The LHC, Dark Energy, Black holes and us

I'm sure most of you have heard of this new experiment running at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. It's just one of those pieces of news that you have trouble avoiding with all the hyper media attention. Black holes and the possibility of the world ending as the scientists push the button for this gigantic machine to work!

Remember the Y2K bug? yeah almost forgotten by now, but at that time there was much speculation of the possibility of the world ending, with all the computers getting confused and unimaginable chaos to follow....... but you just woke up the next morning only to find that you are still alive and you still have to make your own cup of morning tea and go to work.

Same story.


So what's this thing about this LHC experiment?

Warning: Mild Science Content!

When I put on my scientific shoes, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments are one of the most exciting things to have ever happened, right there along with the man landing on the moon.
We might finally find the answer to the age old question of how did the Universe begin and
this might sound funny but what are we made of? and also was Einstein correct?

Now the possibility of answering these questions would get any scientist jumping up and down with excitement! And that is quite understandable for these were THE questions that kept these people awake at night for centuries. And the uncovering of these answers might open up a whole new dimension literally!


So what's the big deal you may ask, we can still go on living life without knowing these gobbledygook. That's where I put on my philosophical shoes.


It's true that we don't need to know how the world began or whether relativity is correct to go about our daily lives. And besides what's all this knowledge for? ok suppose we did prove that there was a big bang and the universe is expanding and we are made out of this elusive Higgs boson and that Einstein was correct! So what? We still have to take that crowded train to work, we still have to put up with the troublesome boss and we still have to eat through our mouths.

The pursuit of all this incomprehensible knowledge is just to quench the humans thirst for curiosity.


Or is it?


Since the beginning of time humans have had this curiosity, to know who's living in the next cave, to perfect the art of hunting and to find out what's up there in the heavens. This curiosity is what has brought us to where we are now.

Most of the time when discoveries are made we don't realize it's potential straight away, it takes time to find applications. So could these experiments at the LHC be one of those that hands us the key to unlocking a door, behind which lies endless possibilities???


Only time can tell!

Typical day with machines

Spam News

I'm doing some experiments today and taking some measurements. In between each set of measurements I have to keep an interval of about an hour for the machine to cool down before I take the next set of readings. I need to take about 5 sets of readings which means it's going to take 5+ hours of the day, and in between those readings what do I do?

First hour or two I managed to finish off tit-bits of other unfinished work, play a game of sudoku, arrange my desktop folders etc. Then I opened my junk mail folder to sort through the junk and to see if some non-junk mail has been wrongly accused by the mail authorities. Fortunately there wasn't any, however one mail title caught my eye

"Afghan bomber kills Bush"
This sudden suppressed laugh/murmer escaped me. Seems the spammers are being creative nowadays. They are probably begining to realize that the old fashioned 'remedies for bodily defects', 'designer wear at low prices', 'free tickets to watch Oprah', 'Winning a lottery ticket in some remote land' and of course 'the death of an unknown relative who left you a million dollars' is now a bit too known to their victims.

So they are coming up with new ideas to get those people to click! And of course who can resist "Afghan bomber kills Bush" I have to give credit to those spammies, that title looks very tempting!

Being Project Manager

When you are in charge of receiving a specialized piece of equipment, doing the site preparation, installation, getting it up and running, and making sure it's doing what it's supposed to do, everything that can go wrong does go wrong! When you've thought through all the necessary precautions and think you've handled them all, you find there's something you missed! When you think that it cannot get any worse, it does! Finally when you think you've worked out all problems, you are proven completely and utterly wrong!!

I'm talking about this new piece of equipment that our research group decided to invest in. Yes it's a great investment specially for my research work. But so far I've been going out of my mind with trying to set it up!

It all started when the dispatch of the equipment was delayed by the manufacturer who's in the UK. Not my fault, but it's pretty annoying when you've got an oblivious agent who has got no idea what's happening, and a 9 hour time difference with the main company!

All the while I was doing the site preparation, like finding a suitable place (negotiating with people who are very possessive of their labs is not too easy either), thinking through the connections, and placing orders for the accessories and fittings, which also gets either delayed or ends up in someone else's mail box!!!(for some obscure reason)! and all the while I'm running around like a headless chicken trying to locate the parcel which had been delivered two days ago!!!

Anyhoo,, at long last the equipment comes in....hooray!! so we gather around and unpack everything, and with a lot of manpower lift up the 70kg unit up onto the trolley/stand that I designed and got custom made for this, only to find that it's sagging under the weight! grrr! I wrote it down in plain English that it needs to withstand at least 80kg!

Then we eagerly rummage through the rest of the package. Lots and lots of accessories, fittings and parts all in a number of boxes......but no instructions manual!!! oh yeah there was one with about 5 pages which said, open the package, locate the pump (as if a 20 kg vacuum pump is easy to miss!!), check whether everything is in order etc etc...........But no instructions as to how to set it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unbelievable! They send us a highly specialised piece of equipment which is all disassembled and expect us to try and put everything together!!!???!!@!!

So I write to them and again the 9 hour time difference means I have to wait till the next day for a reply. And the next day I get a reply, with apologies about the shortcomings of the current instructions manual (shortcomings??!!*#&*!) and instructing me as to how some of the pieces fit together...and I said 'some' not all! so again I have to write to them specifically asking them about each and every connection, and I get a reply the next day. And the worst part is we need to set this up really fast, and test if it's working properly before we pay them! and we need to pay them within 30 days! already 2 days down for the missing instructions which wasn't even my fault to begin with!

Ok finally we get all the instructions that we need, and we go about putting it together, only to find that fittings don't fit, joints don't join and their tubes and hoses are not long enough!!!!!!!
Unbelievable!
So I start looking for vacuum hose suppliers, not very many around where I can get a fast delivery, but finally manage to find one and to my relief it's in stock (at least that's what I was told), so should be here in 2 days.
And I get the workshop person to grind, drill and modify the fittings to fit!

Then I find that there's a small issue I overlooked. I was planning to connect the gas tube of the equipment to the gas supply of an existing system, through a simple T connector. I measured the sizes of the tubes and both of them seem to be 6 mm (never rely on a broken vernier calliper!). Later on I realize that the existing system is from the US which means they use the imperial system so that tube is actually 6.35mm or in other words 1/4 inch! Doesn't really fit with the new UK equipment! Gggrrrhhh!!! Why can't the Americans use the metric system like everybody else does?? would make life that much easier for us poor souls!
But luckily the workshop guy managed to fix the problem but not before teasing me around with "oh, you are in big trouble here!".

And of course there were other subtleties that sent me running around looking for solutions, but I'll spare them here.

Ok, so now all the connections are done and everything seem to fit! But I still haven't received the vacuum hose that I ordered. Expecting another 'sent to the wrong person' escapade, I run around to check the mail centre of the university, only to find it never got here.
So I call up the supplier, who answers my question rather sheepishly "ehh...we kind of ran out of it.., so we had to wait for the next delivery" !!!!!??!!!!##$*?&**#&^!!???

Oh god! so now we are nearing the 15th day mark. Hopefully the hose will get delivered tomorrow morning, in which case 'hopefully' I will be able to get the thing up and running (fingers crossed!) but of course I wouldn't be surprised if some issue does turn up! I'm kind of sure that something will turn up......I have a gut feeling.......but of course I'm feeling paranoid!


Wish me luck!

Once in a blue moon

The blue moon from NASA

I've wondered about this expression once, sometime back. Blue moon? why blue? were there any instances where the moon appeared blue?

Today, I came across the answer in an unexpected manner. I was reading through a Physics book called "Absorption and scattering of light by small particles", which is quite nicely written I have to say.

Anyhow, the part about the blue moon....I think we are quite familiar with the reddening effect at sunrise and sunset, which is partly the result of light scattering from airborn particles. Ok I'll spare the scientific details......

Similarly there's a 'bluing' effect, but for this to take place the airborn particles must be within a narrow range of particle sizes, which is very hard to come by, hence the term 'once in a blue moon'.

However, there have been instances recorded in history where the sun and moon were observed to be blue, specially after the giant eruptions of the volcano Krakatoa and following huge forest fires in Canada.

If you'd like a more scientific explanation see here & here.

The feeling that someone's watching you.....

My cubicle is located in a rather inconvenient place, kind of in the middle of a big room where the exits of the room are located such that people walk right behind me. Since the day I sat here I've noticed that some people and when I say some I mean only 2 or 3, tend to shot a glance towards my computer screen when walking past this point. But not everyone did that (so I thought) and since I myself often found casting a glance or two at other's screens when I'm walking past theirs, I didn't really take much notice of these 'peeks', until I changed my wallpaper.

It was a close-up of a cute little puppy looking playful, that filled my computer screen this time.

First it was my supervisor,
"I like your puppy"
"huh?.., puppy?"
"yeah the one on your desktop"
"Oh!"
hmm.........so he's keeping an eye on what I'm doing.....Caution!!!!!

Next the admin lady
"Oooh! nice one!"
"ehh..thanks"

Then later in the day comes this professor who hardly notices anything!
"Oh that's cute! Is that your puppy?"
"(me smiling) no it's not, but I wish!"
"hahaha...."
Oh god!

And of course the other students
"Awwww"

"Hey! a doggy!"

"Cuuute!"

Gheez!!!! This is pretty creepy!

Word of advice: Always keep a spreadsheet (filled with thousands of data values) or some complicated graph (for me a spectrum: which nobody can understand) always ready to be 'maximised' when needed.

A bundle of ......physics??!

I got this mail just a couple of days ago from a former researcher in our centre (Me being a newbie, have never really met this one). Apparently his wife has given birth to a baby, and he sent this mail to his former coleagues to let them know of the big news!

(I'm not displaying his name just for privacy sake!)


Hi all,
I just wanted to tell you that since 07.02.08, 4.52 am (german time) N----- and I are not alone anymore: With 4390 g distributed over 54 cm, we named our son Ruwen (pronounced: Rouven, hebrew: "behold, it is a son"). The boy is well and the mother is recuperating: with 39 cm head circumference he has a "bullhead".
I hope you join us in our happiness!

XXX

It sure looks like he could do with a break from work!!

Have a break, Have a Kit-Kat!

For those of you wondering whether I'm dead....... not so soon! For the last month or so I've been living in the micro world or rather the nano world! Yes it's a very exciting place!! Where atoms and electrons mingle together and where vapour particles deposit forming beautiful patterns, ............well, at least in my imagination!

And for some weird reason all the equipment that I use seem to be behaving themselves very well! hmm........that's a first!

Anyway, after a very 'occupied' couple of weeks, it's Friday ahead of a long weekend, with fine weather (outside; not in the lab) And my supervisor is nowhere to be seen!

I need a break to get back to real life! (before the boss appears back at his desk!)

Good, I'm going to grab "Anna Karenina" which I've been trying to read for more than a month , and slip out of here!

Maybe snap up a Kit-Kat on my way!

Just my luck!!!!!!!

After waiting for a whole week, just to get my turn at the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), I arrived at the Research lab with my precious little samples, well ahead of time so as not to waste a single minute of my booked 3 hours! .....no...it's not plenty of time to get work done.....these high resolution imaging stuff takes ages for a scan!

And if I don't manage to extract all the information I need within this 3 hours, it might be another week before I can find an available time slot to continue my work, the SEM seems to be in very high demand.

So the person who's responsible for the SEM, let's call him Dr. H, was kind enough to explain to me how it all works before he began scanning the samples for me. And again no....we are not encouraged to 'do it ourselves' with this sophisticated piece of equipment which is worth $$ big bucks $$!!! So there's this Dr. H who operates it for us.

So, all was good and we were just about an hour into our work, took some images of the sample surfaces and was getting into the more interesting and important part of the work when suddenly the computer got stuck!!!

hmm...ok, so he did what he would normally do, shake the mouse a bit....sit patiently for a while....shake it again.................no response.......Esc.......Enter.......shake the mouse again (this time a bit impatiently) and now the mouse was also stuck!!! .....now that's weird....

When we came to the point of realization that the shaking is not going to work, we had to Ctrl+Alt+Del; once,...twice.......thrice....still nothing..........so Dr.H got really impatient and he kept pressing hard down on the keys till it shut down!

And then restarted it...but this time it wouldn't log in! The computer has gone seriously bananas!!!!

And it's not just a stand-alone computer, it's linked to the SEM, so we had to abandon my work!!!!!!

And my precious samples are still stuck inside the SEM! and they will have to stay there until some service people come down and figure out how to fix the system. Grrrr!!!**&&^# I wonder when that's going to be.

The SEM has been functioning very well for the last couple of months and just my luck it decided to crash right now!!!??!!

Muilti-culturalism

Melbourne is known to have a very multicultured and diverse society. People from all over the world call the city home.

And I've got a fairly representative sample of that population at my research centre. I share an office space with an interesting bunch of people. an Australian, an American, a Russian, a South African, a Vietnamese, a German, a Chinese, an Iranian, a Spaniard and a Sri Lankan (that's me!)
Funny mentioning America, Vietnam, Germany and Russia all in one sentence :)

So it gets very interesting when we get a chance to talk outside of work, like during lunch or tea, you discover very interesting aspects of life and different cultures. But that sort of occurence is very rare! because all of us don't feel hungry at the same time, and tea/coffee is something you have all day long.....one after another........at your desk...until you finish your work, it's kind of like.... fuel.

Anyway. and even if a few of us meet up in the lounge area for lunch (by coincidence), after a brief chat, as it starts getting really interesting, someone goes "aah.....better get back to work!!"

The joy of experiments!

During the most part of this week I've been locked up inside laboratories doing some very delicate experiments, with the "Laser on" warning light going on outside the door, so that others would think twice before disturbing.

Everything was going very well, and I was feeling very productive for getting so much done within a couple of days, and was just about to wrap up the first stage of my set of experiments. I only had to do an extra set of analysis of the teeny weeny Silicon samples that I prepared so carefully...and patiently!

So I put them under the microscope, which is connected to a PC, a CCD camera and a spectrometer. After adjusting everything, I hit the "Acquire Data" button on the software programme. Tuk..tuk....peep...tuk..tuk....peep........that's the spectrometer analysing the sample and the computer outputting the graph....after a few minutes of tuk tuks and peeps, the computer showed me what the final graph looked like........... "What the...??!!!*&^#"
I didn't need my well experienced colleague to tell me that that is not what we are expecting!

hmm...ok, so back to the begining, adjustments......laser, camera, focus the microscope, cables...etc etc.... ok! Hit the button "Acquire Data"
tuk...tuk....peep...tuk...tuk....peep......

Final graph...."Darn!! What in the world is going on?"
So we were running around the set up, scratching our heads trying to figure out what's wrong.
After about two hours of tampering around, we discovered that the laser we were using was 15 mW in power, which is about 50 times more than what it should be!!!!!!!!!!!
How the hell that happened we don't know, but what it means is that not only were we subjecting our eyesight to potential damage but were burning holes right through my precious samples all this time!! Oh Joy!!!

The arcane world of vacuum technology

If you’ve watched the film Matrix, you probably would have got that eerie feeling when you switched off the tv and looked around you, “is this the real world or is there something going on underneath that I’m not aware of”.

I recently read up on ‘vacuum technology’ as part of my work and revisited something close to that weird feeling.

There are so many things that we use in our day-to day lives without realizing the work that lie hidden beneath it.
The technology of vacuum coating is something that goes into your pair of sunglasses, reading glasses, your car windscreen, fluorescent lights, LCD screens on your mobile, calculator, digital watch, computer, CD’s, DVD’s and the small chip on your credit card, magnetic strips on your ATM card and old cassettes, inside all electronics and much much more.

Something as simple as a pair of sunglasses goes through a couple of vacuum chambers (which are deemed of air) to get its UV reflection coating, polarization coating (to reduce the glare) and other coatings that are needed to protect your eyes. Same goes for your laptop screen, car windscreen and shutters (tinted or not) and now that I’ve mentioned it tinted thin film layers etc.

All these fine coatings can’t be done under a normal environment with air and water vapour present for they get in the way of the coating and you get a pretty lousy product.
So what manufacturers do is they put them in a vacuum chamber and evaporate the material that needs to be deposited on it, which then goes and sticks itself onto the product, and since there’s no air, you get a high purity coating. And of course it’s not as simple as it sound, a lot of consideration goes into the process, like maintaining the right temperature, rotating the sample to get a uniform coating, and making sure that the coating thickness (which is generally less than a hundredth of a milli meter) is just right.

This is a technology that is vastly present behind many things that we use everyday, but most of us don’t even know it exist.

Exasperated, Confused, Tired, Angry, Irritated and Bugged!

I've been trying to design a set up for a vacuum chamber that I have never seen, using components that I never knew existed, and trying to calculate the electrical loads and wire connections and what not using just the pictures and very little details provided in catalogues!

Simply driving me nuts!!!

And I can't get the required information from the component manufacturers! Obviously they are not in a hurry as I am.

Once I decide on the design I have to order the suitable components (based on my hypothetical design). If by some chance I overlook some small detail on one of these components and the thing turns out to be unsuitable, it's going to be my neck!

And I'm supposed to complete this before I leave to SL, so that an order can be placed for the components.

I hate deadlines!

Specially when I'm totally confused about the subject matter.

Mysterious vibrations

For the past few days I've been trying to figure out whether my lab setup is stable enough to carry out experiments. I've got a vibration isolated 800kg steel table, which measures about 3m long and 1.5m wide, sitting on a concrete block which is something like 7m long. And this whole thing is pumped up in pressurised air just to isolate it from the ground vibrations.

So effectively my experiment which will be sitting on the table and the concrete block will be completely isolated from any ground vibrations. But when I set up a scheme - an interferometer to check this, the table was very good but the concrete showed a small vibration. It's in the scale of micrometers and nanometers, but in optics that's a big issue. I turned off all AC's, exhaust fans and asked my colleagues to keep their voices down, but still I couldn't get rid of the confounded vibration.

It got my supervisor and the other students also thinking.. but finally we managed to find a work-around to it. The vibrations are still there, but I'm going to set up my experiment so that the vibrations will be compensated.

So that done, I'm sitting here blogging, waiting for my big mirror (1m diameter) to be lifted up and mounted for me. That should be done by today afternoon - hopefully!

Lasers in a nutshell

When someone mentions "Laser" we are instantly reminded of a bright light beam whether it's from a James Bond movie or from a stage display. But what exactly is a Laser?

In plain English, it's only a light source. Just like an ordinary light bulb or sunlight, a laser emits light. So what's so special about a laser? Well, there are a couple of differences, the major one being the high degree of coherence (I'm not going to explain that now since it's going to be very technical) another is the high intensities they can produce.

In some instances Laser intensities can be so high that just by looking at an object illuminated by a laser can burn your eyes for good! So lasers are categorised according to the level of damage that they can cause. Therefore lasers categorised as class 3 and above require wearing goggles and protective clothing.

A description of the importance of lasers is beyond my scope, they range from medical applications such as cancer cell burning and teeth whitening to metal cutting, engraving, and precision measurements of incredibly small distances, (I'm talking in the nanometer range).

I'll write about my research later on, for the moment I'm using a He-Ne laser which is categorised as 3B, that means I have to wear goggles, which can be quite a pain, for it cuts out most of the light and I keep knocking on things in the lab like a blind bat!

For your own safety

Next Tuesday supposedly there are some folks coming from some OHS (Occupational Health and Safety) thing to evaluate the safe work practices in the Physics building. Much to the annoyance of practically everybody!! Well, we are doing quite well without them, aren't we?

The lab wardens and technicians are annoyed since they are required to take care of all safety related actions and be prepared to deal with these folks, because if something goes wrong they will be partly responsible. The supervisors are annoyed since this 'monkey business' is taking up lot of useful time (research time). And students are annoyed because we are supposed to read up and be prepared to answer all sorts of possible questions they could ask, instead of doing our work! And of course this means that the lab warden would not have time to put up my optical table till after next Tuesday!!!@!?@*#&^!!?!

I don't know why we have to go through these stuff. We very well know how to use a Laser, to wear eye safety and not to poke our fingers into a high-voltage outlet! And above all, only authorised persons are allowed in the laser labs, so there is no risk of some curious passer-by getting into one of them. And of course there are those fire drills that goes off every now and then and we have to abandon all our work and go out of the building - just for fun!!! next there are those forms that we are required to fill out every now and then.

All these paraphernalia is just wasting time. I know it's better to be prepared than be sorry, but seriously there should be a limit!!

One of my colleagues actually believe that he will come down with some mysterious illness on Tuesday. And another a pure Australian, hoping to pretend that he's from France and can't speak any English! Well, he wouldn't get further than "Parlez-vous Francaise?" on that, and specially not if one of the evaluators happens to be fluent in French!...hmm......that would be fun!

Anticipating work

Gloomy day....no sunshine at all...and very cold...... seems like the winter is on its way...brrrrr!!!!!!

After a lot of remindings and pressuring, the setting up of my lab has been accelerated. So the whole day the lab warden was busy with that work. a-ha!

And I've been trying to understand "surface enhanced Raman scattering", dozing off......reading wikipedia, raman scattering, answering mails, raman scattering ..... I wish they would finish my lab soon!!

Customer confusion !?@?

I've been searching for some polymer materials for my project and for that purpose I was looking up companies that supply these kind of materials. It's not very easy as this is a very specialized area.

A word of information, I've been looking for photorefractive polymers, now these polymers are used for many purposes including holographic recording, which is what I want them for.

I found this company (Say X co.) upon the recommendation of a legendary researcher in polymer science (very nice fellow and the only person who was considerate enough to reply to my email).

I mailed this company assuming that they are the experts, asking if they've got holographic material with such and such properties. I got a blunt reply of " can't see what kind of products you want to know. We don't have product concerning real-time holographic materials"

hmm...... so I thought of approaching it another way, I used the specific chemical names of the materials and mailed them back asking if they supply that. Next I got "We don't supply holographic material, Sorry I can't assist you any further on that".
o....k...... I wasn't sure whether to give it up or not, because I knew they do research in polymer materials, and that academic person couldn't have been wrong...

I checked out their website but it was simply a mess, too many products and too many technical stuff. So I thought of giving it one last try,

This time I said, I just want to clarify the fact that they do research on photorefractive polymers and don't they sell them to the industry?, next comes the reply "yeah we do sell photorefractive polymers, but not holographic material" !??!!!%@#&!^#!

Obviously, the contact person has no idea for what their products are used for!!!

Well, at least the trouble was worth it, I now have a company which sells what I need, But I don't know how easy it's going to be to deal with them.

Research proposal submitted! Yepee!

Finally, finally... finally!!!

After making all the corrections, additions, subtractions etc, and printing....... well, one page - the time plan was too big for A4 and there weren't any Legal size papers around - only A3, but the printer wouldn't take A3, so after running back and forth between the main lab (printer) and the resouce room (papers) had to cut down A3 to the size of Legal to get that printed.

Next the bureaucratic work! 10 pages of questions to be answered, about this and that, with 5 people to sign (one person out for lunch, another at a meeting, the other on leave, the other on the 5th floor!!$@&#!!)

Half the day wasted on that! But the good news is that it's finished now.
Cool! let's see...... back to the journal database!!!

Supervisor's Democracy

My research proposal is almost done! (almost - because here nothing is certain, you think you've finished with something, only to find out from your boss that there's something more that you can add)

The tv in the main lab is always turned on these days because the Australian Open is going on. It's the quarter finals now, Federer and Roddick are already in the semi finals and so are Sharapova and Serena Williams, the other 4 will be decided today. Our supervisor doesn't seem to think that the tv belongs in the lab (even though it's in the dining area). However, he doesn't object much to tennis as much as he objects cricket. Probably because he can't understand the rules of cricket. So if there's a cricket match going on, he takes great pleasure in turning it off, despite the groans and objections from all the others. That's about 8 people vs 1, and they call it democracy.