Q: Are there really Vegas odds on GW detection?

@Astroguyz  asked:

Are there really Vegas odds on GW detection?

The answer to this is yes, there were Vegas odds on the detection of gravitational waves.

This story starts in latter half of August of 2004.  Ladbrokes created a special category of wagering based on successful scientific discoveries by 2010.  These were the discovery of life on Titan, a fusion (rather than fission) nuclear power plant, finding the Higgs Boson, understanding the origin of cosmic rays, and the discovery of gravitational waves.  Originally, the odds were set at 500:1.  Well, those of us in the know thought that the broker was way off and we had a lot to gain by taken them up on their offer - so many that the broker realized the same thing.  Within just a few weeks (I cannot find the exact date but the news articles I've read implied it's between 2 and 3 weeks), the odds were slashed from 500:1 to 100:1, 10:1, 6:1, then 2:1 before they finally closed the bets.  If I wasn't a broke graduate student in 2004, I even I would have jumped on these!

Here is some of the news coverage of the betting:
   26 August 2004 - New Scientist
   31 August 2004 - BBC News
   29 July 2010 - The Economist

If you read through these, you will note that the same LIGO Science Collaboration member is quoted: James Hough from the University of Glasgow.   I asked him about this in an email and he wrote:

"I think my bet was for 25 pounds at 100 to 1 but the chair of the UK oversight committee had 50 pounds at 500 to one.

Unfortunately as you know we did not succeed.

But you can imagine my excitement over the Big Dog event!!  I was on tenterhooks for weeks!"

As James notes (and as I have mentioned on this blog many times), LIGO has yet to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves.  In the end, Ladbrokes cleaned up.  I do hope that they open bets like this again though since I know that Advanced LIGO will be able to reach 1000 times more of the Universe than it did during its last data run in 2010 (when we started the aLIGO upgrades).  Instead of maybe seeing gravitational waves, we expect to be able to see tens of gravitational waves every year after aLIGO reaches its design sensitivity.  I can't wait!

If you are interested in making bets on odd things, Ladbrokes does still have a "Specials" category with all sorts of odd things you can wager on.  If you have a gambling problem, please consider contacting the National Council on Problem Gambling at 1-800-522-4700.

...

P.S.  As I wrote this blog post, it is to the horrible background music of uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) in my and neighboring offices beeping due to a power outage here at LIGO Livingston (loving my office with a window!).  This is when our computer staff really gets called into action - all of the computers that run the instrument AND the supercomputer that is located here need to be powered down before their UPS fails (they are only supposed to be good for minutes to give you time to shut down) and then they get to power everything back up again once the power is back on.  And there is an order to powering the computers back on!  So I guess this blog post comes to you today courtesy of my laptop battery :) 

The picture above is looking down on the large assembly area (not far from my office) where systems like seismic isolation are being put together for Advanced LIGO.  The lights that you see are emergency lighting so no one hurts themselves trying to leave in the dark.  This is a view I've never seen before.

Q: Is there anything like LIGO outside of the USA?

I mentioned before that I've noticed in my blog visit statistics that some people find my site by searching questions that they have about gravitational waves.  They show up as the search keywords (don't worry - I have no way of knowing who searched and visited this site).  Many of the questions are great and I am not sure that my blog completely answered their question, at least in a concise way.  Today, I am answering one of these "searched for" questions:

"Is there anything like LIGO outside of the USA?"

Yes!  First, let me establish that there are 2 LIGO observatories in the United States.

Why are there 2 LIGO's?

Detectors like LIGO, gravitational wave interferometers, are sensitive to gravitational waves coming from nearly any place in the sky, including the sky that's above the other side of the planet.  The fact that gravitational waves can travel through matter and come out the other side unchanged is a huge advantage over doing astronomy using different forms of light and allows LIGO to have this amazing sensitivity.  It does have the downside that, given only a single detector, we cannot tell where a detected gravitational wave came from on the sky.  So, we built 2 detectors in the United States to ensure that, even if no other countries built gravitational wave detectors, we would be able to narrow down the location of any detections. 

LIGO Livingston's sensitivity to sources coming directly above locations on Earth.  Red is the highest sensitivity and blue is the lowest.  Since this is a flat map of a spherical object, sizes are distorted.  CLICK TO SEE DETAIL.

The time it will take a gravitational wave traveling at the speed of light to travel between the LIGO Hanford and Livingston observatories in seconds.  The black line is the circle on the sky the would produce a detection at both LIGOs at the same time.  CLICK TO SEE DETAIL.

Note that I said "narrow down".  Given 2 detectors and the detection time at each, we can start to triangulate possible sky locations of a gravitational wave to a circle on the sky that corresponds to the locations that could produce the observed difference in detection time (since we expect gravitational waves to travel at the speed of light, the maximum time it would take to travel between the 2 LIGO detectors is about 0.01 seconds).  With 3 detectors we can narrow the location to 2 points on the sky and with 4 or more we can find the 1 source.  Of course, if there was an optical event like a supernova on the 2-detector sky circle that for a gravitational wave detection at the same time, it would be probable that the optical event was also the source of the gravitational wave.

Another reason to have at least 2 detectors is eliminate the possibility that a local vibration is mistaken for a real gravitational wave.  LIGO is very sensitive to vibrations from our environment.  It is possible for a passing truck or a dropped hammer near the detector to make the mirrors inside vibrate in such a way that it "looks" like a gravitational wave.  In order to avoid making mistakes like this, we do not believe that anything is a gravitational wave unless we see the same signal in both detectors within the time it would take it to travel between detectors.  Therefore, we only consider a candidate detection if we see the same signal within +/- 0.01 seconds of when the signal is seen in one of the detectors.

Now, back to the original question:

Is there anything like LIGO outside of the USA?

There are several other gravitational wave interferometers in other countries.  The Virgo detector is located outside of Pisa, Italy, the GEO600 detector is located in Hannover, Germany, and the TAMA300 and the future KAGRA (formerly known as the LCGT) is located in Japan.  LIGO collaborates extensively with all of these detectors so that any time detectors are collecting data at the same time, that data is shared.  We also share technology so that all of the detectors are as sensitive as they can be.  The more observatories that see the same gravitational wave, the better we can localize it and the more we can know about it.

King Cakes, Elevators, and More Questions!

On King Cake...

One of the great things about living in Louisiana between between the Epiphany and Mardi Gras is a wonderful sweet called King Cake.  Before I moved here, I'd never heard of it (although I did see something about it on the Food Network shortly after I moved here).  If you've never heard of it, let me tell you a little about it.

King Cake (from Wikipedia)

First, King Cake isn't a cake at all.  It is more like a very large cinnamon roll.  Instead of cutting individual rolls from a log of dough swirled with cinnamon, the log is turned back onto itself to make a circle (anywhere from about a foot in diameter to as large as the baker can handle).  Once the "cake" is baked, it is covered with icing (anything from a doughnut glaze type of icing to a cream cheese icing) and then covered in colored sugar, usually in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, yellow, and green.  Inside (or underneath) the cake somewhere is a trinket, usually a plastic baby.  Whoever gets the baby gets some sort of priviledge (in Mardi Gras tradition, the person who got the baby literally was the king for whatever their Mardi Gras celebration was).

Here at LIGO, King Cakes can usually be found in our kitchens (there is a full kitchen in the main observatory building and a kitchenette in the building across the street that houses the Science Education Center and other things - like my office).  If you get the baby, you get to buy the next King Cake.  But I've been noticing that there has been a shortage of King Cake in the kitchenette in the building were my office is!  Where has all the King Cake gone?

AMBER'S DIABOLICAL PLAN FOR MORE KING CAKE...

I have come up with a plan to increase the King Cake near my office.  Over the years, I have collected my own little orphanage of plastic babies.  This one has been living in my desk for a long while now (I almost decapitated this little fella when I cut into his cake):

 

I plan on seeding the kitchenette with a King Cake and stuffing it full of babies!  Mwa-ha-ha!!!  Today, 1 King Cake...  Tomorrow, MANY King Cakes!!!


Well, since I am writing about it in by blog I'm not really going to do this, but it was a thought. ;)

On Elevators...

One of the questions I get from students visiting LIGO is, "Wow!  You must be a genius!"  Not hardly.  I wasn't always a good student and even once I was, I always had a struggle to be the good student I wanted to be.  My elevator story below proves my "not a genius" claim.

I got on the elevator this morning (they are painting the exterior stairs so they are temporarily off limits).  I have been in this elevator many times before, but today I stop and look at the control panel:

 

This elevator only goes between 2 floors and yet there is a button for each floor.  Wouldn't it make sense just to have a single button that took you to the "other" floor?  Really, if I am on the first floor and just entered the elevator, where else would I want to go.  While I am having these deep thoughts, the door closes and after about a minute or so I am standing there wondering why the elevator isn't moving.  It turns out that pushing any button is a good start but that was a mental leap I simply didn't make.  (Of course, I did eventually push 2 and it delivered me there directly.)  At least I was alone in a elevator so no one knows the depths my brilliance can plunge (except for you and I am sure you won't tell anyone, right?). 

More Questions Please! 

So, I am starting to run out of questions from you, my wonderful readers!  Please send me more!!!  (In the comments below or on Twitter to @livingligo.)  However, I have figured out a "sneaky" way to start digging up those questions you are wondering about but never asked.  You tend to Google them and you may end up on my site.  When this happens, the terms you Googled show up in my statistics for how people found my blog.  Here are some of the questions I have found this way:

• Is there anything like LIGO outside of the USA?  Answered on 17 February 2012
• Has LIGO seen anything yet?
• What does LIGO look like?  Answered on 15 March 2012

Starting next week, I will begin answering these questions (and the few that I have left over from the last time I made a call for questions).  Please ask me more!  If you are a teacher and you have students who may have questions, please have them ask (or you can for them).

I look forward to hearing from you!


UPDATE:

@Astroguyz asked:

• Where do you see gravity wave/astronomy & physics a decade from now? 
• Are there really Vegas odds on GW detection?  Answered on 23 February 2012

Science Summaries on ligo.org - FEEDBACK WELCOME!

A new initiative the LIGO Science Collaboration (LSC) is undertaking is composing science summaries of all of our newly published papers so that everyone can keep themselves up to date on what new science LIGO and her sister observatories produce.  Today's post gives you a look into my experience writing one of these summaries.

One unfortunate thing about science is that almost all publications are written for an audience of other experts in the field.  This allows us to communicate to one another in efficient terminology that is all but alien to non-experts.  Some research is so specialized that it can be difficult for experts in a related sub-specialty to understand papers without careful study.  However, most physical science research is funded through government agencies - that means with your tax payer dollars.  LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation (that's right kids, the same people who pay Elmo pay me!).  So, for the same reasons that I write this blog (to let everyone see inside of LIGO) the LSC is publishing these science summaries of recent publications.

There have been several already published (click on "science" and then on "science summaries"), but I wanted to talk about my experience writing one on the a paper titled "Implementation and testing of the first prompt search for gravitational wave transients with electromagnetic counterparts".  Of course, the title for the summary is a bit more succinct, "Optical, X-ray, and Radio Telescopes Seek Explosive Sources of Gravitational Waves".  This is that paper that outlines the development of the procedures and software needed to alert optical telescopes when we think LIGO may have seen a gravitational wave (I wrote about working on this in a previous blog post).

Before I started writing this summary, I re-read the paper.  Wow.  This paper wasn't too difficult to read because of jargon, but there were so many details that I thought were important (... of course I did!).  So I sat back and asked myself how I would explain this to my mother, who is a real estate appraiser and not an expert on what I do (even though she always smiles and nods when I ramble on about work).  What are the most important points I would want her to know?  The first is that we were successful in creating a system that would give us a good chance of imaging the source of a gravitational wave if we were to have a real detection.  The other was that we made partnerships with scientists who operate telescopes around the world (and they are just as excited to work with us as we were with them - but we don't talk about that in the paper).  After I determined these 2 major points, I made sure to detail the who, what, when, where, why, and how as well.  Then my draft went to the rest of the group who did the work described in this paper for their opinions.

I got many helpful comments from the project group.  There are so many small changes I was advised to make so that my prose would be better understood (I am sure my regular readers can tell me many ways that, if I just changed the way I said this or that, my blog would be improved).  Once everyone was comfortable with the summary draft, it then went to the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group in the collaboration for review.  This is where all of us who are interested in sharing LIGO's work with the public get together to plan events, etc.  The comments I got from this group had me doing some major reworking of the summary.  You see, I answered most of the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions in a few very long sentences right at the beginning.  Instead of this, it was suggested that I give a more introductory paragraph that established background instead of a flood of facts.  After these major revisions, my summary wasn't any longer and still contained all of the same information but in a much more digestible manner.

Now that the summary has been published, I am wondering what your thoughts are on it.  What could I have said better?  I've learned so much from my colleagues in writing this, but in the end, they are still experts that are just as biased as I am towards jargon.  I would love to learn from you!  Please feel free to leave comments below!

Q: How can gravitational waves help mankind?

UPDATE:  [11 Feb. 2015] Gravitational waves have been detected!  Read more about it here.

@HughScot asked:

What do you hope to discover about gravitational waves that will help mankind in the future?

There are many things that we hope to observe through gravitational waves especially since they have the advantage of being able to travel through matter and come out the other side unchanged, unlike the different forms of light used in traditional astronomy.  This gives us the opportunity to observe things that do not emit light, like black holes or to observe systems that would otherwise be obscured by intervening material.

But this question asks how gravitational waves will improve mankind in the future - as in what are the applications of gravitational waves.  I get this question often when I am giving tours of the facility.  Well, the primary use of gravitational wave observations will be to understand our Universe better.  Most people's reactions to this are that our efforts can better used for other endeavors.  But this view is a little short sighted.  One of the things we forget is that when we understand more about the Universe in general, we know more about the world around us.  We are a very small part of the Universe, but we are a part of it nonetheless.

One of the direct uses for gravitational waves will be to use them to turn the Universe into our own laboratory.  There are many things that we cannot replicate on Earth, like the dense cores of neutron stars.  Under extreme conditions like this, nuclear physics and thermodynamics can theoretically do some interesting things.  However, we can't investigate those directly because we cannot create these environments ourselves.  That's when we turn to the Universe for our laboratory!  Prime candidates that will allow us to use gravitational waves to investigate this include pairs of neutron stars merging into one star, starquakes on these stars, or even rapidly rotating neutron stars with "mountains" on them (and I put mountains in quotation marks because neutron starts are believed to be so perfectly spherical that a deformation a few millimeters [a quarter of an inch or so] is 'huge').  Knowing the details of how nuclear physics and thermodynamics changes in these environments can have applications on Earth, although I can't tell you what they are yet.

Another application of gravitational wave observations will be testing Einstein's general relativity.  Even though gravity is the force that holds the Universe together, we have a very difficult time testing it since it since it is also the weakest force in the Universe (there is no negative mass to cancel the effects of positive mass like happens between positive and negative charge).  Since the mass needed to conduct experiments to test general relativity is so great, lab experiments are very few.  Again, we must turn to the Universe to be our lab.  Directly observing gravitational waves with LIGO and detectors like it will allow us to perform tests on general relativity that we have never been able to before.  For example, it is expected that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light but there really isn't anything in the theory that constrains them to that speed (they could travel slower).  Detecting gravitational waves with multiple detectors across the planet and observing light from the same source in the sky would allow us to test this.  (By the way, even though general relativity is difficult to test, every time it has been tested it has proven to be right!)

We already use an application of general relativity in our everyday lives: a consequence of special and general relativity is that time passes a different rates based on the speed of an observer or the strength of the gravitational field that the observer is in.  No matter what, your time will always be the same, but you may observe the clocks of others who are at rest or traveling slower than you ticking slower than yours (this tutorial does an excellent job of explaining how this time dilation works).  If corrections for this effect are not taken into account, the clocks on GPS satellites would quickly become out of sync and the GPS in you car, etc. would not be able to accurately locate you!

Besides the benefit to mankind due to the information the gravitational waves themselves will bring us, we have also developed a significant amount of new technology to make LIGO work.  We have developed new seismic isolation techniques that allow less than 1 billionth the energy of normal ground vibration into our instruments, we have required and received the most precisely polished mirrors, and we have developed new suspension and control systems to stabilize our optics.  These are just a few of the advancements the search for gravitational waves have made.  I am sure that there are many other applications for these new developments (although I haven't explored them myself).  Using technology developed for other purposes is a well known phenomenon in science and technology call spin-off technology.

In conclusion, we will never be able to commercialize or weaponize gravitational waves themselves.  However, they will carry information to us about some of the most extreme environments in the Universe which we can use as a laboratory for environments we cannot create here on Earth.  This information can tell us more about how the physics around us works in subtle ways that can have profound implications.  What those are are yet to be seen.  That's the exciting thing about science - you never really know the full potential of new discoveries until after the fact.

Today's picture is of an engineer (my husband Derek Bridges) dressed in clean room garb (so as not to contaminate the equipment that will be placed into LIGO's interior vacuum).  The blue stands he is leaning on are part of the seismic isolation system mentioned in the text above and the big steel chamber behind him is one of the many used to contain LIGO instrumentation in its vacuum.  This picture was taken at the Advanced LIGO testing lab at MIT.

I hope this answered your question!  If not, please feel free to ask me more about this or anything else!

First Software Engineering Run for Advanced LIGO

Most of the visible work on Advanced LIGO has been revolving around the installation of new instruments that are needed to increase the sensitivity of LIGO about 10 fold.  While this is exciting, it can feel a little like being on the outside looking in for data analysts like myself.  But there is still much to prepare for!

The first step in that preparation starts in a few days with the first Software Engineering Run (which we abbreviate ER1 - there's longish, boring story on why it isn't being called SE1).  The goal of this is to start testing our computing infrastructure and data analysis methods with simulated data (remember, Advanced LIGO is still not complete).  For this first run, we will be simulating the channels of data that would contain information about a gravitational wave.

But what is a channel?  Just like channels on a TV, LIGO has many different data streams called channels that report on basically everything involving the instrument.  Besides the channel that will carry information about gravitational waves, we also have channels of data from seismometers that tell us how the ground is moving beneath us, channels from microphones placed around the detector that tell us about loud noises like thunder that can cause vibrations in the detector, and channels that tell us how different places on a mirror inside of LIGO is moving (and we can combine channels like this to tell if the mirror is moving up, down, sideways, front to back, rolling, etc.).  This is just the beginning of the channels we record at LIGO (there are hundreds per detector)!  We use these to cancel out unwanted movement and to double check if a potential gravitation wave is real or caused by vibrations in our environment (we would be less likely to claim a detection around the time that our seismometers indicate a train moving on the tracks a few miles away from the detector here in Louisiana).

So, we are starting out small with ER1 and focusing on just the gravitational wave channels (with simulated gravitational waves included to give the detection software a workout).  In the future, more of the Advanced LIGO channels will be simulated and included in the run.  We plan on having about 5 or 6 of these runs until Advanced LIGO is ready to give us all of the channels for real.  But, the transition from Software Engineering Run to Engineering Run should be seamless.  Engineering Runs precede Science Runs to allow us to work out any bugs in the real detector before we start using the data for science purposes - but data from engineering runs is handled like it would be if it were science data.  As more subsystems in LIGO are installed and producing data, the simulated data for those channels will be replaced with real data.  The only difference between the last Software Engineering Run and an Engineering Run will be that none of the data is simulated anymore.

It is anticipated that, by having these ER runs, that the computational infrastructure for Advanced LIGO will be ready to handle the new demands of the more sensitive detector.  We are entering a new era in LIGO where detections will be expected on a fairly regular basis (once the detector has been tuned into its design sensitivity).  We need to be able to respond quickly to potential detections to alert others in the astronomical community and for us to vet the detection in a time efficient way.  We want to be able to clear detections off of the table, so to speak, before others become backlogged.  Honestly, I am excited at the prospect of this since I have worked with LIGO since it took its first science data and I remember collaboration meetings being focused on how to make the data clean enough that we could see more than just instrumental artifacts or environmental contaminants.  Now I'm thinking about backlogged detections!

LIGO has several supercomputer clusters and one of them is located right here at the LIGO Livingston Observatory.  So, I went downstairs (from my office) and took a few pictures of our cluster today:

Above is a picture of the computers facing the front of the room.  Since these computers produce a large amount of heat and noise, they are isolated in their own room which also allows for the efficient use of extra air conditioning (and noise containment).  This is an odd room to be in because of the noise but also because of strong air currents moving the heat around.  The wind is noticeable and it can change quickly between a warm breeze to a cold one as you walk.

This is a close look at the computers in the racks (as we call the large rectangular container).  Each one of the horizontal shelves is a computer.  Many computers are used simultaneously to search LIGO data for gravitational waves.

This is the back of the rack shown in the previous picture.  If you are ever chilly, this is the place to stand since the heat pushed through the fans from the computers is dumped here.

Broken New Year's Resolution and Priorities for 2012

I really do know better than to make New Year's resolutions.  Truly.  But there is one thing that I want to do more of and that is to make more blog posts.  I've noticed that it is easiest for me to make posts on Thursdays so I resolved to post weekly on Thursday.

Then last Thursday happened...

I woke up with the most painful migraine I've had (at least in recent memory).  I felt like my head was going to explode all morning and early afternoon and when I finally took the correct meds (when you are alone and trying to keep your brains in your skull, you tend to lose a lot of common sense) and felt better, but not well, I was thoroughly exhausted.  I think I was asleep more hours than I was awake that day.  Between that and the fact that I had to write a last-minute abstract to present some new LIGO results at the upcoming APS April Meeting, my blog post never happened.

But, today is a new Thursday and the first new blog post of the year!

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday season.  I didn't murder any family members so I'm counting mine in the win column (I'm kidding - I would never harm my family!).

So, what have I been doing as a LIGO scientist this year?

1. I've had a few projects in the works that I am trying to wrap up and complete (I love starting new and exciting projects and documenting completed computer programs is not exciting to me).  One of the things that has been simmering for a long while now is a survey of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration to assess the members' feelings on its diversity and climate (working environment).  I created and administered a similar survey just for us who work at the LIGO Lab (I am on the LIGO Lab Diversity Committee).  The point of surveys like these are to identify areas that can be improved to make everyone's working experience better and to find out what we are going right.  This survey is in a fairly-mature format and should be ready to release in the coming weeks.
2. There is a paper I have half written on multi-messenger astronomy and LIGO that I am targeting to  publish in The Physics Teacher.  This has been half done for a while now because other life issues have gotten in the way.  Notably, work and making an application to move up the career ladder and secure myself something more permanent (all postdoctoral positions are temporary like medical residencies - I talk about this a little in my post about "Becoming a Physicist").  This is high on my list of priorities for the near future. 
3. There is a new initiative in LIGO to write outreach abstracts (summaries) of the scientific papers we publish (like this one).  The papers themselves are almost always on the arXiv server (I can think of only 1 exception) and anyone can read these for free.  That is all well and good, but these papers are meant to be read by other experts and are horrible to wade through for someone who doesn't do that sort of thing for a living.  We are trying to make our results more accessible to everyone and these abstracts are written so that everyone can know what science we are doing.  I've been working on the outreach abstract for the paper discussing the methods employed to rapidly alert telescopes to search for possible optical counterparts to gravitational wave detections (this is the link to the scientific paper).  I've talked about working on this project before here.  When this abstract goes live, I will write more about it and discuss the other abstracts that have been written.
4. There are also numerable data analysis and software simulation projects that need to be further developed, but I won't go into those here (if you really want me to, let me know in the comments - I may tell you about it later anyway even if you don't).
5. I also still work extensively with the Science Education Center here at Livingston.  Yesterday, I traveled to a elementary school in Amite, LA to talk to about 120 kindergarteners over the course of the day.  Besides the fact that they were adorable and very interested, I had the cutest ambush of my life - a 20 little kid group hug! :)  And only a few of them where taller than my hips.  Little things like this (besides getting to discover new things about the Universe) is what truly makes my job amazing!
6. Finally, I have only a few questions left to answer from my previous call for questions!  These will be answered in the coming weeks.  If you have anything you would like to know about, let me know.  Also, I was thinking about having guest blogs from other LIGO scientists, engineers, etc.  Is that something you would be interested in?  (My husband is an engineer at LIGO Livingston with me, so I have one person that I can probably bribe into doing this.)  There are many different specialties here so this may be interesting.  Let me know!

Hope to hear from you soon!

~~~

Today's picture comes from my office and its new vampy inhabitants:

From left to right: Vampire Julius from Paul Frank, Count Chocula from the cereal of the same name, and The Count from Sesame Street

You may remember from previous posts that not only do I have a nearly unhealthy love for vampire books, but I also have a collection of stuffed undead (do NOT call them dolls).  Here is a previously posted picture of my office with a few of the figures in the background:

And another of my name tag covered light (which really doesn't function so well as a light since I've added even more tags) with a few other figures: