~have a little fun while I'm gone~

The garden grows.

The 'Little Gem' magnolia is in bloom - spreading it's own version of lemon across the back garden.  The hydrangeas look thirsty and the roses are holding on tight for cooler evenings - some of the gingers are over 7' tall and look as if they still aren't done growing.

There's a few waves, popping up off the coast of Africa.

August.

~~~~~

~stick this on your blog and smoke it~

Ahhh, graduate students.  Sometimes I just want to completely ignore proper protocol and cut and paste some of their emails in here.  As for tonight, I'll paste a subject heading - which was in reference to this MIT discovery, which is nicely summarized below:

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Kudos to them I say.

~~~~~

Which leads me to another email (from the same graduate student as above) that was making the laboratory aware of developments in bringing the Large Hadron Collider on-line.  It seems that the first attempt to circulate a beam will be on 10 September.  If you want to read a wonderful article - At the Heart of All Matter:  The hunt for the God particle - or, as the National Geographic article (published March 2008) states:

The preferred name for the God particle among physicists is the Higgs boson, or the Higgs particle, or simply the Higgs, in honor of the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed its existence more than 40 years ago. Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the "force." The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one's ever found it.

Theoretical physicist John Ellis is one of the CERN scientists searching for the Higgs. He works amid totemic stacks of scientific papers that seem to defy the normal laws of gravity. He has long, gray hair and a long, white beard and, with all due respect, looks as if he belongs on a mountaintop in Tibet. Ellis explains that the Higgs field, in theory, is what gives fundamental particles mass. He offers an analogy: Different fundamental particles, he says, are like a crowd of people running through mud. Some particles, like quarks, have big boots that get covered with lots of mud; others, like electrons, have little shoes that barely gather any mud at all. Photons don't wear shoes—they just glide over the top of the mud without picking any up. And the Higgs field is the mud.

So I really recommend that you read the National Geographic article.  It's a pretty good one.  And when you are done, reward yourself by watching the video below.

(I know, I seem like a gardener here - but at heart, I'm pretty much a geek).

~~~~~

This weeks poem was presented in between comments about lemonade (and the lack thereof), and slices of a Piggly Wiggly cake decorated in red roses with the inscription "Love, Peace and Microbes", a rough run through of a talk by an undergraduate (who latered 'WOW'ed' us all in her formal presentation) - and then, somewhere in there, was this poem that Katherine read to us.  It's a lovely one I think.

Three Naps at Walker Point by D. Nurkse

I slept, when I woke
I had built this cabin
with its shade garden,
flagstones, and screened porch
overlooking Burnt Coat Harbor.

I dozed, when I came to myself
we were middle-aged, our children
called from an inner room—
you stirred and tiptoed out,
agile as the breeze.

I drowsed and at twilight
I remained in the dream,
in the cursive slope of the letters
that would contain it, caught
in the maze of reflected masts,

so I bit back panic and listened
for the bell from the ocean.

~~~~~

I'll try to check in from Australia - perhaps share an image or two.  This is a part of the planet that I have never visited - and I'm guessing that it will be a visual pleasure.  And the reef - I can't imagine getting to see that reef.

Comments

[Nancy Bond]

Oh wow, enjoy your trip and bring lots of photos back with you. :)

[Les]

May your journey be safe and your garden moist.

[lfmorgan]

you wrote:" like electrons, have little shoes that barely gather any mud at all. Photons don't wear shoes—they just glide over the top of the mud without picking any up." Hey! What is the photon and electron are both made of Higgs Particles?? ---where the electron is really 1/h protons in helical string tandem, and each photo is 1/h Higgs particles in helical string tandem? You thinking is way too full of "nothingness" just like the best of current Standard Model theory!

[lfmorgan]

if you cannot read thru typos you should not be reading on the internet!

[Benjamin]

Um, I'm a grad student, and already terrifies at contacting / working with my committee. I mean, if I was a prof, I would not want to have to work with students who eat up my time, let alone send stupid emails or ask dumb questions or assume I like them or their work enough to pretend to care when I'd rather be sleeping. So, PLEASE don't make me more of a pani-case than I already am. Assuage my fear. I am a career grad student (on year 9 of 9) with two dissertations and all their demands to be made on my readers soon.... OH MY LORD. DISSERTATIONS. ARGH ARGH ARGGGGGHHHH.

[Kim]

Hope you're enjoying Australia as I type... and that the Dan and the Stan, along with the home garden and the Airstream, are doing just fine awaiting your happy return. :)

And thanks for leaving us with a poem. That it weighs on my mind is more a reflection of my deep-seated fear that I am sleepwalking through life than it is of bad poetry, I assure you.

[Pat]

I read that National Geographic article when I was doing laps (walking) at the mall. It was fascinating. The YouTube is amazing!

Hope you're having a fabulous time Down Under!

[Philip]

You have a very interesting blog. I have enjoyed reading it.
I do not think I have ever read about the God particle in a garden blog before. I love it!
Regards,
Philip