Talk Like A Physicist

Tuesday Physics Tattoos: CERN bubble chamber tracks tattoos:

Bubble chamber tracks are so beautiful and having a tattoo of the actual tracks is very special.

Considering that LHC will start tonight, there was an interesting comment about this tattoo:

You have a potential end of the effing universe tattooed on your arm. Well done, sir.

For additional pictures of this tattoo, please see Lofidelity’s Flickr

Here is another tattoo of the same bubble chamber track image.

The original track image looks like this:

Here, the particles in the beam, which comes in from the left, are pions, the short-lived particles discovered originally in cosmic rays. One has interacted with a proton in the liquid near the upper left, to create a spray of new particles. One of these was a neutral (uncharged) particle, which left no track, but revealed its existence when it decayed nearer the centre of the image, to produce two charged particles that leave behind a sideways V shape.

The chamber was located in a magnetic field, which made positive particles curve to the right, and negative particles to the left. Particles with high energies, including the beam particles, curve almost imperceptibly, but particles with lower energies produce fascinating spirals. These are mainly due to electrons knocked from atoms in the liquid hydrogen.

You are not famous until there is a lego model of you: Lego Hawking

Professor Stephen Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics - Cambridge University.

Here he is in space:

Source : Brickshelf

And the ipod nano commercial:

My favorite Hawking quotes are:

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.

Just a personal note: I had the privilege of working with him when he agreed to serve as an advisor to one of the conference that I organized eons ago. The conference was titled “Black Holes, Membranes, Wormholes and Superstrings”. I co-edited a book based on the talks at the conference. See it at Amazon or at http://www.allbookstores.com/author/S_Kalara.html

Hubble 4.0 : Upgrade Prep in Glorious Pictures

I consider Hubble as an extension of my eyes and the distances it sees as an extension of my vision. It can see 12-13 Billion light years away, so it was like my vision is 20/17×10^23!

Glad to see that the Hubble is getting an update! (Service Mission 4)

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch next month (October 8th), carrying new instruments, batteries and gyroscopes to the Hubble Space Telescope. This will be the final servicing mission to Hubble.

A technician performs black light inspection on Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, one of three main instruments being taken to Hubble aboard Atlantis. Black light inspection uses UVA fluorescence to detect possible particulate microcontamination, minute cracks or fluid leaks

Practicing underwater on Hubble Model.

Servicing Mission 4 astronauts practice on a Hubble model underwater at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston under the watchful eyes of NASA engineers and safety divers.

For more beautiful pictures, visit Boston Globe’s Big Picture Blog.

Tuesday Physics Tattoos: Fractal Mandelbrot tattoos

This is just the first of many sessions. In a week, after it heals, this outline will be tightened up so that it’s more regular. Then comes the colouring The above is only part of the entire tattoo. We’re doing a 3/4 sleeve of mandelbrot zooms.

Source: flamingnerd

Got this ink done last night! The tattoo is in the shape of a Mandelbrot set, which to me, is symbolic of infinity, regeneration, life, knowledge and enlightenment.

Source Stacy : She Dreams in Digital

Source Broox

The Mandelbrot set, named after Benoit Mandelbrot, is a fractal. Fractals are objects that display self-similarity at various scales. Magnifying a fractal reveals small-scale details similar to the large-scale characteristics.

Here is a 3D animation of a Julia Set, a type of Mandelbrot fractal set.