The Science Thread

[j'nuh]

Post some science articles *****es.

It's been a good week for science. Some scientists have come up with evidence, still yet to be fully scrutinised, which would give more credence to the Big Bang Theory. There are other teams currently working on reproducing the experiment. Immediate talks of Nobel prizes, it's so ground-breaking. It'll be exciting to see how this develops:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26605974
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...entists-picked-up-echoes-of-the-Big-Bang.html

Some other evidence has been given of a double impact, where an asteroid and its moon struck the Earth together. Scientists were able to date two craters in Sweden to the same age by studying prehistoric fossils (458 million years):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26172181

 

[Feicarsinn]

I'm a bit skeptical of this BICEP II lark for the moment. It's a wonderfully carried out experiment no doubt, but I think an awful lot of the talk around of its results is premature. Firstly, while they've done really well to get the clean data they've gotten, you can still make a good argument that what they're seeing is at least partly the result of gravitational lensing. Secondly, they're only operating in a small frequency band. Should they be able to see these B-mode signals somewhere else on the spectrum (although this will probably require some more expensive equipment) it'd lend a lot more credence to the result. That said, it's a really strong indication that the inflationary model is pretty good.


In other news, I have an interview for a possible PhD spot on Tuesday making wee small things.

 

[j'nuh]

Well, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the peer-reviewing and whether the results will be reproduced by other teams. Thankfully, it shouldn't be too long until this happens.

And congratulations on the interview. What would the topic be? It's not been too long since I left education, but I am absolutely itching to get back. Did you do a masters before applying for a PhD? I actually left my masters year halfway through and didn't complete it for certain reasons. Doing a PhD weighs heavily on my mind, but I'm not sure whether I would get far in applications for funding/a place without having a masters under my belt, and I'm not sure how I would be able to afford going back to do a masters.

Also, you may know something about this: can people transfer subjects between masters and PhD levels? My workplace may be able to offer me a chance to do a part-time masters in statistics, but I've been wondering how easily I'll be able to transfer to another research topic if I were to go on and do a PhD?

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

 

[SelimNiai]

Astronomy is one of these things I used to be into as a kid but never took it further. Wish I had now, find the whole space, stars, nebulae etc really fascinating. I can spot a few things in the night sky, one night a few weeks ago had a clear view of Orion, and his belt and the main stars in it, Sirius, Jupiter and the Gemini constellation.

 

[Big Ewis]

Astronomy is one of these things I used to be into as a kid but never took it further. Wish I had now, find the whole space, stars, nebulae etc really fascinating. I can spot a few things in the night sky, one night a few weeks ago had a clear view of Orion, and his belt and the main stars in it, Sirius, Jupiter and the Gemini constellation.

Me too ! I'm still not too sure just how exact it is, but I know there's truth to it. Cancer, Gemini, the tides...I personally prefer numerology, there's so much more to delve into and explore the occult corners of the univer.....
oh astroNomy !!...haha, I was just kidding of course !!! HAHA !!! Big Ewis and his silly self !...

 

[Feicarsinn]

Well, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the peer-reviewing and whether the results will be reproduced by other teams. Thankfully, it shouldn't be too long until this happens.

And congratulations on the interview. What would the topic be? It's not been too long since I left education, but I am absolutely itching to get back. Did you do a masters before applying for a PhD? I actually left my masters year halfway through and didn't complete it for certain reasons. Doing a PhD weighs heavily on my mind, but I'm not sure whether I would get far in applications for funding/a place without having a masters under my belt, and I'm not sure how I would be able to afford going back to do a masters.

Also, you may know something about this: can people transfer subjects between masters and PhD levels? My workplace may be able to offer me a chance to do a part-time masters in statistics, but I've been wondering how easily I'll be able to transfer to another research topic if I were to go on and do a PhD?

Well, I can't tell you what the story is in maths, but for physics at the very least a masters usually isn't a prerequisite for PhD work. It's a full time job, so they're not really expecting you to take another year or two with low to no income before you can get at it (this isn't the case everywhere I should say, for example I was going to apply for a spot at Max Plank, but they're big into masters students for some reason.)

As to interdisciplinary work, there's loads of opportunity for transfer. There are a tonne of chemists in my physics department for example. Maths and physics are very transferable, particularly for theorists and modelling. A maths degree is a pretty versatile thing to have from what I can see.

Anyway, the position I'm going for this week is mainly centred around nanolithography. That's making devices on the scale of about 100 nanometers or less, which is about 1,000 times the thickness of a human hair. I've also applied to this new centre for metamaterials in the University of Exeter which I'm really excited about. They're doing some very cool things with graphene and nanodevices.

Astronomy is one of these things I used to be into as a kid but never took it further. Wish I had now, find the whole space, stars, nebulae etc really fascinating. I can spot a few things in the night sky, one night a few weeks ago had a clear view of Orion, and his belt and the main stars in it, Sirius, Jupiter and the Gemini constellation.

Oh man, astronomy is one of the easiest things to get into if you're still interested. You don't need a telescope worth hundreds of pounds to enjoy it, just a keen sense of interest. SmartCookie is pretty into it if I remember correctly.

Here are some cool resources about what's going on in the sky at the moment if you're casually interested. They're made for North America, but as we're in the NH it's not a big deal.

This Week's Sky at a Glance:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

Tonight at a Glance:
http://earthsky.org/tonight

Heavens Above (satellite tracking):
http://www.heavens-above.com/

Also, you should check out some of the astronomy subreddits, they've got a tonne of useful info.

 

[SelimNiai]

Cheers for those. Any decent Android apps on the subject? I had one on my old iPhone with I used a lot but its not made for Android sadly. Main problem I have where I live is there is a lot of Light pollution so dont get a very clear view. Once I go out of town I can see a lot more

 

[Feicarsinn]

Cheers for those. Any decent Android apps on the subject? I had one on my old iPhone with I used a lot but its not made for Android sadly. Main problem I have where I live is there is a lot of Light pollution so dont get a very clear view. Once I go out of town I can see a lot more

Yeah, light pollution sucks.

Apparently SkEye and Sky Map review pretty well as apps. Sky Maps is one of google's babies I think.

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

I have Sky maps for android I quite like it easy enough to use.

 

[Rich Taff]

The skymap can be a bit buggy on Android, but when it works, it's great to know what you're looking up at.
Also, there is an 'ISS locator' app, that will tell you when the International Space Station is visible, and where to look. (Still not managed to see it, but living in Cardiff, that's more due to cloud cover than the app)

 

[Feicarsinn]

Went to a talk given by Sir John Pendry there last week on metamaterials for electromagnetic cloaking (invisibility yo.) The man's a genius.

 

[Feicarsinn]

Did anyone see that craic about a 4 quark hadron discovered by LHCb? It's going to be interesting to see how the standard model and QCD in particular deal with this.

 

[Rich Taff]

Ok, I think I've solved P vs NP. All we have to do is consider the initial...hold on there's someone at the door.
...
...
.....
.......
Ok Back. Now what were we talking about? Oh crap, I lost my train of thought, but I really did have the solution!

 

[Big Ewis]

yeah, this thread is sorta....


you know ?
a fkn science thread on a rugby forum, just wtf....

 

[SelimNiai]

yeah, this thread is sorta....
View attachment 2787

you know ?
a fkn science thread on a rugby forum, just wtf....

Too intelligent for you?

 

[Big Ewis]

Too intelligent for you?

coming from you !! :lol:

 

[Feicarsinn]

Accepted a PhD position yesterday in Nanomechanics. Going to be spending the next four years making really, really, really small stuff. No doubt it'll make me feel like a real big man yo.

Happy out. Also, doing a bit of study at the moment and I saw this pic which i quite like.

 

[Big Ewis]

Accepted a PhD position yesterday in Nanomechanics. Going to be spending the next four years making really, really, really small stuff. No doubt it'll make me feel like a real big man yo.

Happy out. Also, doing a bit of study at the moment and I saw this pic which i quite like.

kind of like you're feeling right now spewing out your life accomplishments on a Rugby forum ?

 

[Feicarsinn]

Beats studying.