Greetings from Palmia Observatory,
Well, it's been a while since we last made a blog post. I guess I'm just losing energy and have a tougher time deciding to blog about any ongoing activity. I've made 559 posts over the past 10 years and this Physicist Wannabe is just getting tired.
The APS combined March/April meeting was held at the Anaheim Convention Center, March 16-21. I'm more of an April meeting person rather than March but having both meetings collocated and local was great.
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| APS Global Physics Summit in Anaheim (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
So, I picked up my badge and got ready to begin searching for appropriate sessions.
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| Resident Astronomer picks up his badge (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
This first session that I stumbled into reminded me of just how much I had already forgotten. In fact, I mentioned to fellow attendee, Math Whiz, Dave, that the signer made as much sense to me as the equations on the screen.
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| One session where the signer was as understandable as the slide (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
So, with my brain bruised and melting it was time to retire to the Marriott Hotel bar for a martini break. I do appreciate combining physics with martinis.
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| Taking a martini break for my exhausted brain (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
I sort of remembered some of the physics involved but decided I had better breakout one of my physics textbooks and look up some of the forgotten topics. This text by Paul Frampton was one of the best.
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| Gauge Theory Textbook (Source: Gauge Field Theories, Paul Frampton) |
But, when I opened up the text and just got to page 2, I realized I was in more trouble than I thought. I was even going to have to start and review this beginning section material too.
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| Just starting at page 2 is hard enough for me (Source: Gauge Field Theories, Paul Frampton) |
Anyway, I had to cut my attendance there short because all of the walking between sessions had inflamed my hip and I really couldn't keep walking.
A couple of weeks later I recovered enough and I finally had enough energy to attend the 41st Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting (PCGM) which was held this year at Cal State Fullerton, April 4-5. Previously I had promised to never attend another PCGM because they are just getting too hard for me to follow anymore. But the last time I was at CSUF was about 30 years ago when I earned an MBA there.
So here is the first photo of the session as it was just getting started.
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| Beginning slide for the PCGM at CSUF (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
One topic that was of special interest to me was whether current accelerometer technology was sensitive enough to detect and measure the gravitational acceleration between Andromeda and the Milky Way. Now we know that the two galaxies are on a collision course as indicated by their measured velocities, but what is their gravitational attraction just based on their mass and distance separation? This web page shows the current estimate to be 1.9 x 10^-13 meters/sec^2.
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| Estimate of gravitation attraction between Andromeda and Milky Way (Source: phys.libre.org) |
This May 2024 paper shows one estimate of current sensitivity of quantum accelerometers. So we see that the capability to measure the acceleration in the laboratory falls short by at least a factor of 100.
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| Current sensitivity for quantum accelerometers (Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.11259) |
Until next time,
Resident Astronomer George
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