Dear Physics Community,

I’d like to thank everyone who showed up for the lunch discussion today.  These are the slides I showed and I would be happy to hear further thoughts from anyone, especially students and staff.  Please send me your thoughts. We will share our response to the Vice-Chancellor in some form next week.

I sent Ian Waitz and Mark DiVencenzo an email earlier this week asking how much trouble I would get in if I created a list of matches between students on campus with people in Physics who need child care.  One thing led to another and I learned that MIT actually has a benefit for students, faculty, and staff for up to 30 days of subsidized babysitting.  MIT also has an affiliation with care.com that provides matching to local babysitting and coaching for homeschooling etc.  All this is managed through the Center for Work, Life, and Well Being.  I’ve been in touch with people there and if you need help with these things, please let me know and I will connect you.

Physics Department

The woodwork squeaks – and out come the freaks.  Pseudoscience in the COVID-19 era.

Entanglement – David gave a great colloquium today.  It reminded me of how great the original papers in this field were: EPR, Bell, and Aspect. If you want to work through the problem, here is a problem from Eugene Comins 221A Quantum Mechanics Course.

Los Endos

When you feel you need a break, have a look at Dark Roasted Blend.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

Nature has a great graphic about the race for a SAR-Cov-2 vaccine here.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories

• No more cutting across the field
• Fine for not wearing your mask, $300, includes inside public (including MIT) buildings. You can get a mask in Lobby 7.

Events

• Second Town Hall 4 pm Tuesday – announcement here
• Ragon Institute Webinar, on Anit-body testing and reopening. Friday, 10 am but will be recorded. The last one was excellent

Some glimmer of good news for international students: David Elwell reported that students had been given appointments for via interviews in mid-late June, including in China.  The earliest dates before were in November.

Physics Department

In planning for the Fall, the Vice Chancellor has asked the Department to write 1-2 paragraph plan here for each of the four or five scenarios spelled out in these slides.  On Thursday at lunch, I would like to collect your thoughts on how we should respond to each.  

 We will certainly like some of the scenarios more than others (and we should say so) but we must respond to all of them as we really do not know what will happen.  I invite all of your to respond from your own perspective as an instructor who will organize and give the course, a student who will learn the material, and a staff member who will administer all the logistics to get the courses going.

 No decisions have been made about the Fall and the work we do in this document may very well inform those decisions when they are made.

AMO dark matter searches – Vladan’s group used the isotope shift in Yb+ to look for new bosons in the 1-100 MeV mass range, same range as accelerator experiments.

Squeezing – a major effort in our LIGO group in the past couple of years is to use squeezed light to improve LIGO’s sensitivity and increase LIGO’s range.  New paper on their and Japanese here.

Los Endos

Openings? –  Harvard letter from the Provost, and NASCAR in Charlotte May 24, 27.

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here. Thanks to Physics Council, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.

Dear Physics Community,

How to do it – containment of a COVID-19 outbreak in a South Korean call center.

Announcements

• Pre-registration this year.
• Undergraduate office hours Wednesday 4-5 pm, on zoom, “What do you expect from your academic advisor?”

Physics Department

A hundred years ago – the Great Debate about whether the Milky Way was the whole universe and the “nebulae” were gas clouds inside it or the nebulae were really outside the Milky way and are “island universes” that we now call galaxies.

Rai and LIGO – last year, Mike Sipser, Dean of Science, produced a series of short videos about science at MIT.  This one features Rai Weiss, talking about how he came to LIGO. Nergis, Scott, and Matt all make appearances. Music from Sate, very classy.

Los Endos

Several people wrote asking if the US had something like the Russian Losharik spy sub.  Adm. Rickover, as a personal project, built NR-1, which even had wheels so it could drive around on the bottom.  If you are really interested, there is a book, “Dark Waters” written by a former crew member.

Dear Physics Community,

Done bingeing? – “Homeland” ended last night (but I have not watched it yet), “Better Call Saul” is done, and you’ve binged, “Ozark”, “Billions”, “The Good Place”, “Wolf Hall” and just cannot get in to “Dispatches from Elsewhere”, and when is “Lodge 49” coming back?  Try this opera!  Courtesy of Hale Bradt.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Articles related to re-starts at other colleges:

• Chronicle article (College plans for fall):
• Brown University

New working group: Academic Policy and Regulation Team – faculty, officers, CUP, CAP, COC chairs+ others to work out academic regulations.  Replaces EARS team that worked out P/NR during the shutdown.  Several things under consideration:

• Pre-registration – normally Friday, delayed until mid-June, most probably
• Grad. admissions yield – unchanged at the school level, except Sloan which was down a little.
• Graduate deferrals – handled at Department or program level.
• Subject evaluation – most likely two parts: experience survey (similar to Quality of life survey) and subject-specific with open-ended questions.  Instructors will not be evaluated and this term’s evaluations will not be used in tenure decisions.

Our input on Fall restart teaching scenarios is coming…

Physics Department

Hubble crisis update – In the Fall, Adam Reese gave a colloquium about measuring the Hubble constant locally and at cosmological distances and getting results that differed well outside of errors.  A new Quanta article talks about theoretical work to explain how this might happen. I’m putting my money on a new measurement of the Hubble constant that LIGO will make in the coming years.  Scott Hughes invented the method with others and wrote a Physics Today article about it.  The paper is here.  Stay tuned.

Aerosols – an aerosol consists of droplets or particles that are small enough so that they do not fall and can remain suspends for hours in are, circulating with the local airflow.  This article gives data on airborne SAR-COV-2 measured in China.  Makes me think we should be requiring fluid dynamics.

Los Endos

Too cool! – the Shelter in Place Gallery

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

Things to look at:

• Brain pickings
• From Pioneer Works run by Janna Levin.  Jana worked with Alan Guth while at MIT, I think, and then got into the Pioneer Works.  Everything she does is interesting and The Broadcast is no exception. She also wrote a book about LIGO, “Black Hole Blues”.

Advisories

Advisory about summer programs from Rafael

Physics Department

Contact tracing – Gov. Baker started, going old school by using people and phones.  Eventually, we’ll probably use our phones in some clever way, but right now, I’m betting on a phone tree.

HEPA filters – I’m starting to think about the air quality problem in closed rooms.  Aerosols hang around for tens of minutes and are not well controlled by masks.  The temptation is to open the windows, crank up the airflow and just get the stuff out, but turbulent flow around objects can cause aerosols to collect.  Not surprisingly, the pros have thought about how to do this, so I am going to digest this report before making a further nuisance of myself.

Los Endos

Repost – Nergis sent this last week, but I posted it with a bad link.

Peter

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

In the midst of all this mess, we still have to navigate international waters.  H.R. McMaster has a very interesting piece on US-China relations here.

Physics Department

What happens when you get behind on your reading – I try to follow what people in Physics are doing, but this week was just hard.  Catching up, I found this paper from Hong Liu relating condensed matter physics, gravity, many-body physics, and string theory.  I really recommend this nice, non-technical review.

Census – one of the most interesting things going on right now is the US Census.  The Constitution says there has to be a census every ten years and Congress says it has to be a count, not a sampling, and it has to protect citizens’ privacy.  The Census determines the allocation of congressional seats and the number of votes in the Electoral College, which we learned in the last presidential election is important. There is cool math used to ensure privacy.

Los Endos

This from Bob Jaffe.

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here. Thanks to Physics Council, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.

Dear Physics Community,

Today the Globe reported that the Ragon Institute would go back into full operation, as an experiment, in the next couple of weeks.  Terry Ragon, who endowed the Institute, chairs the Physics Visiting Committee and is a great friend of our Department.  The Ragon Institute also works on antibody testing for COVID-19 and there was a Ragon Institute Webinar last week about their work, which was quite good

Academic Continuity Meeting

MIT Medical – is expanding its testing capabilities.  Cecilia reported the tent outside of MIT Medical will be replaced this weekend by a trailer to allow testing in a better environment and with more technicians. Self-reporting – if you or someone you know might have COVID-19 please contact covid19reports@mit.edu right away.  They can connect you with resources, testing, and MIT Medical

Fall term – remains a hot topic with a new option: half the student population on campus for half of the Fall term.  Not sure how it works.  I think in a week or so, the Departments will be given clear scenarios and asked to work on developing plans for them.

Physics Department

UROPs – the Department is working to find UROPs positions for the summer for any undergraduate who has filled out Cathy’s form, so please do that so we can move ahead.  If you are a student and already have a UROP planned for summer with someone, please write a proposal and apply for direct funding by May 7.  Faculty and the Department can also fund UROP positions, but first, we need to match students with faculty.

Why did sex evolve? – this Quanta article has some interesting ideas, aside from the diversity of offspring.

X-ray induced mutations – Quanta had a link to Herman Joseph Muller, who in 1926, discovered that X-ray radiation could cause genetic mutations.  This was before DNA was known.

Los Endos A look ahead – from Nergis.

Damn glad it is Friday.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

NYT had a piece today, “The Year You Finally Read a Book about Climate Change”.  First on the list is “What We Know About Climate Change” by Kerry Emanuel from MIT.

While flipping through the Times, I found this.

Physics Department

When? – A piece on what’s needed for reopening campuses and businesses.

Networks – contact tracing of infections is a network problem.  I was reading this paper and wondering if the results could be applied to contact tracing to estimate the total number of infections.

Bound state beta decay – I have always been interested in this process.  Bahcall predicted it in 1961 and it was first observed in 1992 at GSI in the very intriguing Dy-163 – Ho-163 system.  Does not appear to be good for much, but interesting to think about.

Los Endos

Carol Breen reports that today the 403rd anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.  This shows the frequency with which people in his collected works were dispatched.

Trouble coping (thanks to Ray Ashoori)?

Peter

Duke

Dear Physics Community,

Pablo and Matt sent a  very interesting paper about pulse oximetry and its potential value in identifying people with COVID-19 before there are symptoms.  I’ve sent the paper to experts and will wait to see.  There is also an interesting series of posts by Tomas Pueyo here about coping long term.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Where 160 sq. ft./person in labs comes from – Earlier this week, I reported that safe density in labs needed 160 sq. ft./person and I got a lot of emails about it. I asked at the 8 am meeting and Krystyn Van Vliet explained it comes from analyzing the layout of labs at MIT.  Because of lab benches, cabinets, and equipment, the accessible floor area is much smaller than the total floor area and the stuff in the room has the effect of forcing people closer together.  The 160 sq. ft. comes from the average space needed per person to prevent incursions inside 6 ft. between people.

The same was then applied to classrooms, where I do not think it applies very well.  To get occupancy, the projected floor area is divided by 160 sq. ft..  10-250, floorplan here, is steeply sloped and the projected area is about 40′ x 64’=2,560 sq. ft., for occupancy of 16 people.

Opinion – Pres. Reif’s op-ed in the Globe.

Physics Department

LIGO – Science reports on a heavy/light black hole merger here.

Bright black holes – why?  They’re supposed to the black, but they aren’t.

Los Endos

Jesse Wodin was an undergrad who UROPed with me.  Then he went to Stanford and got a Ph.D. with Giorgio Gratta working on AMO and particle physics.  Now he works at a cool company called SRI that does a lot of government-related research and he asked me to advertise some positions for SRI here.  If you are interested, let me know and I will put you in touch with Jesse.

Peter