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!

On Outreach...

In my last post, I mentioned that I recently visited Ole Miss to give a colloquium on outreach for their physics department.  Later that night, I also gave a talk at a local bakery on multi-messenger astronomy (public events like this are called "Science Cafes").  The colloquium on outreach was interesting to do since it made me organize my thoughts from my experiences here at LIGO (and this blog was featured) and I wanted to share my thoughts on engaging students and discussing religious issues in general.

The beginning of my colloquium at Ole Miss.

ENGAGING STUDENTS

I specialize in being the scientist that people talk to when they visit LIGO.  That includes taking visitors on a tour of the control room (where all the science happens).  I think everything I talk about is immensely interesting, but some of my visitors (especially the younger ones) will disagree.  So, how can I make this interesting for them?  Usually, anything that is gross (yet age appropriate) will get their attention.

One of the features of LIGO I like to point out is our outstanding vacuum system.  LIGO has 300,000 cubic feet of volume in a vacuum that is 8x better than the vacuum of space the space station is currently orbiting in (that is a trillionth of the atmospheric pressure you are sitting in now).  For some visitors, this is impressive; for others, not so much.  Then I talk about how your blood would boil if you went into our vacuum without a spacesuit.  And I put a little dramatic emphasis on the "boil" part.  Now I've got their attention!

Why would our blood boil if we were inside LIGO's vacuum?

The reason that blood would boil in our vacuum isn't because of temperature.  Rather, it is because our blood stores oxygen and carbon dioxide in solution.  How much it can store is dependent on the pressure that surrounds our body.  Going from atmospheric pressure to 1/1,000,000,000,000^th that pressure would allow the oxygen and carbon dioxide to be released from solution in the form of bubble.  Hence, it "boils".  To give an example that most of us encounter in our daily lives, this "boiling" is similar to what happens when you open a 2 liter bottle of soda (or pop, or Coke depending on where you live) - you release the pressure in the bottle and the bubbles come out of the drink.  Another example that many people have heard of is deep sea divers suffering from the bends when they surface too quickly.

RELIGIOUS ISSUES

In one of my first blog posts, I stated that I don't want to argue religious issues here.  I want to make clear that I am not making any statements for or against a view, I simply want to talk about DISCUSSING religious issues when the come up.

Many people who visit LIGO have strongly held religious convictions.  Fortunately, there is very little controversy over LIGO science and religion.  The one concept that can have religious implications if the Big Bang.  This theory (and I mean a scientific theory that is supported by evidence, not a hunch) states that the Universe was once contained in a very dense, very small ball and time effectively started in a large explosion.  This is at odds with many types of creationism.  While this can yield lively debate, that is not something I am interested in doing with visitors; my goal is to talk about science and what LIGO can reveal about our Universe.

My goal when faced with situations like this is to treat everyone with respect no matter what their beliefs are.  Just like it is unlikely for them to convert me to their worldview (assuming it is different from mine), I know it is unlikely for me to change theirs.  So I define what kinds of questions science can and cannot answer: science only ever asks "How?" not "Why?".  For the "Why?" you need to turn to philosophy and religion.  With respect to the Big Bang and creationism, I point out that evidence exists to support the Big Bang in the Cosmic Microwave Background.  But, even if this is not the relic light from the Big Bang, something created it and whatever it was may have also created gravitational waves.  So, while one of our documentaries claims that we are seeking the gravitational waves from the Big Bang (and many other sources), we are really seeking the gravitational waves from whatever created the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Some have accused me of skirting the subject in the way I handle religious issues and they are mostly right.  I try to respect everyone and re-frame the contentious issue in a way that doesn't conflict with religious beliefs and is still true to the science.  But I think it is also important to make the distinction in what science can and cannot do.  Some people believe that science tries to disprove God but the truth is it can't.  Science also can never prove God.

The Likely End to a Space-Based GW Detector

LISA...

(The video below is large [~44 MB] and dated, but gives good background on the motivation and specifics of a space-based gravitational-wave detector:)

About this time last year, I wrote a blog post about the NASA withdrawal from being a full partner in the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) with the ESA (European Space Agency).  At that time, it meant that US scientists would still be able to receive funding to develop research programs and contribute to the LISA effort but the ESA would be responsible for the bulk of the work.  This withdrawal by NASA was caused by the poor state of the agency's funding and the cost of the James Webb Space Telescope.  For all of us in doing research in gravitational waves, it was a horrible setback; LISA was once a flagship mission of NASA's Physics of the Cosmos program and the best hope we had of detecting low frequency gravitational waves (< 10 Hz). 

This then led the ESA to redevelop their plans for a new version of LISA (that is referred to as eLISA but is officially known as NGO [New Gravitational-wave Observatory]) in order to lower the cost of the mission by at least 20% and preserve as much of the science as possible.  This new design was published in their "Yellow Book" at the beginning of the year which included, among other things, only 2 arms in a triangular formation (previously there were 3 arms and each corner pair of arms could function as an independent detector), reduced distance between satellites (1 million kilometers instead of 5 million), and a new orbit which is similar to the LISA orbit (in orbit around the Sun about 20^o behind Earth in its orbit) but will allow the detector to drift away into the solar system over time.  Below is a short movie illustrating a few orbits - the "drift away" is not noticeable:

The newly designed eLISA/NGO received the highest science ratings of the projects up for funding at the ESA.  However, the ESA Science Programme Committee has concerns about the technological readiness of eLISA/NGO to fly in the 2020 time frame and has passed it over to recommend the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer).  This is likely the last nail in the coffin for a space-based gravitational-wave detector in the foreseeable future.  (Note:  NGO can be considered for future launch opportunities but that is way down the road.)  There is a slight chance that the recommendation could be rejected in favor of gravitational waves when the 19 member states of the ESA make the final decision on May 2.  However, I heard the news of this recommendation from a friend who specializes in LISA science and he didn't seem hopeful for the 11th hour pardon.

I wonder what will happen to the LISA Symposium that is supposed to take place in Paris at the end of May...  Or for that matter, the LISA Pathfinder mission (which will demonstrate the basic abilities that LISA would have needed to have) which is scheduled to launch on June 30.

UPDATE:  I've heard from a LISA colleague that LISA Pathfinder is still a go!  Thanks!

***

On a more uplifting front, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at Ole Miss (this link will take you to their gravity research group - they do great work!) about the importance of outreach, useful skills for it, and different ways to do outreach (and this blog was featured!).  That night, I also got to demonstrate my points by giving one of their monthly public science cafes.  This experience gave me the chance to really consider what it is that I have been doing professionally for the last 5 years...  What have I learned?  What mistakes did I make?  What surprised me?  What ideas can I pass along on how to do outreach to those who are expected to do it but aren't afforded the extra time like I am?  I'm thinking about posting a summary of my thoughts and speaking points in next week's post (unless something else newsworthy happens in the mean time)!

Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop and AAPT Summer Meeting

I've just returned from a week long trip to Nebraska for 2 conferences, one in Lincoln and the other in Omaha.

Using Astronomy to Teach Physics Workshop:

The Lincoln trip was for a special workshop on Using Astronomy to Teach Physics (UATP).  The goal of this workshop is to bring educators in physics and astronomy together, share the information on the state-of-the-art science projects in their fields and then breakout into small groups to identify ways to bring this frontier science into the undergraduate physics curriculum.  I put together a professional poster (see my post on the different types of posters for more information on scientific posters) on the educational work done in the Science Education Center (SEC) at LIGO, both locally and nationally as part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration's Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group [this group has just announced its partnership with the 2012 US Science & Engineering Festival].  (I will put a link to this post as soon as it becomes publicly viewable.) While I was making this poster, I found pictures of all of the SEC staff and myself engaging students and the public in some way.  For my picture, I found one that I adore (which is shocking since I hate nearly all pictures of myself) that shows me talking to school students while giving a tour of the LIGO control room:

I found this workshop particularly interesting for 2 reasons: 1) there were talks on the different frontier astronomy projects to make sure everyone in attendance at least had a working knowledge of what the state-of-the-art is and 2) there were breakout sessions where groups who were interested in similar goals met to discuss actionable ways to incorporate the new astronomy into the undergraduate physics curriculum.  My big project that I am now working on as a direct consequence of this is a document I intend to publish in the American Journal of Physics on connections between the basic physics concepts taught in the undergraduate physics courses and the technology that makes LIGO possible.  For example:

LIGO is looking for gravitational waves that will change the length of its 4 km arms less than 1/1000th the diameter of a proton (that's 0.000000000000000001 meters).  At this length scale, one must consider the effects of quantum mechanics.  So, here's the issue: the thermal vibration of the atoms in the mirrors used in LIGO is going to be much bigger than the "big" gravitational wave cited above.  How can LIGO possibly hope ever detect gravitational waves distinctly from this thermal mirror vibration?  (The 'no math' answer is at the end of this post.)  

After publication of this document, I am thinking about approaching LIGO's EPO group to propose that we create a web site to support this kind of effort.  Basically, I would like to take the document apart and use it to make a skeleton for the web site.  Then, any time a LIGO member has a homework question, activity, etc. that they use in their classroom, they can contribute that content to the site so that anyone who is interested can also use that content.

AAPT Summer Meeting:

After 3 days in Lincoln, I then went to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Summer Meeting in Omaha.  There I got to make new friends in the Physics Instructional Resource Association (PIRA) and we did something together just about every night (which, if you know me, is remarkable since I am the type to hole up in my hotel room during down time).  I also co-presented an invited talk on LIGO outreach using demonstrations with my colleague Kathy Holt.  Demonstrations are really at the core of the outreach we so since we do demonstrations with teachers and give them the tools they need to take those demonstrations back to their classrooms, we do demonstrations during public open houses and there is often a demonstration or two when we work with student field trips.  It was great doing this talk with Kathy since the combination of our backgrounds (she was a teacher before working at LIGO) give different and useful perspectives on what we do in the SEC.

Then, besides going to other talks, I also had some academic service obligations.  I believe that I have mentioned that I am on the APS Forum on Education (FEd) Executive Committee.  Even though the AAPT is not affiliated with the APS, they work together closely since they both serve physicists but with different focus.  Because of this, the AAPT Executive Board meets with the APS FEd Exec. Comm. to coordinate efforts and we had a good lunch meeting this year.  I am also on the AAPT Committee on Graduate Education in Physics and this committee also met to make plan for the upcoming AAPT Meetings and to discuss the broader impact activities we are undertaking.

In past blog posts, I have included pictures of the city I happened to travel to as seen from my hotel window (see Long Beach, Milwaukee, Anaheim).  The view out of my window was a horrible view of a parking lot and another hotel.  Fortunately, the view from my colleague's room was much better (she got a room in the main hotel for the conference and I didn't since I waited too long to make my reservations).  So, here is the view of Omaha from the window:

OH!  One more thing...  When I was flying from Omaha (whose airport in actually in Iowa), the north terminal of airport of evacuated for a "suspicious package".  Luckily for me, I was flying out of the south terminal.  Once I got home, I found out that the hours long closing was due to someone's physics classroom apparatus that got TSA's panties in a bunch (it went through security as a carry-on).  I suppose it's good that they were awake enough to think something suspicious but what concerns me is that it is almost a certainty that the same thing was carried on the plane to get to the meeting at all.  I guess it wasn't as threatening then :) 

Answer to the quantum mechanics question posed above (highlight text below to uncover the answer):

The thermal vibration of the mirror's atoms would indeed make it impossible to measure a gravitational wave only if the laser was so well focused as to only shine on the area of a few of the mirror's surface atoms.  Fortunately, that is not the case in LIGO!  The beam spot on the mirror is about 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter.  In that area, there are MANY surface atoms that are vibrating.  By observing this large area, LIGO effectively averages over the vibration of all of the atoms that the light falls on yielding a zero net motion.  Thus, LIGO works just fine!

Giving a Talk on Behalf of LIGO & APS April Meeting Wrap-up

Sorry for taking so long to round out my summary of the APS April Meeting.  My talk was on the last day of the meeting (3 May) and by the time I got home the next day I was suffering from a nice case of jet lag.  I know that there is only a 2-hour time change between Pacific and Central time, but it really hurt me this time.  I am just glad that I was able to recover from it over the weekend!

Let's talk about giving talks as a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.  When we speak on results that took a substantial number of people to produce (which is most of our results) we need to give talks "on behalf of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration."  Not only does this let the audience know that the person giving the talk isn't taking all the credit for the work, but that the talk has also been reviewed by the respective collaborations and approved.  This process isn't meant to be censorship; it is meant to ensure that there aren't people claiming to have results that are later refuted or otherwise change before a paper is published (like "we detected gravitational waves yesterday" [we didn't, this is just an example]).  That being said, my talk was on behalf of LIGO and Virgo and discussed the work we have been doing to collaborate the EM observatories to image parts of the sky where we think a gravitational wave may have originated.  My talk needed to be done at least a few days in advance to be sent out for review to the specific committees that give the final OK and to the working groups that produced the results I was speaking on (I sent my talk out on Friday and my talk was on Tuesday afternoon).  The final approved talk that I gave can be seen in the LIGO Document Control Center (DCC) here.

The talk went well with the one exception that I ran a little long in time.  I tend to like to talk about things that get me excited, and the topic of my talk certainly did!  However, I had only 10 minutes to talk followed by 2 minutes for questions.  I did finally wrap it up before they got the hook out for me though!  :)

In a previous post, I talked about the "Physics of Hollywood" session at the APS Meeting that included some Hollywood veterans.  The APS "Physics Buzz" blog also covered this in much more detail than I did.  If you would like to read more about it, you can read the first post (Q and A with Q, et al) here and the second (Writing Science Fiction: Trying to Avoid “The Button”) here!

Finally, I want to continue what seems to be a tradition of mine in sharing some of the more mundane views from my life by sharing the view from the 15th floor of the hotel I stayed in while I was in Anaheim, CA: 

This is facing south, if I was only facing north I would have had a peek at Disneyland!

Weekend at the APS April Meeting

The APS April Meeting started in full swing on Saturday 30 April.  The meeting is composed of many (~12 or so) parallel sessions during the day (form 8:30 am to 5 pm).  These sessions are composed of invited talk (about 30 minutes each) and contributed talks (about 12 minutes each).  In the evenings, there is usually a feature presentation and on Saturday night was on of the best ones I've been to.  This event was titled "The Physics of Hollywood" with panelists Bill Prady (executive producer and co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory"), Bruce Miller (executive producer of "Eureka") and John de Lancie (the character "Q" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation").  Junnifer Ouellette (author of "The Physics of the Buffyverse" was the moderator.  The picture below is from the back of the room when they were showing a clip from "The Big Bang Theory":

The panel at the front is hard to see here, so here is a zoom:

The people seated by the screen are (from right to left): Ouellette, Prady, Miller and de Lancie.  It was great!  They even answered one of the questions I have wondered about for a while:  Exactly what positions do these characters hold at the university?  They are clearly not grad students but they don't seem to be faculty members either.  Well, it turns out they are just like me...  They are postdocs!

I also had another "in the wild" sighting of the "Gravitational Waves" poster I worked on with the APS.  The picture below is the poster as it was distributed on the APS outreach table:

 

After another full day of listening to talks (I primarily go to sessions focused on gravity or education, unless there is something I don't specialize in that seems especially appealing) on Sunday, I had the Executive Committee Meeting of the Forum on Education (I serve on the Committee as an APS-AAPT Member-at-Large).  The FEd is just one of many units that members of the APS can join that address their special interest and their executive committees are the way these units are governed.  (Perhaps I should write a blog post detailing the governance structure of the APS - but perhaps that is more bureaucracy than anyone is really interested in...)  I may be very early in my career, but I have always felt welcomed by these physicists who are much more distinguished than myself.  So, I love going to these meetings (we only have one face-to-face meeting a year) and I get fed too!

That pretty much sums up my weekend at the APS April Meeting!  There are 2 more days left and I speak on the last day (Tuesday).  I am in the final stages of getting my talk approved by the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations since my talk is on their behalf.  I will write more about this process, how the talk went and about a few other things I got to do while at the meeting.

Visit and Seminar at Rice University

Last Monday, I gave a seminar at Rice University on LIGO and gravitational wave astronomy.  Rice does not have a LIGO group or a group that works on relativistic physics, so the talk needed to start from the foundations of gravitational waves.  I do this sort of thing all the time at work when I do outreach, but I assume that the visitor isn't a physics expert.  So, I was a little worried about pitching it too low and insulting the audience or pitching it too high and having no one really understand what I'm talking about.

It turns out that I was worried for no reason and this was one of the most enjoyable talks I've ever given.  The topic is very dear to my heart since the entire reason I became involved with LIGO when I started grad school in 1999 was to be part of this new field of gravitational wave astronomy.  Through this talk, I got to start with the basics about gravitational waves and LIGO and then go into all of the personally exciting fronts on gravitational wave astronomy.  The audience was not shy and asked questions throughout the talk (which I usually interpret as them being excited about the topic).  In the end, the talk & questions went on for an hour and a half (the seminar was scheduled for 55 minutes) and only a few people who had other commitments (like teaching) had to leave early.  It felt so fulfilling to give a talk to such a wonderful group of physicists.

After the talk, the organizer mentioned that the older gentleman who asked me a few questions was none other than Dr. Robert Curl, the Nobel Prize winning (1996) chemist who was one of the scientists who discovered C60 (Buckminsterfullerene or Buckyballs).  In case you are not familiar, buckyballs are spherical shells of carbon atoms that resemble the geometry of the geodesic domes (think Spaceship Earth at EPCOT Center) that Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller popularized.  These buckyballs began the new field of research in carbon nanotubes which is full of promising new technology.

I can't believe that I held my own with a Nobel Prize winner!  (Not that I am usually proud of myself for answering questions correctly, but I'm usually not questioned by someone so famous.)

After the talk I was treated to a tour of campus.  I must admit, it is one of the most beautiful campuses I have seen in a long time.  The week before, they dedicated their new physics building.  Outside on the top of the support columns, were symbols with physics themes (this is common on other buildings on campus with the symbols showing the respective subject of study).  On the top of one column was a diagram of a mass warping space-time and a schematic of how an interferometer works:

I was also told the story of the founding of Rice.  I won't spoil all of it here, but it is a murder mystery where the butler really did do it (along with a corrupt lawyer).  The day was topped off by dinner with the organizer and her husband.  The food was excellent and the conversation even better!

The cherry on top of this trip happened 2 days before the talk.  Nearly 6 years ago I donated bone marrow to a 16-year-old young lady with ALL.  We communicated through the donation coordinators for a year (we were not allowed to know each other's identity for a year due to privacy issues) and then signed the paperwork to release our personal information to each other.  She and her family live outside of Houston, TX so I took this opportunity to meet her for the first time in person.  She is beautiful both physically and in spirit!  The most meaningful thing I have ever done with my life is help her beat her cancer (she has been cancer free since the transplant).

If you are interested in learning more about registering to donate bone marrow or peripheral stem cells (basically what they need from bone marrow that can be taken from the blood), visit The National Marrow Donor Program.  Most people will never be a match to someone in need.  I was called in the first 9 months and haven't been called since.  However, I would welcome the opportunity to do it again.

P.S.  If you are interested in my donation story, you can read it here:  www.marrowdonor.net.  I wrote it shortly after donation and it could use a bit of editing, but the story is complete.

Meeting Aftermath

I flew home to Louisiana from the LIGO-Virgo Meeting in California on Saturday.  The rest of this week has been a bit crazy for me since! 

I have been preparing for a talk I am giving at Rice University on Monday (the ad for it is here).  I love giving overview talks on LIGO and its potential so I am very much looking forward to it.  That being said, I don't do 'canned' talks (those are talks that are generic enough to be given with little notice and to varied audiences).  Well, I just lied a little - I do have a very basic talk that introduces LIGO to an audience that has little or no previous knowledge about gravitational waves.  I think that I have given that talk 4 times.  The talk I am giving at Rice is very different in that I am talking to other physicists (faculty and students) who are knowledgeable in physics, but are not experts on relativity or gravitational waves.  The most difficult part is figuring out how best to pitch the talk so that everyone stays interested but no one gets lost.  And then there is the issue of what cool things to talk about and what other things to leave out (I only have a 55 min slot and that includes time for audience questions).  Those are some of the hardest choices.

And then life always likes to make everything more complicated...

I was having an odd toothache since just before the I left for the meeting.  I got the first dentist appointment that was available to have it looked at.  I made a horrible mistake of taking some Advil before my appointment (it hurt) which made it difficult for him to figure out what was going on (since it didn't hurt anymore then).  Since there was something suspicious on my X-rays he was worried that I may need a root canal and that would need a specialist my roots on that tooth are curved irregularly.  So off to the root canal doctor the next day (no stress - it's not that I'm scared of a root canal, I just had so much work to do, a talk to polish and I didn't want to be recovering from a root canal while giving the talk).  GOOD NEWS!  It turns out that I brush my teeth with a little bit more enthusiasm than in healthy for my gums.  I have a little bit of recession which exposes a bit of dentin which causes sensitivity and repeatedly exposing those teeth to cold/hot/sweet/etc. was causing the ache.  I don't think the root canal doctor gets someone to smile as big to him as I did when he told me I needed some Sensodyne toothpaste and not a root canal!

<sigh>  It is a little odd writing my mundane blog posts after the post about the "Big Dog" blind injection got so much attention.  But the whole point of this blog is to let you see what it is like to be a LIGO scientist for real.  The bottom line is that there are some days where great and interesting things happen, but most days are just like everyone else's.  Right now, I need to clean up my house, I need to get groceries (I haven't gone for more than bread, etc. in a few weeks and I am out of everything), I have a pile of laundry with my name on it (and my husband's name since he helps out with that - I have a great man at my back) and a movie from Netflix that has been sitting by my TV for almost 3 weeks.  Yup.  This is my life and I like it just the way it is!

Here's a little LIGO fun to get you though the weekend.  This compilation of Beach Boys parodies was made by a group of LIGO REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) summer students.  I guess we didn't keep them busy enough :)

 
Research experiences are priceless for physics students, especially those considering going on to graduate school.  If you are interested in the LIGO REU, you can find more information here.  It is too late to apply for this summer, but consider applying for next summer!  Most students end up working at Caltech (like the students in this video) but you may get to work/visit LIGO Livingston and meet me :P