It's a beautiful day in nanoland and I have superconductors on the brain. 
Perhaps I'll go do some cooking in the lab once I finish my data analysis.
As seems to be the tradition, when I get in a fight with my friend, I pick up an astrophysics book and learn something new. Last time I read Kip Thorne's (I actually still have the last chapter to go yet) Black Holes and Time Warps and Matthew Bate's Thesis (which was the most awful piece of boring garbage I've ever encountered and it totally devastated my interest in numerical astrophysics algorithms -- try to ask something intelligent after reading it -- its just impossible or even to have a remotely intelligent conversation with someone who uses those techniques -- I end up only making a total fool of myself and asking questions that I just don't care about).
This time, I went to the library and picked up Albert Petschek's Supernovae. I'm taking it one chapter at a time. Supernovae are very cool and actually overlap with my scientific interests. Classification is chapter one. Supernovae are classified according to elemental composition. It's all chemistry and spectroscopy! Hey! Hey! That's my field! Basically, you have a Type I or a Type II SN depending on the absence or presence of hydrogen (my favorite NMR nuclei). Further classifications are given to SN on the presence of other elemental species within that subgroup and also on the stage of SN development. For example, a
Type I in its early stage of development with Si present is a Type Ia. In later stages, a Type Ia has no oxygen present and has elements Fe and Co. Most of this is determined through basic spectroscopy (UV and emission and absorption lines). The UV spectra are so convoluted that I'm amazed at how well observational astronomers can distinguish various elemental species.
The theory behind the SN explosions is rather complex and only briefly tantalized at in this chapter.
So many factors seem to play role, i.e., the energy and mass, the E & M (determines velocity profiles), the mean opacity, the initial star's radius, the luminosity (from what I gather that's affected primarily by Ni composition in the SN), the envelope composition (which is effected by the electron density and electron scattering), and winds (I don't quite get this one -- but we're not talking my windsurfing kind). Much of this adds to spectral features thus making for some intriguing science. So far, it's all particularly interesting because there's a lot of solid-state physics and basic thermodynamics involved. Unfortunately it doesn't get into any interesting electron scattering and electron-nucleon interactions till page 220 so I have a while before the really interesting science... Itll be intriguing to compare how electron scattering and electron-nucleon interaction work in the interstellar medium versus that of condensed matter. Im thinking itll be easier than all those Feynman diagrams and many-body Greens functions I had to learn last year.
Perhaps I'll go do some cooking in the lab once I finish my data analysis.
As seems to be the tradition, when I get in a fight with my friend, I pick up an astrophysics book and learn something new. Last time I read Kip Thorne's (I actually still have the last chapter to go yet) Black Holes and Time Warps and Matthew Bate's Thesis (which was the most awful piece of boring garbage I've ever encountered and it totally devastated my interest in numerical astrophysics algorithms -- try to ask something intelligent after reading it -- its just impossible or even to have a remotely intelligent conversation with someone who uses those techniques -- I end up only making a total fool of myself and asking questions that I just don't care about).
This time, I went to the library and picked up Albert Petschek's Supernovae. I'm taking it one chapter at a time. Supernovae are very cool and actually overlap with my scientific interests. Classification is chapter one. Supernovae are classified according to elemental composition. It's all chemistry and spectroscopy! Hey! Hey! That's my field! Basically, you have a Type I or a Type II SN depending on the absence or presence of hydrogen (my favorite NMR nuclei). Further classifications are given to SN on the presence of other elemental species within that subgroup and also on the stage of SN development. For example, a
Type I in its early stage of development with Si present is a Type Ia. In later stages, a Type Ia has no oxygen present and has elements Fe and Co. Most of this is determined through basic spectroscopy (UV and emission and absorption lines). The UV spectra are so convoluted that I'm amazed at how well observational astronomers can distinguish various elemental species.
The theory behind the SN explosions is rather complex and only briefly tantalized at in this chapter.
So many factors seem to play role, i.e., the energy and mass, the E & M (determines velocity profiles), the mean opacity, the initial star's radius, the luminosity (from what I gather that's affected primarily by Ni composition in the SN), the envelope composition (which is effected by the electron density and electron scattering), and winds (I don't quite get this one -- but we're not talking my windsurfing kind). Much of this adds to spectral features thus making for some intriguing science. So far, it's all particularly interesting because there's a lot of solid-state physics and basic thermodynamics involved. Unfortunately it doesn't get into any interesting electron scattering and electron-nucleon interactions till page 220 so I have a while before the really interesting science... Itll be intriguing to compare how electron scattering and electron-nucleon interaction work in the interstellar medium versus that of condensed matter. Im thinking itll be easier than all those Feynman diagrams and many-body Greens functions I had to learn last year.