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Dear Physics Community,

Note: there will not be community messages over the three day weekend.  I will be using the time to fix the website.

What a week!  All kinds of things happened.  Some real grinding.  I’ve heard from Cathy that she and her team got all the grades from instructors today, so thanks for the attention.

Advisories

• Please nominate a worthy colleague for the Dresselhaus lectureship
• Guidance on remote student appointments for Summer and Fall

Academic Continuity Meeting

Owing to a Lightning Restart meeting, I missed the 8 am Academic Continuity Meeting for the first time.  Rob Simcoe attended.

Cecilia – report on testing

David K – is everywhere, including leading an ethics panel on the restart.  Slides here.

Physics Department

Quantum radar – if you have time, learn about it, it is an amazing feature of entanglement.  Story here, paper here.

Mathematicians – may be out of a job – AI-driven programs now do integrals and may prove theorems.  Great Quanta article here.

Los Endos

GLX – Lechmere station closes for a year.  This is worth paying attention to.

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,

Please note: I am having a problem with Athena (!) uploading files, so I have linked to articles that I would normally upload.  They may be behind paywalls and I apologize if they are.  I will refresh and upgrade WordPress over the weekend.

Announcements

• Community input to what happens in the Fall term plans is here.  Please participate if you can.
• Letter from Cindy about graduate students returning to campus.  Please note: graduate students who applied to live on campus will be receiving a separate communication this evening with the results of the housing lottery process. If they receive an assignment, they will participate in a phased move-in process in August. If they do not receive a housing assignment, they will be informed about the waitlist process for securing on-campus housing as well as resources to assist with off-campus housing searches.
• Letter on appointments for graduate students in foreign countries and not able to return to campus.
• Research Town Hall, Friday, 1 pm

No academic continuity meeting today

Physics Department

Clocks – new optically coupled atomic clock has frequency stability of 10^-18 s.  In the Earth’s gravitational field, that is equivalent to moving the clock by 1 cm.

NASA’s return to human flight – May 27 will see the first launch of SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying a crew to the ISS.  Story here.  I will opine: the early twentieth century was the dawn of aviation.  The federal government had a role through the Smithsonian and the War Department (now called the Department of Defense), but progress was really driven by private companies.  Progress was fast but lots of people got killed in test flights.

Langley – Samuel Langley as a physicist and astronomer before going into aviation.  At the Allegheny Observatory in the 1860s, he worked on establishing time zones and established a commercial time service.  Later, he developed the bolometer for measuring the intensity of IR radiation.

Los Endos

Trying to get sound files working…

Anthem for the times: here

Or an embedded player:

Let me know which works for you.

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,

This just in – re-start process letter from Maria

Listening to your gut – the human gut biome has become the object of intense study in the last five years.  In the gut, there is about 1.5 kg of living bacteria, virus, and other living stuff that protects our body in many complex ways.  These are creatures living inside us, not human cells.  Now there is more in-depth evidence that the gut biome signals the brain, and the two communicate in complex ways.

No Academic Continuity Meeting today

Physics Department

Quantum radar anyone? – PMTs and APDs can detect single visible and IR photons, but microwaves have much lower energy, and single microwave photon with high efficiency and little background has remained elusive.  Single microwave photon detection using two coupled two-level systems has just been achieved, here.

Katherine Johnson – for “Hidden Figures” fame passed away.  Obit here.  At Johnson Space Center, there was a display about her first calculation of the flight to the moon and back done by hand and slide-rule.

Los Endos

Dating – the venerable C-14 method is up for a refresh.

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 Harvard Business Review is more useful than you might think.  Over the weekend, I read an article on “Leading through Anxiety” and realized I have a pretty bad case.  Anxiety does not feel bad for me – it is more this bad thing that is there.  I decided to slow everything down through June – a good time since the Department needs to concentrate on basics – getting grades in, make sure our graduates get on degree lists, getting various things to the Dean, etc.  With finals over for many of you and research s-l-o-w-l-y restarting, this is a good time to give yourself a checkup from the neck up.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Fall – Pres. Reif outlined in his letter last week the engagement process for input to the decision of how to return to campus next Fall.  A more detailed letter should come out tomorrow or the next day.  Whatever you think, please make your voice heard.

Much of the meeting was a meandering discussion of the Fall restart options.

Physics Department

Italian – Paola Rebusco was featured in the WaPo’s “Distance learning isn’t just for kids: 12 online classes to nurture the mind, body, and soul” for her class “Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full”, here.  Italian language, culture, and diet.  What could be better?

Office hours on hiatus – in keeping with making some whitespace on the calendar, our weekly student office hours will take a hiatus and resume first week in June.

Community lunches – ditto above for weekly lunches.  If there is anyone who would like to help organize, please let me know. “helping” consists of making suggestions of people or topics and perhaps hosting.

GlueX – Mike Williams built a cool detector for the GlueX experiment at JLab with parts of an old detector from SLAC.  Story here.

Los Endos

What we need to do – Arup Chakraborty and John Gruber have an Op-Ed in Newsweek about what we need to do.

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,

I hope this will be a quiet weekend on the MIT front, so I will not write messages Saturday or Sunday unless something happens that warrants doing so.

The nature of some sciences leads to fieldwork that can be isolating.  Here is advice and comments from five scientists who have to cope with isolation when conducting their research.

Advisories

• Letter from Pres. Reif

Academic Continuity Meeting

This morning’s meeting was primarily taken up with a discussion of the five scenarios for Fall.  The questions mainly dealt with technicalities, and the big picture will fill in the community engagement that starts next week.  Please participate.

Physics Department

Anyons – good article in Quanta about their recent discovery

More Wilczek – Frank’s obit for Freeman Dyson in Science.  Reading this, I learned that Dyson was also responsible for the proof of the stability of matter, here. Showing that a system of point particles can be stable is a significant result, and I am surprised I never knew about it.

Los Endos

David Brooks frequently has something good to say so that I will leave it with that.

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 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