Quantum Diaries

While most labs managed to dodge a bullet mor(what really looked like a giant bomb) in the 2011 budget. There are still many problems coming. Announced Thursday and reported on the Courier News and this blog that Fermilab will seek to reduce its staff by 5% through a voluntary program.

With the ending of the Tevatron program in September this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, however it doesn’t do much to boost morale around the lab. In fact, even though much of the talk is on the future experiments like Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), Mu2e (website), and the future of Project X (website) there can’t help but be a sense of loss for many scientist working there.

For me, trying desperately to finish my thesis on work at CDF and looking for post-docs that might keep me in the Chicago land area, pieces of news about the shrinking of the lab only causes me to take pause and check to see if going down this path is the best for me.

The little support and almost no excitement coming from a budget strapped government towards science makes it hard for a young researcher to keep a stiff upper lip and look to the future with too much optimism .

Oh well, more focus on thesis and hopefully when I lift my head there will be a good position on an interesting and well funded experiment to work on.

I don’t know how this keeps happening but there is always some neat tool or new feature that the folks over at Google roll out and completely blows me away! This time it is their tool out of the labs called Google Correlate. I’ve only just seen this (thanks to my buddy Homer Wolfe for posting on Facebook) and I’m already floored.

What I can gather is this lets you see how certain search terms are correlated over time, or location, or many other variables that I’m still exploring. The first example that I saw as a search term for Stalin (as in Joseph Stalin). As it turns out, no one searches for Stalin in the summer….weird right?!?!

Frequency of search terms for "Stalin"

As if this wansn’t enough to blow me away you can click on the link ‘Search by Drawing’ (http://correlate.googlelabs.com/draw) and pick to draw in your own frequency pattern and it will return a series of search terms that look like what you’ve drawn and tell you how correlated it is.

So I drew this:

What I drew (Something that peaks every couple of years

The correlation result

Really cool tool that gives all kinds of intuitive ways to search their search data! Since particle physics people are usually pretty geeky when it comes to how to search data I thought this would be a tool many people would like to play with!

Imagine the different implications to how searches could be done with this sort of manipulation of data at a visual and intuitive level. Now granted, most of the searches that go on in particle physics are of this sort (looking for bumps or strong correlation in the data) but the tools that Google is making to allow this to be more intuitive is really remarkable!

I thought I would share this post from the Tevatron’s Facebook page (can be found here).

Just in the last week we had 6 of the top 10 initial luminosity stores from the Tevatron and the accelerator delivered 78 pb-1 of data in just the last week!

This is really an amazing accomplishment for this accelerator and with this rate of data delivery we can be sure that both experiments that operate on the Main Ring (CDF and D0) will have lots of data to analyze before the planned shutdown in September.

For those of you that don’t exactly know what these numbers mean, this is just a simple way of measuring the amount of interactions (or collisions) that we will get during the operation of the accelerator. The higher the luminosity, the greater chance that the collisions will occur and the more interesting data we have to record. What is truly amazing is after 25 years of operations the Tevatron is performing like never before and delivering data and unprecedented rates! This means that there is a greater chance of catching a glimpse at rare processes in physics that may be buried in our data.

Even more clear explanations and updated numbers for the Tevatron can be found here:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlumexp.html

So I promised myself I wouldn’t put the most common blog entry I think there is on the internet by not writing about how I am sorry that I haven’t been blogging frequently and then make (most likely false) promises about blogging more (did I just fail at that?)

Anyways, I thought I would instead talk about the new Linux release of Ubuntu that I just downloaded and finally decided to abandon the dual boot world of Windows/Linux for my laptop and instead just use Linux exclusively.

I had effectively been doing this for the last year, but always had the safety net of being able to boot in windows if necessary. Now, after a glowing experience with Ubuntu Linux I went completely without a net into this new release!

Previously I was using Ubuntu 10.04 and was very pleased. As a member of the high energy physics community I was really pleased to see that the Ubuntu community had included CERN’s program ROOT as part of their software center! For those of you outside the physics world ROOT is THE FUNDAMENTAL PROGRAM used by physicists for just about everything we do. Without ROOT, we would likely be using an abacus and graphing paper.

Needless to say I was disappointed in the new version not to find the same convenience ready to install ROOT with a “click of the mouse”. However, unlike when I was a young grad student, the installation process has become much easier and better documented. Thusly, I was surprised when ROOT complained that I didn’t have a library installed (X11 for those that care) despite me explicitly following the well documented instructions on their page (http://root.cern.ch/drupal/). What I realized is that the libraries did in fact exists just not where ROOT was looking for them. Once I found this I made a series of softlinks (computer jargon for pointed the computer to where to look) and things ran swimmingly!

I thought I’d post the libraries that gave me issues in case there was anyone out there in the physics world considering changing brands of Linux and wanted to give Ubuntu 11.04 a whirl (Because heaven knows we can’t have a machine and NOT have ROOT installed)

 

jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so /usr/lib/libX11.so
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
jasaadi@jasaadi-Inspiron-1420:/usr/lib$ locate libXft.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so.2
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so.2.2.0
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so /usr/lib/libXft.so
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so.2 /usr/lib/libXft.so.2
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ locate libXext.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6.4.0
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so /usr/lib/libXext.so
jasaadi:/usr/lib$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 /usr/lib/libXext.so.6

I thought I would share a good link to find all the current talks being given in the particle physics world from the conference Recontres de Moriond.

As said on the website the purpose of this conference is:

While I’m not personally giving any talks at this conference many people I know are and you can expect some big name talks coming from the Tevatron.

If it seems that the news lately has been grim coming out of the U.S…it is because it is. In a talk yesterday by the director of Fermilab Pier Oddone laid out some very bleak circumstances for the coming year that Fermilab and many scientific ventures face.

See Pier’s talk here

The short of it is the budget put forward by the Republican congress would slash domestic spending in view of the fact that the U.S would see 1.5 trillion dollar deficit in Fiscal Year 2011. Now that being said, these proposals actually only effect < 20% of the total budget and definitely don’t fix the total problem.

However, the impact would be very real! Since the U.S government has been acting on a continuing resolution (basically saying keep 2010 spending and appropriations since Congress didn’t pass a new budget), getting a 20% cut now actually amounts to a 40% cut for the rest of the year! This fact has DIRE impact on Fermilab as Pier said in his talk.

Impossible to accommodate such cuts without major disruptions:

1. Stop operation of all accelerators immediately
2. Slow down projects to barely keep-alive levels
3. Prepare layoffs of 20% of the staff or 400 employees
4. Furlough staff for roughly two of the remaining six months

This coming on the heels of the announcement that there would be no extension to the running of the Tevatron in 2011 means that things would slow down in the US High Energy Physics area very quickly with no clear signs of when they will pick up again.

Frankly, for a government that is purporting not wanting to miss “their sputnik moment” the idea of drastically cutting funding to fundamental research seems just plain stupid! Innovation does not happen in a climate where people are worried if the lab they work at is going to be there tomorrow…nor will “job creation” and “a balanced budget” happen by cutting spending to a small fraction of the overall budget that actually generates jobs and opportunities in the United States. The best quote I’ve heard to describe this sort of approach to budgetary problem solving was in an article in the Washington Post.

“Making the government lean by cutting the most defensible (and productive) federal spending is akin to making an overweight aircraft fly by removing the engine!”

So what do we do? Write your congressman/congresswomen and tell them that gutting science is no way to the future! There are instructions on the webpage of how to get this letter written. I encourage all readers to write to help save such great scientific programs such as Fermilab!
Write Congress

Well, with all the talk of the terrible weather moving through the central united states I thought now would be a good time to chime in about life at Fermilab during the winter.

Winter weather is a fact of life in the midwest and this terrible storm is no different. Even the Tevatron tweeted some comments about it

Tevatron Store 8465 terminated intentionally – 7900 nb^-1 delivered. Store 8466 initial lumi = 352 ub^-1/s. Preparing for blizzard tomorrow.

followed up by the comment:

Tevatron Too bad the accelerator isn’t going to shovel my driveway.
Likewise, as a grad-student now living off site this sort of thing means that it is unlikely I’ll make it to the lab to work over the next few days. Generally, this isn’t  a big deal for me, the component of the detector I help maintain (Electromagnetic Calorimeter Timing or ‘EMTiming‘) has few to no problems and most of them are software related (one of calibrations drift) and can be dealt with remotely. What I do end up missing out on is being physically there to take part in the discussions and get feedback from experts.

Particle physics is an interesting game, especially from where I sit nearing the end of my analysis and hoping to present the results that will go in my thesis in the upcoming weeks. Getting feedback is really important, however presenting results that you haven’t vetted really well is also problematic. You can end up wasting a lot of time because you showed plots that had a “bug“ in them (bug meaning a problem in your code) or presenting an idea for estimating your background that ends up not working out….then having to explain in another talk why what you initially thought was wrong and how you were just wasting your time.

So, with Snow-mageddon bearing down on me, I will take this time to crawl into my little whole of an apartment and finish vetting my final plots and ideas.

CDF Collision Hall as seen from outside (in the spring)...very pretty orange

The CDF collaboration meeting is coming up in under 2 weeks and I need to have my results ready for presentation!

Time to get my ducks (or in the spirit of Fermilab) geese in a row!

The Tevatron will shutdown at the end of Fiscal Year 2011

As was announced today by the director of Fermilab (see here) there will be no extension to the running of the Tevatron beyond 2011.

As stated:

“The present budgetary climate did not permit DOE to secure the additional funds needed to run the Tevatron for three more years as recommended by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel.”

This marks a very sad day for me to hear that the experiment I am working on and have grown to love will be ending after this year.

It is especially hard to hear considering that this choice is being made (at least publicly) by budgetary considerations and not by the recommendation of the science that drives field.

I’ll probably have more to say on this in the coming days…but for now I have a PhD to finish and thought it would be worth while to post briefly on this.

See more related articles here:

From the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2011/jan/10/1

From Chicago Buisness: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/3242019-418/tevatron-fermilab-funding-accelerator-energy.html

As described in the following press release (see here). The Italian government has confirmed that they will be moving forward on the construction of the high intensity electron/positron collider known as SuperB.

Expected to produce 1000′s of B-Mesons and Tau particles every second this will allow physicists to study the very rare decays of these B mesons as well as study CP violation to a much higher degree of accuracy than previously possible.

The U.S. meanwhile is still holding in the background awaiting word if we will even have a say in the future of particle physics. With the awaiting word of the Tevatron extended run (see P5 report recommending the extension of the Tevatron here) and knowing that many of the components for the SuperB will come from the short lived PEP-II experiment at SLAC just reinforces that while the rest of the world is looking forward to the future of science the US is increasingly looking like it playing a “wait and see” game.

At least this physicists may end up having to look for jobs in Europe and add to the potential brain drain (all though in my case a very small drain) facing the US.

One of the things that brings me much joy during the often difficult and trying times of finishing a PhD in particle physics is the overwhelming exposure I have to some really great intellectual minds and discussions. Being stationed at Fermilab and taking part in an experiment like CDF (which has a long history and much expertise) makes this even more possible!

Image from talk by Prof Sundrum

In fact just a few weeks ago I got to see a lecture from one of my physics icons Prof Raman Sundrun on Warped Extra Dimensions. (See his talk here). This was really a great talk and the images used were simple but conveyed a really understanding of an incredibly difficult subject (only on this blog would working out the mathematics of 11 dimensions be considered “standard operating procedure”)

Along these same lines I was pleased when I stumbled across the website http://fora.tv. This website complies talks by many different experts and academics from all over the US and puts it all in one place (mostly) for free.

I’ve already watched some great lectures by Prof Steven Levitt (Author of Freakonomics and Prof of Economy and University of Chicago) NASA scientists David Morrison on the end of the world and 2012 myth…and I’m just getting started.

These types of intellectual discussions are great stimulus during those long coding sessions and paper editing nights. Where the intellectual work is already done and now you just need to bear down hard and turn through the work. So I thought this would be a great thing to share with our readers here.

Enjoy the talks!