you’ve not actually met them before. The staff will do whatever you ask. And they really seem to care that you are comfortable – down to a person (well, there was one guy who very early in the morning wasn’t too happy to help, but that was the only time). Julia and I spent a lot of time together – much of it walking back and forth between our room and the large outdoor pool. She be-friended many people. Many of them even knew her name by the end of the stay.
The history of the Cyprus is fascinating. I was aware of the Turkish invasion in the early 70’s. If you follow international news it is hard not to be aware because Turkey is trying to join the EU and divided Cyprus is one of the things that the EU wants fixed first. What I didn’t know was what triggered the invasion. A dictatorship was in power in mainland Greece and had a falling out with the Cyrpus government. To fix this, Greece sponsored a coup of the Cyprus government and installed their own Greek government. The Turks on the island got worried, which got Turkey involved, which led to the invasion. It wasn’t until 2003, apparently, that you could even make a phone call from one side of the island to the other. Our conference host, who is Greek, was originally living on the Turkish side of the island and saw his house for the first time in 30 years in 2005 (or there-abouts). Turks and Greeks were living side-by-side, apparently, before the invasion (though I’m told there was no real mixing of the cultures). Further, it sounds like there have been many opportunities to both avoid the invasion and repair the damage afterwards, but it was always “just” missed. It reminds one of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (complete with trying to get people to move to Cyprus to increase the Turkish population) – but, thank goodness, no one is trying to kill each other.
UN sponsored talks between the sides to make the island hole are supposed to start on the 3rd of September. This means that everyone is laying the ground work for this. And some of that groundwork was occurring in the Hilton. I saw many ministers and the Cyprot president in the halls (amazingly, he had only two security people following him). Lots of cars with flags outside – including one with New York license plates (!?). The Greek Orthodox church was also there and it sounds like they aren’t in favor of the unification that is currently proposed. They had posters up in the main lobby of the hotel discussing missing persons, lost art treasures, and looted and vandalized churches on the Turkish side. The basic issue is who gets claim to land on each side that was formerly owned by someone on the other side. I wish them luck. The island is an amazing place; I learned about the Ottoman empire in high school; too bad the hangover still exists.
And finally… I don’t know if this is a Cyprot culture thing, a Greek culture thing, or because we met some really nice people (or all three). But everyone was amazing hosts. With Julia in tow the conference host ferried us around in his car instead of on one of the packed conference buses. It was extremely difficult to get anyone to allow us to pay for a dinner or taxi ride. And it felt like they would drop everything to help us if we asked – so we were very careful not to ask unless we were really desperate. But it was fantastic.
This conference of Paula’s is cursed, by the way. Last year we had a horrible experience, thanks to Al Italia. This year it was the same thing — we arrived 10 hours late; J-mo was finally in bed at 1am. She was so tired she lost it on the decent. Sorry to everyone else that was on that plane. 
Ironically, we booked our tickets through Al Italia (what were we thinking!?!?), but we never flew on an Al Italia plane. Cyprus Air was 3 hours late, which caused us to miss our connection, which meant sitting in the Rome airport for almost 7 hours.
Bye Bye, Marseille! August 28, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Marseille.add a comment
Only about 6 hours left in Marseille. Frantically packing. Knee deep in garbage, recycling, and boxes! How is this all going to get to the train station, exactly!? We’re going to miss this place!
Who Is Eating Our Boxes? August 27, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Marseille.add a comment
First the good news: unlike last time, all 12 boxes that we shipped back to the USA have arrived. We gave 5 or 6 more to go, so I hope this sort of luck holds.
The bad news: it is questionable to say they arrived intact. Check out the shape of these guys. It looks like an animal was munching on them in transit.
Seriously. Are these boxes just tossed in a pile into a container, and that container contains spikes and poles sticking out at random angles. The Container Of (Box) Death. From the damage it looks like they were used in some sort of Olympics event. Perhaps the little heard of “Drop Kick The Box” contest? Only very pointy shoes may be worn. Extra points for tearing a corner of a box completely off!!
I don’t understand why the postal service can’t figure out how to ship boxes overseas. At least, with them being intact. All those red boxes you see there — those were boxes sold by the post-office that were meant for over-seas shipping. So there is no excuse “you are using the wrong box!.” I’d love to put a GPS and an accelerometer in a box or two and see where the damage occurs. I suppose the GPS probably wouldn’t ever work as the box is always inside… but is this damage sustained through out the trip? Or just in a particular port? Or what!?
Shipping 5 boxes when we moved out was no better. Only 3 of the 5 arrived. The other two “disappeared” (both of them disappeared in France). We had insured them from the USA side, but they demanded original receipts and the deadline they gave me was impossible because I wouldn’t be back in the USA soon enough to make it. No wonder insurance is cheap for shipping! This time we didn’t even insure. We will take some valuable stuff by carry on and UPS, and the stuff we can afford to loose by the postal service.
Sheesh!
How Times Change August 26, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, computers.add a comment
I was looking at some predictions for the size of the Trigger Processing farm for ATLAS. This farm is basically racks and racks of computers that will decide, in real time, if the data should be kept or discarded as it rolls off the ATLAS detector.
Back in 2003 (see powerpoint slides, page 23, for example) we were predicting that the computer industry would be making 8 GHz processors by now. Of course, due to power and heat problems, we are now sitting around 3 GHz, but with many cores.
Ahhh.. the good old days! 
Precision Science August 25, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in physics.5 comments
You can tell how old a set of tools for a field is by how precise their measurements are. Take the top quark. Its been around since 1996. The latest top quark mass result from both CDF and D0 is 172 +- 1.22 GeV – so we know that to better than 1%.
Some of the most stunning recent discoveries in science have been dark energy and dark matter. Well, I guess I shouldn’t call them discoveries — we don’t know what they are yet — but the fact that something is there is definitely a discovery. But the thing about astrophysics is that it isn’t a precision field.
Perhaps that is changing now – from an article on a new measurement of the Hubble constant done using the Hubble space telescope:
The news was not in Dr. Riess’s value… , but in the precision with which his group claimed to have measured it: an uncertainty of only 4.3 percent.
Only 30 years ago, distinguished astronomers could not agree within a factor of two on the value of Hubble’s constant, leaving every other parameter in cosmology uncertain by at least the same factor and provoking snickers from other fields of science.
Actually, even more recent than that! I remember a rather famous string theorist standing up and claiming “Hey – in cosmology we have finally learned how to use error bars!” And then poking fun at the size of the errors in astro physics.
But that is always the way when you find something new. The top quark, when we discovered it, we basically knew it was there and kind-a knew its mass. We have then spent the last 15 years making the measurement steadily more precise (knowing that mass very well tells us a lot about where to find the Higgs).
Getting down to the 1% level, or the 5% level, even, is a lot of careful work. And, at some level, not as much fun as actually being the first to measure the value. But after verifying that the discover exists, it is the most important thing. That is the beauty of science: all the numbers are connected. The more you know one set of numbers, the better you can predict a second.
Getting the top quark precision down has been 15 years of hard hard work, many graduate student theses, and many post-doc years. But because of that we know a lot more about where to hunt for the Higgs. Doing the same in astrophysics is bound to help with the quest to understand dark energy and dark matter. Can’t wait!
P.S. Can you tell I wrote this on vacation? I’m reading the newspaper!!
It is Better When You Are Away August 22, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0.add a comment
Last week was the DZERO workshop, as I’ve mentioned. During that time many people from DZERO were 1000’s of miles away from the detector. Many of these people help keep the detector running – fix it when it breaks, etc.
So… how did our detector do? It had a better than average week – smooth running with almost no pauses. I guess it was happy not to have all sorts of people tweaking it? Fortunately, nothing major broke – then there would have been real downtime as people tried to fix it over the phone from Prauge!
I guess DZERO should have more collaboration meetings away from Fermilab!
BTW – this is one reason I like taking owl shifts on DZERO. The detector breaks less often because there aren’t people around to mess with it!
Long Live The Train! August 21, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in travel.3 comments
How many of you have seen this NYTimes article, or a similar one, over past 6 months? It contains paragraphs like this one:
In just a few short months, the airlines have discovered to their glee that their customers are willing to pay for most everything from checked bags to soft drinks to pillows and blankets — and are doing so without much fuss. With that knowledge in hand, the airlines aren’t about to stop.
Fees for checked baggage. Fees to let you reserve a seat — any seat. Fees. Fees. Fees. My favorite line was the following:
“You complain at Starbucks, you get a freebie,” she said, “If you throw a fit at an airport, you could be picked up by the T.S.A.”
So — don’t complain about those fees! On our recent flight on Brussels Airlines from Marseille to Brussels (on the way to Prague) I looked into buying a Coke. It was 3.10 euros for one of those plastic bottles. That is $4.52!!! At the local 7-11 in Seattle those things go for about $1.50. And the best thing was there was a line at the bottom of the menu that said the prices in the airport were the same, so they weren’t raising the prices unfairly!!! Wow!
Ok — as things settle, they will remove the fees perhaps? Like a drug addict willingly leaves heroin behind:
Given that [analysts have said airlines will benefit from new fees and the currently dropping jet fuel price], Mr. Ridley says he believes that the airlines, which are grounding planes and cutting about 8 percent of their available seats this fall, will not rush to remove the charges, which he likens to “fee heroin.”
I have traveled only a little this year by plane. Spending most of it in Europe. The result is next year I won’t be a frequent flyer. And now that I have a kid I probably won’t fly nearly as much as I used to. Add to that the fact that science budgets are going down and airplane ticket prices are going up. So this means I’ll get to experience this mess first hand. I’m not looking forward to next year. Riding the train from Marseille to CERN has been so nice…
Will it really take ATLAS 3 years to see 5 sigma Higgs? August 20, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, CERN, D0, Fermilab.15 comments
Probably (for ATLAS new predictions on this should be released in a few months). But in the context of the Tevatron and the LHC Higgs search that isn’t really what is important.
The ATLAS prediction that it might take 3 years to reach the 5 sigma level for a low mass Higgs discovery got a lot of airplay. It got me to thinking. Lets say the two accelerators are in close competition for the Higgs. The Tevatron can really only speak to the 3 sigma level. It isn’t ever going to get to the 5 sigma level. Further, at the Tevatron the CDF and DZERO experiments will have to combine their results to even reach this 3 sigma level. So, I find it highly unlikely that the LHC will sit back and let the Tevatron get away with this. I certainly wouldn’t (and I’m on a LHC experiment). So what to do? Obvious – beat the Tevatron at its own game: combine results from CMS and ATLAS and the 3 sigma level will be obtained much more quickly. At that point the LHC has stolen the thunder from the Tevatron and CMS and ATLAS can now race each other to individual discoveries of the Higgs at the 5 sigma level.
I don’t expect the experiments to combine for the 5 sigma discovery (I could well be wrong, of course – I know of no plans to not do this or to do this!). There are many forces at play that are driving each experiment to make the first paper submission of a 5 sigma signal. This may, indeed, be what gives the Tevatron space to slip in with a 3 sigma evidence paper. And in the grand scheme of things – the Tevatron goes out with a 3 sigma evidence and the LHC with a 5 sigma discovery – that doesn’t seem like a bad “split”. But who has ever heard of the free market working like that!?
As a member of DZERO I want to push as hard as possible to nail a low mass Higgs. As a member of ATLAS, I want the experiment to scramble as fast as possible to get the Higgs – evidence and discovery. After all, that is one of the LHC’s main points.
