The talk ended about 3:42. The only thing I had eaten or drank all day was the one Pepsi I had that morning. Earlier, some sort of food court had been open at the far end of the Convention Center but it was now closed. I wanted to get something to drink. I went to the Hyatt to see if I could find something. I found a place selling food, where in their refrigerator I could see cans of Pepsi. I was so relieved. I figured it would cost about 75 cents. I asked the perky girl for a Pepsi. Instead of getting a can, she took a tiny glass, filled it with ice, squirted a tiny amount of Pepsi into it, and then handed it to me. I said, “Can you just give me the can?” She chirped, “Oh! That’s the deli! They close about 2:00. We’re just the bar.” I mumbled ok. Then she said, “That’ll be $1.50”. I considered just saying forget it, but I was famished, so I paid it and left. Therefore I paid $1.50 for a tiny glass of Pepsi which was mostly ice.

At 4:18, I planned to go to J14-10 which was about the search for the supersymmetric partner of the top quark. Unfortunately, the speaker didn’t show up, so instead, I listened to the next talk, J14-11 which was titled, “Search for Supersymmetry in Single Lepton + Jets + Missing Et Signature”. It was being given by a Chinese man named John Zhou from Iowa State University. It was held in one of the small rooms on the second story. He described a search for evidence of Minimal Supergravity (mSUGRA) in data taken from the Fermilab Tevatron from 1993 - 1996. Supersymmetry is broken at the mSUGRA. LSP is the lightest supersymmetric particle. He talked about looking for a decay mode that would be evidence for a supersymmetric particle. This is stating what your explanations state you should observe. Then you try to find something similar enough to it that you can say that’s it, and most people would go along with it. They use a program called Neural Net to do a multi-parameter fit to increase sensitivity.

The person scheduled to do J14-12 had also not shown up, so the next talk was J14-13. This was my favorite talk of the entire meeting. Shortly before I left for the meeting, I had read about brane world cosmology. It turned out that that’s what the next talk was about, so I was very knowledgeable and very up on it. It also happens to be extreme outer edge of esoteric advanced physics, which I love, so I really enjoyed this talk. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Kaluza thought up the idea of extra dimensions, assuming they would be large. Einstein and others said they should be compactified, so they were always imagined as small. This idea didn’t get much attention until supergravity required ten dimensions. Still, everyone assumed the extra dimensions were compactified. The problem with this was that the electroweak scale and Planck scale were so far apart which is the hierarchy problem. Why then assume they are large? Because gravity would not be constrained to our dimensions, and would act on all the dimensions. However, later Sager and others figured out a way to confine the gravity to our dimensions, making the theory viable. The irony is that we are again imagining the extra dimensions as large, which is what Kuluza did when he invented them 80 years ago. Also, the dimensions we live in, are called a brane world, and is in some ways analogous to the D-branes of modern physics. It can then be said that we live in a giant D-brane. The talk J14-13 was titled “Search for Extra Spacetime Dimensions via the Drell-Yan Process at CDF” and was given by John Carlson from the University of Michigan. Basically, he was suggesting a possible way to detect these extra dimensions. I doubt very much that will happen. John Carlson talked about large extra dimensions. The hierarchy problem is the large difference in scale that requires you to fracture the Higgs sector. This theory drags down the Planck scale to the electroweak theory. The problem with dragging it down is that you would have seen gravitational effects already. Gravitons can propagate in all five dimensions. What does this introduce to di-lepton production? The theory adds two new production mechanisms for di-lepton production. He studies this using a Monte Carlo simulator. It starts to affect things in production angle. Basically, he is trying to find something that the explanation states you should observe. Normally, you do not want to do that because when you don’t observe it, the explanation will contradict what you observe. However, here it will be very difficult to detect so that fact you don’t detect it can be accounted for by the fact that it’s hard to detect. I had read about the subject recently, so it was wonderful to hear this talk.

Next, I went to a talk where I really didn’t know it was about ahead of time. The official title was “Physicist Writers”. I thought it might be about writing physics articles like I do for Suite 101. It turned out instead to be about physicists writing science fiction and mystery. However, I was interested in that also, since I’ve written fiction, and know what it’s like to try to get your work published. I came in towards the end. If they had prepared talks earlier, I missed it. When I was there, they were fielding questions from the audience. It was more like a discussion about the process of writing and getting writing published. It reminded me of English classes I had taken in college. It had a different set up that anything else I went to. There was no podium. At one end of the room, there was a table at which were seated the host, Avivia Brecher, a male science fiction writer named Gregory Benford, and a female mystery writer named Camille Minichino. To my amazement, people in the room were acting like they were some sort of celebrities. I never heard of either of them before, but the room was packed with their fans. People in the audience brought cameras, and were gleefully taking pictures of them. There were continual flashes when I was there. In the back of the room was a table with all their books sitting on it on display. Gregory Benford was a very colorful character. He reminded me of Ernest Hemmingway. He had a short white beard. He was funny. He continually made dirty jokes. He made sexual metaphors for all sorts of things. He said, “Getting published is like getting laid, the first time is the hardest, you hope”. He was anti-authority. You got the impression he could drink large amounts of alcohol without being affected. The mystery writer was a frumpy old woman who wrote mysteries for old housewives of her demographic. Supposedly, they both had PhD’s in physics. It ended about 6:30.

After that, I went to the Student’s Reception. It went from 5:30 to 7:00, so I was only there at the end. It was in the Beacon Rotunda of the Hyatt Hotel. When you walk in, you go up the escalator to the next floor, and in front of you is a little room with giant floor to ceiling glass windows. From that room, you can see the ocean. This was the only time I saw the ocean on this trip. They had a buffet of noodles of different types, and different types of sauce. I got a plate and got short cylindrical noodles, the ones that are in little loops, called tortilinni. I put the white sauce on them. I got a Pepsi. It was great just to sit there and relax, and look out these giant windows. Way down below, there was the swimming pool for the hotel. Counting from ground below, I was five stories up, even though I had only gone up one escalator to get there. The hotel was on the side of a hill, so an upper story on one side is at ground level on the other side. You could see way far in the distance. In the distance, you could see the Queen Mary. As far as I know, that’s the only time, I’ve ever seen it. You could far north and south. It was great just to sit there and relax. I stayed there until after most people were gone. Then around 8:30, I left.

I walked back to the bus stop, and took the bus to the Motel 6. When I got there, my card would not open the door. I went to the office, got another card, and walked in. I noticed that the my commemorative red plastic cup that said, “Don’t Drink and Drive”, that I had gotten at the dinner, was missing. The maid must have stolen it. I sighed, deciding to get another one, next time I was there.

The next morning, Monday, woke up about 7:30. I bought another Pepsi. I turned the card, and then took the bus to Long Beach Plaza. I walked to the Convention Center. I went to Plenary III. I got there 1/2 hour late at 9:00. The first talk was titled “Accelerators for the Future of Neutron Scattering”, was given by David Moncton, a bald man from Argonne National Laboratory. He talked about the superconducting Linac. He talked about the advantages of using superconductors. It’s shorter and has less energy requirements. He showed computer pictures of different parts of the facilities. It will provide the entire range of neutron scattering capability. You shouldn’t go out of your way to observe previously unobservable natural phenomena, because that causes the extent to which your explanations could possibly explain what you observe to decrease. However, if you deliberately don’t look at things, you are admitting that it would cause it to decrease. Then you couldn’t pretend that your explanations are true which is your purpose. He talked about SES and other accelerators. They will add a hard X-ray FEL to SLAC. He talked about how they may take advantage of superconducting technology.

The next talk of Plenary III was titled “Precision Spectroscopy” and was given by Theodore Haensch of the Max Planck Institut fur Quantenopt. He had a very thick accent. He talked about precise optical spectroscopy. They have new advances in precisely measuring the wavelength of light. He showed a picture of the bound spectrum of the hydrogen atom. Using frequency measurements, they measured the wavelength of the hydrogen atom to an accuracy of 10^-14. He talked about how they do their experiments.

The last talk of Plenary III was titled “Biology Meets Microfabrication” and was given by Robert Austin from Princeton, which is the same school Brooke Shields went to. Despite the fact that this was a physics meeting, the talk was mostly about biology. One small subset of physics is biological physics, where people with PhD’s in physics, apply their expertise to solve problems in biology. Almost every field of physics has to be represented somewhere at this meeting, and thus this talk. Fortunately, biology is one of the many subjects that I’m interested in. Robert did not use transparencies on an overhead projector. He had a labtop computer with a device that projected what’s normally on the computer screen onto the giant screen in the front of the room. He had a hard time booting up the computer. He said, “I only use Macs because I hate Bill Gates very much”. He said he wasn’t talking about the DNA chip, whatever that is. He gave a short overview of biology. Promoter and repressor proteins bind to specific parts of the genome, and control expression. With Dolly the sheep, they took the nucleus of a differentiated cell, put it in an ovum, and it acted like the nucleus of an embryonic cell. This is similar to cancer, where an adult cell reverts to an embryonic state. DNA is a long polymer, up to 1 cm long. He played video of a white blood cell engulfing bacteria, with the added sound effects of “munch munch...burp!” You can use dielectric trapping to move these around. One thing you can do in the future is take a sample of blood from a pregnant woman, a find a cell from the fetus. Six week old fetal red blood cells, unlike adult red blood cells, have nuclei. You could use that property to separate a fetal red blood cell from the mother’s blood. Then you could take the DNA from that red blood cell to get a sample of the fetus’ DNA. You can separate long and short molecules in ten minutes, when before it would have taken several days. DNA is not only negatively charged but highly polarizable. When I was leaving, I overheard a man say that he thought biological physics was very boring. I admit that biology is what I call “worthless science” because it’s of zero relevance on the scale of the entire infinite Universe. The second most worthless science is planetary astronomy. I’m measuring its importance on the scale of the entire Universe. However, it just so happens that I’m interested in both biology and planetary astronomy, in the same way I’m interested in many subjects that have nothing to do with science at all, such as history, etc. However, the most important science is particle physics and cosmology, which are the subjects I’m most interested in.

I went to APS booth, and got another plastic cup to replace the one that had been stolen by the maid at the Motel 6.

Next I went to Session P9, which started at 11:00, and was on the next decade in particle physics. The first talk, given by a bald man named Jonathan Dorfan, was on plans for the next decade at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). He mentioned the plenary talk which mentioned adding X-ray FEL to SLAC. The main thing at SLAC is still Linac, built in the 1960’s. It produces 120 Hz of 300 GeV electrons. The first 2/3 of Linac is used for the injection of both PEPA rings. It is the source for SLD colliding beam program. The jewel in the crown is the CP violation studies. It’s a heavy flavor factory. They are proposing the Next Linear Collider (NLC). GLAST will be a gamma ray detecting satellite.

P9-2 was titled, “The next decade at Fermilab” and was given by Mike Witherell. Possible future issues will be physics at the weak scale, Standard Model Higgs, Supersymmetry, Hidden Extra Dimensions, and the Kaluza-Klein graviton. Fermilab is involved in the Large Hadronic Collider (LHC). They are building a neutrino facility where the neutrinos will be shot underground through several states. He talked about future projects. Visit http://www.fnal.gov/projects/muon_collider/mu/study. He complained bitterly that their funding had steadily decreased.

The next talk, P9-3, was given by a woman with an accent, wearing a red dress, named Fabiola Gianotti. It was titled “The LHC physics program” and was about the Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) at CERN. The goals include looking for the Standard Model Higgs, and looking for physics beyond the Standard Model, such as Supersymmetry, etc. LHC will produce a wide range of particles. She talked in detail about the construction of various components of the machine.

Then I switched sessions, and went to P8-4, which was being held in the adjacent room. I forgot my pencil, so I briefly went back to get it. This was the very last talk I went to. It was also my second favorite talk at the entire meeting. P8-4 was titled “What is the Universe Made Of and How We Know it”. It was given by Michael Turner of the University of Chicago. He didn’t just recite one of his papers like so many other speakers. It was a real presentation that he had prepared. It was about an extremely advanced subject, modern cosmology. However, at the same time, it was absolutely hilarious. He filled it with jokes that really engaged the audience. In some sections, it almost sounded like a stand up comedy routine. Even if it wasn’t the best talk, he was the best speaker I saw at the meeting. Right before the end of the 20th Century, we learned that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, which was one of the most important discoveries of the 20th Century. It barely made it into great achievements of the 20th Century. If we had a universe of only matter, which we don’t, a flat universe, or an open universe, shaped like a potato chip, would expand forever. A closed universe would recollapse. Today, microwave photons and neutrinos don’t play a role but they dominated the early Universe. The evidence is that the Universe is flat. Stars contribute only 1/2 % of the mass needed to flatten the Universe. Baryons contribute 5% +/- 1/2 %. When the Universe was one second old, it was made of helium, deuterium, helium III, helium IV, and lithium. The deuterium varies with the baryon density. If you look at distant quasars, some of the light is absorbed by hydrogen clouds in the line of sight. To figure out how much matter is in the Universe, we look at clusters of galaxies. Most of the matter is in X-ray emitting gas. Bg/Bw = Mg/Mtot This suggests that the amount of matter in the Universe is 35% +/- 2% that needed to flatten the Universe.

The total matter in the Universe is determined by the microwave background. By looking at the distributions, you can determine the curvature of the Universe. The geometry of the Universe is related to the density. Flat is the critical density. By measuring triangles, you can determine the curvature of the Universe. Last week, the boomerang experiment flew around the north pole for 3 days. They determined we live in a flat Universe to 6%.

The numbers don’t add up. That’s where the dark energy comes from. If the Universe was slowing down, distant galaxies would be moving faster. Instead more distant galaxies are moving slower. That means the Universe is expanding faster. The dark energy balances the books. 90% of ordinary baryonic matter is dark. Most baryons are not seen, such as intergalactic gas. Most matter is exotic non-baryonic dark matter. [Omega baryon] is a factor of seven smaller than [Omega total]. Dark matter may be axions, or neutralinos. Neutrons can only contribute about the same amount as stars. Neutrinos are hot. Mist dark matter is cold. What is the mysterious dark energy? Quantum vacuum is not empty. Quantum vacuum is elastic. T = -p The gravity is repulsive. Unfortunately the numbers don’t add up. According the current theories, the vacuum weighs much to much. Therefore we just don’t know. Possible theories include the idea that the Universe is in false vacuum, or could have a rolling scalar field. It could have a network of topological defects. We live in a flat universe where the expansion is accelerating, and is 35% matter, and 65% dark energy. The matter is 5% baryons, of which 1/2 % are stars. The matter is 95% exotic, of which 1/2% is neutrinos.

At one point Michael Turner, was listing possible ideas for what is the dark energy, and said, “This next idea is my personal choice, and I think is the most likely to be correct”. He then put up a slide containing mindless scribble. He then said that it was made by his six year old son. The joke is that we have such little idea what could be the dark energy that his guess would be as good as anyone else’s. Michael Turner was giving a talk at an APS meeting. Another person who gave a talk at an APS meeting was my cousin Ian Spielman who is a graduate student at Cal Tech. I still have a book that Ian made when he was about six years old describing how he imagined the origin of the Universe. It was just sheets of paper folded and stapled to form a book. On the pages he drew yellow blobs with crayons, surrounded by black colored in with black crayon. Maybe they were supposed to be stars. It had a striking resemblance to the scribble made by Michael Turner’s six year old son who also presumably intended it to be a serious description of the Universe.

After that, I glanced at a book on supersymmetry in one of the booths. Then I left the Long Beach Convention Center for the last time. I walked back to the Amtrak stop at Denny’s. I got there at 1:50. The Amtrak bus arrived at 2:00. I got on it, and left. I saw the buildings of Long Beach for the last time. The bus stopped in Los Angeles, and reached Bakersfield. I then got on the train. It was supposed to reach Hanford at 7:00, but instead it arrived at about 7:30.

I greatly enjoyed the meeting. This was probably my only chance to go to one since they are rarely near where I live. I enjoyed the talks. More importantly, I enjoyed just being a member of the physics community.