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steve

I have a particle physics background and live happily with my wife Sukie and our five ferrets.

Interests: ferrets, physics, astronomy, atmospheric optics, os x, numerous technologies, large and dangerous electrical devices, simple hacks, social computing, history, history of science and technology, music, digital music, photography, image manipulation, and story telling

Recent Activity

it's switches all the way down

The other day I saw something that a few of you might want to consider for a kid or even yourself - the Turing Tumble Mechanical Computer. It turns out digital computers are mostly switches. A lot of switches these days - perhaps a trillion in your smartphone. As a... Continue reading

Posted 3 hours ago at omenti

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the arc of the chorus

Imagine that you're from another world and happen upon Earth for the first time. You have the ability to sense not only the visual, but beyond it. Soon you discover an arc of sound traveling East to West along the Earth's surface as the planet revolves. Sweeping along it lights... Continue reading

Posted 3 days ago at omenti

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why revolutions sometimes need astonishing simplicity

Physics is, by far, the simplest science. I probably have said it too much and it can raise eyebrows. It may not seem that way as we have a reasonably deep understanding and the required knowledge can seem esoteric, but that complexity isn't central and misses the point. What is... Continue reading

Posted May 12, 2019 at omenti

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I'm certainly not a futurist. Oh - there are some things I can predict with reasonable accuracy: that one of my ferrets will beg for a banana next week and next year, when an eclipse will happen somewhere, roughly when the Sun goes into its red giant stage... The easy... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2019 at omenti

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Last week a friend and I were talking about finding Nature. Is a city a wasteland for a nature-lover? That's a complicated question that triggered a series of thoughts. Ultimately it depends on the person, but a few thoughts. In 1981 interview Richard Feynman talks about how he can appreciate... Continue reading

Posted Apr 16, 2019 at omenti

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a few gallons of gasoline, black holes, and the state of utah

E = mc2 Perhaps the most recognizable equation in the world. It says something with mass is equivalent to an enormous amount of energy. A kilogram of mass has 9 x 1016 Joules of energy. A quick back of the envelope says anything with the mass of three gallons of... Continue reading

Posted Apr 10, 2019 at omenti

1

coupling constants

The funny thing is I thought I was a good teacher. First year graduate students are required to spend part of their time teaching. I drew a two of lab sections of Physics 103/104 - Physics for the Biological Sciences or, more popularly, physics for pre-meds. Each lab section had... Continue reading

Posted Apr 7, 2019 at omenti

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why are we here?

The professor drew a box around the words and added "do not erase" at the bottom. That marked the opening of a two semester course in General Relativity. He never commented directly, but its presence was anything but subtle . The circumstances under which Karl Schwarzchild wrote three significant papers... Continue reading

Posted Mar 20, 2019 at omenti

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RrdD: how a lot of new stuff happens .. (sort of)

The ripped and stained vinyl covered seat of some lost color puffed a cloud of tobacco smoke when I sat down. It wasn't the worst seat in the room. One wall of the windowless basement room was a painted green chalk board. Over forty years had gone by and it... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2019 at omenti

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canada's beautiful new $16 million camera

My Grandmother King gave me my first camera for my eighth birthday - a Kodak Brownie. My parents had a camera, but I wasn't allowed to use it. This was my camera. I also received two rolls of black and white film and a voucher for developin. Of course I... Continue reading

Posted Mar 3, 2019 at omenti

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attacking global warming with deep insight from a brewery

The 1970s were marked by two dramatic energy disruptions that shook the world. Petroleum became much more expensive and a geopolitical weapon. Small cars suddenly became popular and American drivers began to look to countries that made them. In the US large sums flowed into energy R&D. Much of it... Continue reading

Posted Mar 1, 2019 at omenti

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finding the best physical user interface - mini post

The photo shows Katie at a seminar yesterday afternoon. A question came up and in answering it, she's doing some hell-for-leather astrophysics. Usually scientists in cartoons, television or movies are depicted as working at a whiteboard filled with either gibberish or something out of a textbook. Sometimes science advisors bring... Continue reading

Posted Feb 25, 2019 at omenti

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the basic reproduction number - minipost

Measles turns out to be wickedly contagious and an outbreak is currently underway in the Northwest US. It's the result of too few people being vaccinated. It turns out there's a simple way think about herd immunity. Ro (r-nought) is the basic reproduction number: the average number of people an... Continue reading

Posted Feb 9, 2019 at omenti

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northward and beyond!

Yesterday a friend asked for comments on a piece about the recent movement of the magnetic north pole. The article referred to an update to officially published information about the Earth's magnetic field. Unfortunately it was both confusing and inaccurate so I typed out a reply on my iPhone. He... Continue reading

Posted Feb 7, 2019 at omenti

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little quakes - making the earth shake

Some of you live in areas prone to earthquakes. The USGS map is a great resource for checking out what's been shaking in the past day. It goes down to magnitude 2.5 - close to the smallest you'd notice if you were in the vicinity. You'll notice that smaller quakes... Continue reading

Posted Feb 5, 2019 at omenti

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the polar vortex and global warming - probably not what you think

When I was a kid we had to walk miles through snow drifts up to our necks and below zero weather.. Yeah, you say, cutting me off and there's that part about running from the dinosaurs too.. Part of it turns out to be true. Winters in Montana were much... Continue reading

Posted Feb 2, 2019 at omenti

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η and cooking meals on car engines

eta Greek letters are used to symbolize so many things that they are almost Rorschach tests. For me it represents a term in a few very different equations and a type of particle... anyone else is likely to see it differently. You need some context to sort out what it... Continue reading

Posted Jan 26, 2019 at omenti

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the critical edge in a major sport

The other day I was in a Manhattan library wearing the t-shirt of my undergrad school. As luck would have it someone noticed it. She was from the same school - her Ph.D. was in mechanical engineering - and a most interesting conversation followed. It turns out she happens to... Continue reading

Posted Jan 15, 2019 at omenti

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finding a voice

On those clear and moonless nights stars would suddenly rise from the edge of the butte marking its shape and size. Besides the stars the only other lights were a distant aircraft beacon and a flashlight modified to give off a faint red light to protect your night vision and... Continue reading

Posted Dec 30, 2018 at omenti

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smoke rings, sports and beyond

Canals saw explosive growth in England during the first few decades of the Industrial Revolution allowing raw materials like iron and coal to fall in price by as much as eighty percent. Improving canals became a major industry - they became straighter with locks and aqueducts coming into wide-spread use... Continue reading

Posted Dec 23, 2018 at omenti

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technology risks

Fast moving technology can create risks as well as opportunities. Recently we saw the shutdown of London's Gatwick airport by illegal drone activity. It almost surprises me this drone delivered service disruption has taken this long to happen, although it is a surprise it went on for so long. It’s... Continue reading

Posted Dec 22, 2018 at omenti

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design as a bridge

We should not expect more precision than a topic naturally affords. Mr. Wolff, a favorite high school teacher of mine, used the quote to talk about how art is created and enjoyed. It is usually ascribed to Aristotle and I'll admit it flew over my head at the time. Now,... Continue reading

Posted Dec 17, 2018 at omenti

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red-edging life

Challenger, go at throttle up. Roger, go at throttle up. The disaster extended well beyond the manned space program. The Galileo mission to Jupiter was going to take Galileo into orbit where powerful rocket known as the Centaur-G would set it on a direct trajectory to Jupiter. New post-Challenger safety... Continue reading

Posted Dec 2, 2018 at omenti

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about two hundred miles north of roswell, new mexico...

As Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, Enrico Fermi and Herbert York walked to lunch one of them noticed a New Yorker cartoon taped to a door blaming trashcan thefts on aliens. It was 1950 and the country was in something of a UFO craze. They laughed and continued. Unidentified flying objects... Continue reading

Posted Nov 27, 2018 at omenti

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the universe is a time machine

I was asked to write about extraterrestrial life. That's an approximately big subject that I'll approach with a few posts starting off with some context. An old friend wrote this about the Universe: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you... Continue reading

Posted Nov 25, 2018 at omenti

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