Living LIGO's Belated 3rd Anniversary

This past Saturday, 5 October, was the 3rd anniversary of the Living LIGO blog (you can see the first ever post here).  I remember that because it also happens to be my birthday - I started this out of a desire to do something I always wanted to so what a better day to start than your own birthday.  (If you must know, I've just celebrated the 6th anniversary of turning 29.)

I know it has been a long time since I've posted.  I've been teaching at LSU and doing research at LIGO.  On paper my life looks great but the reality is that there are many details, both personal and professional, that have added up to me not being in a great place for a while.  I've been getting my jobs done but after that I've been pretty exhausted, at least mentally.  This has happened to me before, so I thought I would direct you to my thoughts on what it's like being down but getting up again anyway here.  (Also see my last section below: "A WORD OF ADVICE...".)

But there is one thought that has come up many times in the last few months:  "I'd like to write a blog post on that."  There are many different things, like continuing the series of posts I've started about methods of looking for gravitational waves or telling the story of where silver and gold come from (as in, how did it come to be on Earth).  So, I am going to dig myself out of my slump and get back on my metaphorical horse - starting now!


WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER

Let me tell you a little about what I've been doing since I've last posted.  I got to go to a large meeting called the GR20/Amaldi10 Meeting in Warsaw, Poland (where almost 850 gravity theorists and experimentalists gathered for this joint meeting) and gave 2 invited talks.  The first was a formal talk on outreach skills and media (featuring this blog) and the other was less formal and was on the benefits searching for gravitational waves can bring mankind focusing on spin-off technology (I've written about this before here).

This is a picture of the gates of the Uniwersytet Warszawski where GR20/Amaldi10 took place.

A view through the gates at my colleagues on a coffee break in the distance.

One of the best parts of meetings like this is that the meeting dinner is usually somewhere a normal person couldn't go.  Our dinner was at the in the Royal Castle in Warsaw.  And this is my husband and I on the lawn beforehand:

My husband, Derek, and I on the lawn behind the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.

Just before my trip to Warsaw, I took a short holiday to Paris, France.  There was a debacle with lost luggage and then wrong luggage being delivered to us, but outside of wearing the same clothes for a few days (this is why I always pack extra underwear in my carry-on luggage), my husband and I had a great time just relaxing and wondering around.  My new phone takes panoramic pictures and this is a good one I got of the Louvre:

Panoramic view of the Louvre (Paris, France)
Click on the picture for a larger view.

Once I returned home to the United States, I had tons of work to do.  I've talked before about how LIGO has been testing its data infrastructure to prepare for Advanced LIGO here.  We are then had our 4th software engineering run; that means that I had to improve upon the gravitational wave simulation software I wrote to perform better, faster, and incorporate more features.  It was a bit stressful come the deadline, but it all got done and turned out well.


... AND THEN SCHOOL STARTED AGAIN

Then school started again.  I am teaching (at LSU) the first semester of physical science (sometimes referred to as "Physics for Poets" since it is more conceptually based than mathematically focused).  Most of my students in this class (this year my lecture has only about 100 students) are elementary education majors.  Some might think that teaching an "easy" class like this would be, well... easy.  But it is far from it.  The less math you can rely on to teach the subject matter, the better you have to be as a teacher in communicating what the math means.  Since I love challenges like this, this is one of my favorite classes to teach.  I am also team teaching a junior/senior level class on Science Methods for secondary education pre-service teachers majoring in science or math.  This class shows them how science is done by doing experiments using the scientific method, analyzing their data and reporting it in both papers and presentation (since these are the two main means that scientists communicate with each other).

At LIGO, I am working on a paper with a group of other LIGO scientists who are looking for gravitational waves from supernovae that may have occurred while LIGO and/or other gravitational wave observatories were in operation (before the advanced detector upgrade began).  And, as always, I continue to refine my gravitational wave simulation software.


A QUICK WORD OF ADVICE...

I'll be writing again soon (probably next week).  When I first started this blog, I promised you a peek into the life of a working scientist.  Lately I've been answering lots of questions about gravity and how to look for gravitational waves.  But since there has been something major going on in my life, and it kept me from writing my blog as I would have liked, I wanted to share that with you.

I am lucky since even though I know I have times when depression can get the better of me, I have wonderful support from my husband, friends, and family.  I'm not sure why, but they all seem to love me even when I can't stand to be around myself. 

For anyone reading this who has issues with depression and/or anxiety:  Don't fool yourself that everything you are feeling inside is not affecting you because you may be able to keep it together and have others think you are happy.  This will eat at you and everything you are feeling will come out sometime (and usually at the least opportune time).  If you are sad or anxious for long periods of time, even if it's on-and-off, find some help.  It is not weak to seek help (I've been told that before and it's usually by people who need help for themselves and are too afraid to get it).  It takes an inner strength to admit when you are hurting and need a hand up, an ear to listen to you, or a shoulder to cry on.  If that's not enough, talk to your doctor.  Not once has a doctor been anything but 100% supportive of me when I've gone to them seeking medical help.  NOT ONCE did they look down on me, or suggest that my feelings will pass, or that I need to "buck up".  With support and help, I've always clawed my way back to feeling like a normal person.  You can too!

Happy New Year!

I can't believe how long it's been since I've last blogged - I've had so many ideas of stories to post, but I've also had some life issues that have kept me away.  Not to worry!  My most important resolution for 2013 is to write blog posts a few weeks ahead of time so that I can still post weekly even when life gets in the way.  I will be back in full force in 2013!  Expect posts on Thursdays, unless there is something timely I want to share before then.  I will make sure to post on Twitter when I a new post is available so if you don't follow me already, please follow @livingligo.

This is a smiley face the deicing crew at the Pittsburgh International Airport made in the snow.  As seen through the deicing fluid on the window of my plane on the evening of 29 December 2012.

2012

This year has been a year of many changes for me.  My days as a postdoc have come to an end and I now hold a dual position with Caltech as a scientist at the LIGO Livingston Observatory and as a physics instructor at LSU.  It is great being back in the classroom but that is also something that has kept me from posting as much as I would like.  It takes a lot of time to create interesting lectures for a class of 150 students and handle all of the class administration myself (office hours, grading, etc.).  This semester I am teaching the second semester of physical science (astronomy, chemistry, earth science) and will only have a 30 students.  I am very excited about the more personal instruction I will be able to do!

There have also been many changes at LIGO.  When I first started working at the Livingston observatory in 2007, there were about 25-30 people who worked there on a daily basis.  Starting with the Advanced LIGO preparations in 2010, we nearly doubled the number of daily staff.  Since the installation is well underway, we no longer need to have so many people on site (having too many people on site while we are looking for gravitational waves will cause ground vibrations that will decrease our sensitivity).  The parking lots are noticeably less full and it is starting to feel a little lonely even though we still have more people working on site than when I started.

As far as my personal life is concerned, I'm glad that 2012 is over.  It has been full of drama and uncertainty and it is one of the things that have been getting in the way of keeping up with this blog and my career in general.  But I wouldn't change a moment of it since I have so many great people around me, at home and at work, who care for me. 


2013

This coming year will prove to be exciting!  The installation of Advanced LIGO should be completed and the first commissioning (use of the detector to fine tune it to its best sensitivity) started.  This is always an interesting time when you get to use the detector for the first time and solve novel problems.  I will be sure to tell you all about them here! 

I will also continue teaching at LSU.  As I mentioned above, I will be teaching the second semester of physical science with about 30 students.  I also expect to teach a masters degree class on inquiry learning for in-service teachers this summer (I've done this class twice before with LSU).  

Of course, the most exciting events are usually the unexpected.  I look forward to sharing the professional and personal excitement with you here.

Thank you to all of my readers, followers on Twitter, and those who found me through a search engine!  Keep coming back for more!

What are you looking forward to this year?

March LIGO-Virgo Meeting in Boston

So, I am at the LIGO-Virgo Meeting in Boston right now.  As you may (or may not) know, our two collaborations are very close knit.  We schedule our upgrades to be around the same time, we always share our data, and we collaborate on our science to get the most from our work.  Being a part of a big international collaboration is exciting and gives you a new perspective on international politics - in science they exist, but are much easier to deal with since we are all working for the same goal.

Here is the gorgeous view from my hotel window:

Personal Complexes:

Another thing about being one of over 800 scientists and engineers working on a project is that you can feel small.  I've written before about the Impostor Syndrome - when people who are fully qualified and competent feel inadequate.  Sometimes, these meetings bring those feelings back to me.  Every time someone comes to me and asks me what I do, I feel like my worth is being weighed.  But it absolutely isn't!  After all, I do the same thing to new colleagues that I meet and I am only interested in learning more about them and maybe working with them in the future.

I was starting to feel inferior while I was traveling here...  I was sitting at my gate during a layover and a colleague I consider a friend was sitting in his seat diligently working on his computer.  What was I doing?  Reading a vampire book.  The self-loathing voice in my head immediately chimed in with, "See, there is someone who is deserves the esteem of the collaboration.  He works hard and makes the most of his time.  What are you doing?  Reading a book about things that don't even exist!"  As I was resigning myself to mediocrity, he put his computer aside and started talking with me.  During our short conversation, he paid me the most unexpected complement.  I'm not going to repeat it here, but I was speechless and ecstatic at the same time and tried not to tear up.  I smiled and thanked him because his words forced me to think well of myself (not that I told him that).  If he is reading this, you know who you are and what you said even though you don't know how much it mattered to me - THANK YOU!

I've been trying to work more on these issues but I don't ever expect to completely get over feeling inferior to my peers.  Not that I really want to - I've met many scientists who thought they were a divine gift to science and I can't stand them (even if they are right)!

The Science:

The final data analysis from our last data run is finishing up and we've been talking about these results and preparing for the demands the MUCH more sensitive Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors will place on our analysis infrastructure.  This has been a time of reorganization.  I gave a short talk about the functionality of the gravitational wave simulation software (called GravEn) I wrote while I was a graduate student.  This has been the standard software we've used to measure the sensitivity of of our burst data analysis methods.  We are also taking time to consider if there is a better way of doing it.  So far, it seems like GravEn is still the bee's knees and that makes me very happy!  (The science summary of the last burst data analysis paper is here.  The plots that show the sensitivity of our methods to different kinds of signals [the second and the third] were made using the simulations I produced.)

There have also been talks on the status of LIGO, Virgo, GEO, the Japanese KAGRA detector, and the status of what used to be the LISA space-based detector (this was a partnership between the ESA and NASA until budget issues forced NASA to cancel being a full partner).  There is progress being made on all of these fronts - even LISA (which is now led by the ESA and known as NGO for the New Gravitational-wave Observatory).  Every where you walk around the conference hotel, you see small groups working together on a project and a few very tall people in red uniforms (the Wisconsin Badgers are staying in our hotel for their NCAA Sweet 16 game tonight against Syracuse).

What Would YOU Like to Ask a LIGO Scientist/Engineer?

As part of a talk on the collaboration's outreach activities, this blog was featured!  (Those who don't know my science work will often still know me as the "Living LIGO Lady".)  It was also announced that I would like to feature interviews of gravitational wave people (scientists, engineers, etc.) on this blog.  When I originally started writing this, I wanted to make science human and accessible.  I feel like I am running out of human things about me to talk about (I'm not all that interesting).  But there are so many others with different backgrounds and stories that I would like to share with you.  I already have a list of questions I am thinking about asking (not all of them will be mandatory, of course) but I want to invite you to tell me what questions you would like to as a LIGO person?  Tweet them to me @livingligo or leave a comment here (below).  You can also email me at amber@livingligo.org.  I'm thinking of using my husband, a mechanical engineer for LIGO, as a Guinea pig (he can't cook and likes to eat, so I think I can convince him :P ).

Until next week!

Nerdy Fun for the Holidays!

Since I am not sure that I will be posting again before the end of the year (I hope so, but I also have the feeling that you will be busy with your own holiday events), I wanted to make this a fun post that will make you smile.


• Happy Helium Holidays

The APS Physics Buzz Blog team performed this wonderful rendition of Carol of the Bells using helium or sulfur hexafluoride to modify their voices and a harmonious, hilarious way!  Many people are familiar with the fact that if you inhale helium your voice becomes much higher pitched.  This is because the helium gas is so much lighter than air, it allows your vocal cords to vibrate at a higher frequency producing the high pitch.  Sulfur hexafluoride is sometimes known as the anti-helium since it is so much heavier than helium, if causes your vocal cords to vibrate much slower producing a deep, low pitch.

The beginning of this video features Becky Thompson-Flagg who is the Head of Public Outreach for the APS and is also the model for the Spectra superhero character comic books (read here about that).  She explains the physics behind the voice changes and the mild peril involved in this performance.  Then the concert begins :)

• Interactive Relativity Tutorial - Al's Relativistic Adventures

Al's Relativistic Adventures is an animated tutorial on special relativity.  While this is appropriate for middle school students, I found the lessons to be very accurate and the authors are talented at communicating complicated concepts in easy to understand ways (I even learned how to better communicate some concepts from working through this activity).  Once you are done, you are even awarded a certificate - I printed mine out and hung it in my office :)

• Play the GRB Lottery

Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous events to be observed in the Universe and their origins, other than that they are produce from extraordinary energetic events), are still not certain.  They play a vital role to LIGO since whatever produces them could have produced gravitational waves and observe these gravitational waves may uncover the cause of these explosions.

There are several satellites currently in orbit around the Earth detecting these GRBs.  One of these is the Swift satellite and they have a fun GRB Lottery to play on their website (free to play, of course).  You are presented a map of the sky that has locations of past detected GRBs (notice that there is no area on the sky that is favored over another so any guess is really as good as another).  You then click on an area that you would like to select as your own and if you are the closest guess to a GRB within the two weeks, you win!  "What do you win?" you say...  Well, you get a nifty certificate commemorating your good fortune and the Swift outreach staff will send you a small gift (I got a nice package of education materials including a poster).

I played the GRB Lottery once and I won!  I decided that I would retire from my glorious reign so that the rest of you can have a chance!  :P  Below is the certificate I earned which is hanging proudly in my office:

• Physics Carols

This webpage (www.PhysicsSongs.org) has an amazing collection of covers to well known songs with physics lyrics.  They even have a special page of physics related carols!  I have to admit to getting lost on the page and chuckling to myself (and feeling even more nerdy than usual)!

Living LIGO 1 Year Anniversary!

Today is the one year anniversary of the Living LIGO blog!  Thank you to everyone who has ever read my blog and followed me on Twitter.  It has been an exciting year and I hope that the next one is even better for you.

I've learned many things through writing this blog.  The first thing I found was my voice.  Originally, I was targeting this blog to middle and high school teachers and students to give them an insight into the science of LIGO and what it is like to be a scientist.  While I think that this blog has served that role to a point, I also found an audience drawn from a great community of science enthusiasts and I've been able to engage them with all of the things that I love about my job.

By far, it is my readers who have made Living LIGO what it is (and I personally think it is great).  A high point for me came back in March when it was revealed that the "Big Dog" blind injection was not a real gravitational wave.  I wanted to share it on my blog since this was a rare peek into how science is done.  One of my readers shared it on his blog (here) which got the attention of a popular "Cosmic Variance" blog (here) and the story was then picked up by places like Discovery News (here) and various other blogs.  The number of readers went from a few a day to over 1000 on that particular day (and many of those reader have now become regulars).  This is something I never expected when I started writing my blog but it is very exciting for me and I hope that it has at least been interesting for you.

I usually like to post a picture with every post, but I didn't have anything particularly relevant to this so I decided to give you a peek into where I create my blog post and most of my other brilliant research - my office.  It's small but it's all mine!  I even have a window (which is great since fluorescent lights give me migraines) and a door:

If you look closely, you can see some of my collection of stuffed vampire/creepy things.

*Thank you again to every reader out there.*  As always, please let me know what kinds of things you would like to know about.  I'll answer almost anything - from science questions to how to become a physicist or whatever!  Ask in the comment section of any blog post or contact me on Twitter as @livingligo.

Slaying My Own Dragons

I haven't written in a while.  I've been working and traveling but that isn't why I haven't been writing.  I've stayed away because I have recently been dealing with my own personal demons (which surface for me at least on an annual basis)... 

When I first started this blog, I promised a look into my everyday life as a LIGO scientist.  Almost everything that I have shared has been positive and, truly, that is how the majority of my life passes - I am blessed beyond my dreams and I love my life and my work.  However, there are the other days where I feel like nothing I've done has amounted to anything other than keeping me busy.  Deep down, I know that isn't true but I have a horrible way of marginalizing everything I do.  Basically, if I did it then anyone could have or it wasn't meaningful.  This is a well known phenomenon called the Impostor Syndrome.  I've heard about this is various places; I think most recently it was in regard to women in physics but this is a widespread phenomenon in both genders. 

Honestly, I am hesitant to even write about this here.  Physics is a competitive profession.  I feel like a person's worth is usually judged on what you've done lately.  I am always afraid that I haven't accomplished enough to not be forgotten let alone respected.  And with my job being a temporary (I am a postdoctoral scholar - this is much like when a medical doctor goes through residencies after earning their medical degree) and on a yearly contract, not constantly earning respect means that I could lose my job all together.

It isn't something that I discuss with my co-workers; after all these are the people whose respect I am trying to earn and maintain.  I don't even bring it up to my friends because, since I really don't have much of a life outside of work, my friends are also physicists - sometimes even people I feel are my competition.  On my latest trip (to Santa Barbara, CA for the APS Executive Board retreat), I did bring this up in conversation over dinner (I felt more comfortable around these physicists since they are not in the same research circle as myself and I rarely see them).  As soon and I mentioned I'd been dealing with a bit of Impostor Syndrome the immediate response I got was, "We all feel that way."  At that, I didn't know how to respond since I was surprised at how open this person was with me.

So, how do I go about slaying this dragon?  Well, the first stage is messy and usually involves much anxiety and panic about the difference between what I feel I've accomplished and what I should have accomplished.  This then moves into a planning phase where I decide what I am going to do and is followed by a series of email feelers to people I need to collaborate with to perform the work.  By this time, I have usually exhausted myself (at least emotionally) and I wait for responses from collaborators.  If they are prompt, a new determined calm can begin to take root; otherwise, the anxiety increases again.  I start thinking, "Wow, I was right and everyone thinks so little of me that they don't want to work with me!"  (Note to self: next time check your spam filter before you flip out again.)  With a new plan of action intact, I get to start the cycle of the Impostor Syndrome again: "I have all this great work to do but I don't think that I am talented enough to complete it."  But, I plug away at it, complete tasks and rarely acknowledge what I've done.

The one good thing that comes from these episodes of mine is that it jump starts new projects for me.  It also reminds me of how lucky I am to have my husband since he is the only person with whom I share this insecurity.  The poor guy is my sounding board for all of the anxiety I've built up and there really isn't anything he can do for me.

A double rainbow taken from the LIGO Livingston Observatory parking lot on 30 June 2008.

This is a good article on the Impostor Syndrome: Laursen, Lucas, "No, You're Not an Impostor", Science Careers (15 February 2008).

***

Revised Erdös Number: 4

A friend of mine read my last blog post and showed that both of us (as members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration) have a lower Erdös Number (4) than I noted in that post.  Here are the references establishing this network:

1: Paul Erdős & Mark Kac
    Erdös, P.; Kac, M. "The Gaussian law of errors in the theory of additive number theoretic functions",  Amer. J. Math.  62,  (1940). 738–742.
2: Mark Kac & Theodore A. Jacobson
    Gaveau B.; Jacobson T. ; Kac M.; Schulman L. S. "Relativistic extension of the analogy between quantum mechanics and Brownian motion", Phys. Rev. Lett. 53 (1984), no. 5, 419–422.
3. Theodore A. Jacobson & Bruce Allen
    Allen, Bruce; Jacobson, Theodore "Vector two-point functions in maximally symmetric spaces", Comm. Math. Phys. 103 (1986), no. 4, 669–692. 
4. Bruce Allen & Amber Stuver
    Abbott, B.; et al. "Detector description and performance for the first coincidence observations between LIGO and GEO," Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 517 (2004), 154 – 179.

How I Came Into Blogging

I never thought that anyone would be interested in what I had to say, especially in an ongoing basis.  I go to work (albeit to a pretty cool job), go home and do normal things that everyone else does.  Who'd be interested in that?

But then I thought about how scientists are usually perceived.  I've noticed that people who were having a normal conversation with me will talk to me differently when they find out I'm a physicist.  I've had adult visitors to LIGO be in awe and mention that they have never met a physicist before.  My response to that is that they don't really know that - the person in line behind them in Walmart could have been a physicist and they would never know it.  When scientists are portrayed in media, there is usually something about them that puts them apart from the "everyday" person.  I admit that the characters on CBS's "The Big Bang Theory" have gotten a lot of the quirks right (I can label the characters with my friends) but the show only shows the interesting parts of their lives where their quirkiness comes to the fore - I can guarantee you that if these were real people, their 'boring' times are just like everyone else's.

Still, I didn't think that this was enough to base a blog on.  Last February "Astro Guyz" David Dickinson requested a tour of the LIGO Livingston facility so that he could blog about it.  I was more than happy to take him around (regular readers of this blog know that I LOVE to talk about LIGO to anyone who will listen).  After showing David and his wife around we talked about their experiences blogging (they are both experienced bloggers).  They were very encouraging and I was intrigued.  Read Astro Guyz blog post from his visit to LIGO here.  Below is a picture of William Katzman (LIGO Livingston Science Education Center lead), me, and David Dickinson from this post:

Astro Guyz also gave me my YouTube debut:

Months later, on my birthday, I decided that there is no better time than the present to start my blog and see if anyone was interested in following what being a scientist is really like (not just the stereotypes).  Now I had to find a way to let others know that the blog exists.  For that I turned to Astro Guyz and sciencegeekgirl.com (a blog run by Stephanie Chasteen - a well known science education and communication expert who I was acquainted with).  They were both very helpful in giving me hints and their common advice was along the lines of "if you write it, they will come" and to "use Twitter".

And here you are!  :)

I hope that this blog is serving its purpose by letting you see what I do on a daily basis.  I know not everything is thrilling (like this post) but every now and then I get to tell you about a bit of excitement (like the "Big Dog" blind injection - which was picked up by Discover Magazine's Cosmic Variance blog and Discovery News).

I'd love to hear your thoughts!  Is there anything you would like me to talk about?  Just drop a comment below or send an email to amber@livingligo.org.