[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: physics
Greetings from the African desert,
The telescope should clear customs today and arrive here at the
observatory tomorrow, so we are getting all teh last minute preparations
done so we can set it up and start making it work tomorrow!
The desert is beautiful. Reminds me a lot of the american southwest...
until a bunch of baboons cross the road in front of my car, that is.
In the two days I've been here, I've seen warthogs, baboons, some
kind of gazell or antelope (perhaps springbok -- we're not sure),
an eagle, and some guinea fowl. Red, sandy soil, and a lot of
green and yellow scrub with occasional isolated trees.
If you're looking for good physics stuff to read over the summer,
I recommend "Echoes of the Big Bang", a recent book about the MAP
results. I also heartily enjoyed Bill Bryson's Brief History of
Everything. The Biggest Bangs, by Jonathan Katz, is a good popsci
introduction to the field of research I'm active in (I even get
thanked in the introduction -- not sure why, though). And Robert
Kirschner's The Extravagent Universe is entertaining.
Oh, and those extra dimensions aren't "spiritual" -- they're
curled up so small you can't perceive them.
Gotta go fix a fan motor!
--
Don Smith Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
---------------
Unsubscribe by going to http://www.actwin.com/OtR/