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

Dear Physics Community,

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories:

• Academic regulations – memo from Rick Danheiser

Town Hall – Tuesday, 4 pm, students, faculty, staff, Lincoln Labs, parents.  The last one had 7,000, this one will include parents.  Announcement here.

Using classrooms – the Administration is busy trying to figure out how to accommodate students back on campus in the Fall.  A fundamental question is how well we can fit students into our classrooms while avoiding crowds.  There was a very interesting presentation on the first thinking about this, slides here (32 MB, pray for bandwidth).  I was very happy to see the level of thought being put into this problem, one of many.

Physics Department

Uncle John – article in Washington Post today about John Trump, the President’s brother.  John Trump was a physicist and Course 6 professor who was rather distinguished.  He built a van de Graaf accelerator that still operates int he High Voltage Research Laboratory on the corner of Albany and Mass Ave.  Some of us used it for an experiment a couple of years ago.

Los Endos

Damnation – watch it.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

Thank you for the nice notes wishing me well.  Every few months, I work, eat, and drink too much and crash.  It is a circuit breaker.

The weekend so no Academic Continuity Meeting

Physics Department

Kilogram – last Spring on International Metrology Day, Wolfgang gave a great talk about the new kilogram.  His article with Alan Jamison has just appeared in Physics Today here.

Planet 9 – used to be Pluto, but Pluto got demoted.  Now, there is some evidence based on analysis of the orbits of Kuiper Belt object, the notion of a Planet 9 object with a mass of 5-10 Earth masses had come up.  This paper by Witten proposes an almost-plausible trip to Planet 9 to have a look to see if Planet 9 is a primordial black hole.

Invasive species – ten years ago, it was Killer Bees from the south, now it’s Murder Hornets from Asia.  Good lord…

Los Endos

Serial – the Globe has started a serial of a novel, “The Mechanic”.  The first two chapters are in today’s Sunday Globe, here.  I’ve always enjoyed serials in newspapers and am looking forward to this one.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

The is nothing urgent to report.

I did not sleep well last night, woke up with a searing headache and have been dragging all day.  The next thing I can do is go to bed early.  Tomorrow will be better and I will send a more fulsome note then.

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

EMTs – MIT has a student-run Emergency Medical Service (EMS).  When the pandemic hit, eight students, including Physics graduate student Elena Allen, volunteered to stay and serve.  The EMS handle non-COIVD-19 emergencies, which do continue.  I am very grateful for their service.

Academic Continuity Meeting

End of term – the registrar Mary Callahan talked about end of term dates and regulations.  Slides here.  The main thing: instructors, please submit grades on time or early.  With commencement moved earlier, there is very little time between grade submission and commencement and it is hard on the staff.

Physics Department

Repost of Hong Liu’s paper mentioned earlier this week.

SRI internships – Jesse Wodin, an MIT alum who is a group leader at SRI, has an internship opportunity here.  Please have a look, it looks pretty good.

Summer opportunities are here.

Massive black holes – LIGO detection of 30 solar mass black holes was a surprise – theorists did not think black holes of that mass would be common.  A while ago, astronomers in China published a paper with the observation of a 70 solar mass black hole using the wobble of a companion star to measure the black hole mass. A Belgian group os astronomers disagreed, claimed the light used to measure the wobble was distorted by the binary system.  The first group has looked into the criticism and claims their method is correct but the black hole mass is now 23-65 solar masses.  Both groups agree more data is needed.

Los Endos

 This site tracker hate crimes against Asians blamed for COVID-19.  I don’t have words for how I feel about this. Thanks to Sandi Miller for sending this.

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.