Dear Physics Comunity,

Today we had end-of-term lunch. The need for good zoom etiquette came up.  Here is a an example from Pittsburg.  If anyone wants to customize it for MIT, I will circulate it.

No academic continuity meeting today

Advisories

• Working from home – the VPR is getting requests to have lab equipment and supplies moved to MIT employee’s homes so they work from home in a big way.  Here is the new policy.
• In the “that’s just swell” category – there are places in the national lab complex where there is enough helium around to kill your iPhone.  Thanks to Karen Dow for sending this.

Physics Department

Keep calm and carry on department – Lindley’s CUORE double beta decay experiment keeps going through the pandemic.

360 of Wolfgang’s lab, including WK on a bike.

MIT News on Will Detmold and his research in making protons fuse on a computer.

Los Endos

Good weather and a walk around Walden Pond did a world of good for me today.  My walk was followed by a stimulating lunch with the faculty and staff.  Thank you.

Thursday lunches, open to everyone in the MIT community, will go on hiatus and return the first Thursday after commencement.  I’m looking for help organizing and ideas for how to use the lunches, so, please write to me if you are interested in helping out.

Peter

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

Dear Physics Community,

Classes ended today and I would like to thank the students, faculty, and staff who made classes possible in this awful time.  From what I can tell, remote instruction went well, but also served to remind all of us how valuable residential learning really is. Thank you all for working so hard to make the term happen.

Advisories

• From the Town Hall last week

Academic Continuity Meeting

Fall – discussion and community engagement about what fall might look like continues.  Stay tuned.

Physics Department

Fallout – good Lord, why is this in Science and PRL?  I don’t doubt the results, but now is not a good time to give people ideas.

Anyons – invented by Frank Wilczek, they are neither fermions nor bosons, but in between.  They were first observed a few months ago.  Quanta has the story.

Los Endos

As the term ends, I am thinking about the need for the daily Message.  I think the daily message will continue in some form and would like to hear your thoughts.

Peter

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

Dear Physics Community,

Reaching out – Tucker Nichols, an artist in San Rafael CA, will send a hand-painted picture of flowers to anyone who is sick if you ask him.  His paintings are beautiful and he is doing this as a gift to the world in these difficult times.  If you need cheering up, have a look at the paintings in his online gallery here.  PBS Newshour story here.

No Academic Continuity Meeting today

Physics Department

Undergraduate office hours with Peter, Nergis, Emma, and Cathy tomorrow at 4 pm.

End of term – grades are due May 15 for courses with no final exam and May 22 for courses with final exams.  The APO staff has to take your grades, do degree checks, and so on before the Department grades meeting on May 26 and the last CAP meeting on May 27.  On May 28, the Corporation approves the degree list and Commencement is May 29.

In past years, the APO staff has had a week to do what they now have four days to do and the time they have May 22-25, spans Memorial day weekend, which is awful.  We need everyone’s help to make sure they can get their work done, so please:

• Submit your subject’s grades on time or even early.
• If you anticipate problems completing work or finishing grades in this time-frame, please let me know as soon as possible.

Ever want to winter over at the South Pole? – MIT alum John Hardin is living the dream.  He wrote a Letter to the Editor of APS Physics about it here.  Drop him a line if you can.

One layer at a time – Story in Jagadeesh Moodera’s MBE machine to make ultrathin layers of novel materials here.

Los Endos

Distributing the time – constellations of satellites distribute time for geolocation, metrology, and cryptographic keys.  This article describes a new satellite that uses quantum entanglement to carry out these operations securely.  This is technically a big deal.

Peter

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

Dear Physics Community,

Fake news – continues, now pandemic related. It’s a problem and here is how it works.

Useful – some analysis and advice on what to avoid as things reopen.

Advisories

• Town Hall – over 600 FAQ, answers here.

Academics Continuity Meeting

UROPs – The UROP office received 1,071 UROP applications for direct funding, compared with a typical year in which they receive about 700.

Inventing the Fall – the Administration has been digesting the input from the departments on the five scenarios submitted last week and is planning further engagement with the MIT community in the next few weeks.  The plan is to convene students, faculty, and staff in discussions, charettes, and other fora.  At the same time, the heads of student houses are working as a group on how to operate in the fall should some or all students return.  All of this will result in a recommendation to the senior administration who will make the decision of what to do.

If you have the opportunity, please participate.  Deciding how students will come back to MIT in the coming year is probably the most important and difficult decision MIT has had to make in the 25 years I have been here, so let your voice be heard.

Physics Department 

Little’s law – the cornerstone of queuing theory, this simple-seeming law was not proven until 1960 by Jack Little, a Physics alumnus, and still active Sloan professor. Proof here.

Anti-deSitter space – in unstable?  Apparently so, according to Quanta.

Los Endos

Spaceplane launch – the Air Force space plane, the X-37B, will launch Saturday for its seventh highly classified mission.  Nobody quite knows what it does.  It makes you wonder why the Air Force announces X-37B launches to the press.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

We are approaching the end of the term.  A good moment to reflect on how hard this has been and how we have risen to the challenge.  No academic Continuity Meeting today

Advisories

• New Title IX regulations from the Department of Education
• Notes from last week’s town hall

Physics Department

Beating Vegas – Herman Marshall reminded me of the MIT students who built and used a wearable computer in the 1980s to beat a Vegas casino at blackjack.  Video here, books here and here.

Nanotube transistors – one of the cooler ideas I’ve seen in the last year was the computer built at MIT using nano-tube transistors.  The nanotubes essential form the channel in a FET and can work with very small currents, reducing power consumption.  There are also very interesting stackable circuit method, all demonstrated here.

Los Endos

GAO – the General Accounting Office is one of the more interesting places to go to see what your government is up to.  Their mission statement is here and this translates into them digging into things and writing tough reports about what they find.  One of my favorites about the Airborne laser is here.  This time of year, the go through the unanswered or “open” recommendations they have made.  Here are the ones for the Department of Justice.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

Reminder: Mother’s Day is tomorrow!

Even harder – staying inside and keeping a physical distance is hard.  Imagine if you did not have internet access.

No Academic Continuity Meeting today

Physics Department

Lab work – here are some physics problems related to keeping safe in the lab once we return.  A lab is 50 m^2 in floor area and 3 m in height.  Two people are working in the lab, each respires 15 times per minute and, when exhaling, ejects 1000 aerosol particles of 1 um diameter.  Their lung capacity is 3 liters.  Assume the HVAC is off for the first three parts of the problem.

1. How long does it take an aerosol particle to reach the floor?
2. Assume each particle remains airborne for a time long compared to any other time in the problem and the air in the room is well mixed.  What is the particle concentration as a function of time?
3. How many aerosol particles per second does the other person inhale?
4. The HVAC is now turned on and exchanges the air 10 times per hour.  What is the steady-state aerosol particle concentration and what is the characteristic time for a room initially aerosol free to reach the steady-state concentration?
5. How many aerosol particles does the other person in the room inhale per second?
6. Surgical masks capture 20-50% of aerosol particles on exhale.  How does this change the aerosol concentration in the room?  Repeat for N95 faceplate masks that catch 90-99% of aerosol particles.

Quantum cook – in all the shuffle, I missed this MIT News article about Joe Checkelsky, an actual quantum “cook” of novel materials.  Joe made a material that has high conduction when a magnetic field is applied in a precise direction, allowing tuning of the material’s internal energy levels.  Paper here, Science Perspective here.

Los Endos

Northeastern will reopen its campus in the Fall.

Opening today: ‘Spaceship Earth’: They boldly went where none had gone – a sealed dome in the Arizona desert. Trailer here. Family wanted to watch Rushmore instead, which was an excellent choice.

Peter

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

Dear Physics Community,

More on child care – the benefit is here and will pay the MIT subsidy even if you don’t use the placement service through care.com.  Christina tells me  https://www.bostonsbestbabysitters.com/ is very good (background checks, etc.). There is also online babysitting – I don’t know how well it works.  For more extensive help, see https://hr.mit.edu/covid19/resources or contact Ronnie Mae Weiss.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories

• Summer Options for MIT Students Survey – This survey (on behalf of SORT) is designed to gather information on student needs for the summer as well as ideas of remote summer activities from both students and the broader MIT community. It still only has 77 responses. We are looking to amplify.
• MIT Video Productions virtual event services – Here are a few slides on the services MVP has been providing for virtual events.
• Departmental Survey Collection (i.e. survey of surveys) – The Community Continuity Group plans to conduct a community wide Pulse Survey. Before we move forward and to prevent any duplicate efforts, we would like to ask if your department recently surveyed your constituents. https://forms.gle/sHtxTPqhUV77gQVB6

Educational scenarios for the Fall – the OVC has collected 61 plans, including ours and consolidated, see below.  The initial impressions are: nobody liked three semesters, the social component of being on campus is very important, as is the equity between residential and remote students.  For the next step, the OVC will create 2-3 specific options to analyze.  You can see the responses here:

• Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-Ebdj_WqqYNRscjWkSTh7JS78-T8Jiz-EBSg3iWu1x8/edit?usp=sharing
• Summary document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mvZ_pabNyyOzOKJGBPyWDR7pasl1vbQ7Q10ZvhLQ2DE/edit?usp=sharing
• All scenarios (note there is summary of the majority of the responses in a Google sheet as well as individual submissions):https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kvGH7WksEsBprkMIa2SzfF9XmmrOUiWv?usp=sharing

Physics Department

A talk from Frank Wilczek on anyons – 08:00-09:30, 14th May, 2020  (Boston Time)

Link of online talk: https://www.eeo.cn/webcast.php?courseKey=be687b5f133c9b66&lessonid=164021084

Talk Title: Quanta of the Third Kind: Anyons
Abstract:
Textbooks of quantum mechanics tell us that quantum particles are either bosons or fermions. Now they need to be revised, to make room for anyons. Anyons are a new kind of particle, with a kind of memory. I named them, and I have been exploring their properties theoretically since the 1980s. Now, in pathbreaking experiments, anyons have at last been observed. I will discuss the universe of ideas around anyons, using pictures rather than equations and emphasizing broad concepts rather than technical details.

Pablo II – second Nature paper from Pablo here, MIT news story on both papers.

More KOTO – Or sent a theory paper from Yotam Soreq (former CTP post doc, now at Technion) that made the PRL cover.

Los Endos

6 feet – Matt sent a raft of articles on the 6′ spacing rule, that included this article from the NYT.  I’m going to stick by my view that 6′ is the useful minimum and we should all practice keeping as far from people as reasonably possible to keep the viral loading low.  Thanks to Christoph for pointing out the second A in ALARA, As Low As Reasonably Achievable, in the case regarding the viral dose.

A really tough week – lots of zoom – 7 hours today.

Peter

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

Dear Physics Community,

The Ragon Institute and Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) have been having webinars on COVID-19 related matters and they are excellent:

•  COVID clinical management, epi, diagnostics, pathogenesis, treatment, vaccines (3/12/20)
• MassCPR webinar on antibodies and return to work (4/17/20) 
• MassCPR webinar on viral load testing and return to work (5/1/20)
• And tomorrow: COVID-19 Therapeutics and Clinical Management, Friday, May 8, 10-11:30 a.m. ET, zoom link

Advisories

• Remote teaching tips from Biology

Physics Department

Neutrinos as monitors – Pappalardo & Stanton Fellow Rachel Carr has a new article on using neutrinos to monitor reactors and bomb tests.

Rare decays – in the 1990s, the E787 experiment measured K+->pi+ nu nubar, which was very sensitive to the top quark mass, unknown at the time.  As E787 kept taking data, the collider experiments kept not finding the top quark – the lower limit on the top mass went up, and the expected number of events for E787 went down.  Their last paper was in 2008 and they had found 1 event, with an expected background of 0.3. There was a successor, E949.  Some very good physicists came from these experiments.

Now a new experiment KOTO has measured K0->pi0 nu nubar and observed 4 events, way more than expected.  Is it? Poisson statistics? Popular story here and paper here.

Los Endos

Six feet – lots of papers about the six-foot physical distance guidelines.  Fluid dynamical modeling, calculation, and estimates from other diseases.  I’m not going to post it all – just Google.  Where I come down is this – the viral load from COVID-19 in the air is like radioactivity and in radiation safety, you practice ALRA – as little as reasonably possible.  Six feet is a start and you wear a surgical mask, but don’t just hand six feet from people – keep fare away when you reasonably can. Just be cool.

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,

Cabin fever – I want one of these.

No academic continuity meeting today

Physics Department

Restart in the Fall – the OVC asked us to consider and respond to five scenarios for instruction in the Fall (here).  We had an hour-long discussion at lunch last Tuesday, the Physics Response Team discussed our response and so did the Education Committee.  Our response is here.  The Society of Physics Students also met and discussed it and had an anonymous email for comments.  Their report is here.  Both were sent to the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor yesterday.  Thank you for your efforts on this.

Tomorrow’s lunch – will be for faculty and instructional staff.  Libby Mahaffy will lead us through a discussion of two scenarios that take place in the new virtual world.  The scenarios were written by the Physics Values Committee Traning Group. There will small groups in zoom breakout rooms to discuss each scenario and synthesis at the end.  Please come – these discussions are always helpful and things are different in the new virtual world.

Closest black hole – about 1,000 light-years away, two stars orbit nothing – believed to be a black hole.  This is the closest known black to Earth.  News story here, article here.

More twists of graphene – two years ago, Pablo and Co. found that two sheets of graphene twisted by 1.5 degrees created a superconductor with the right applied gate voltage.  In this new paper, they mapped local variations of twist angles in twisted layer graphene in an attempt to understand how the disorder of twist angles can be used to engineer electric properties of twisted by layer graphene.

Los Endos

Anti-body testing – this a blood to tell if you have the anti-bodies indicating that you have been infected by Sar-Cov-2 and maybe immune, for a time.  Any test has systematic effects and Pablo pointed me to two good videos by Michael Cima from the MIT-Lemelson Program, here and here. Understanding statistical arguments like these will be important in the coming months.

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,

Sign here – behind John Hancock’s crazy signature.

Announcements

• Commencement – news is here
• Grading memo for this Spring here – Message to instructors – please get your grades in on time.
• UROP proposals for direct funding are due May 7, Thursday
• Office hours for graduate students with Peter, Nergis, Emma, and Syd tomorrow at 3 pm (an hour earlier because of a conflict at 4 pm).  Question, “What do you expect from your research advisor?” Zoom: mit.zoom.us/my/peter.h.fisher

Physics Department

Time – from Quanta, a timeline of time with biology, physics, and timekeeping.

Pion decay – the decay of the neutral pion to two gamma rays was a favorite topic of Aron Bernstein’s, whom we lost last year.  The Primex II experiment at Jefferson Lab, with Stanley,  has made the most precise measurement of the 1e-16 s lifetime and there is a small disagreement with theory.  This is important because the theory is simple and pretty well understood. The story is here and paper is here.

Los Endos

Sar-Cov-2 – Nature has a good article on the virus and how it works here.

The microMort – your government in action.  A microMort is worth $9.80.

Peter