The most ridiculous part about this, is that this will almost certainly be up days into June and I will look like a fool. Welcome to the summer.

In 1961 the Buhl Foundation established by the power of money the Buhl Chair in Theoretical Physics at Carnegie Mellon. The Buhl Chair, Dr. Fred Gilman, likely does many interesting things, but the only one I know of, is his responsibility to invite a scientist to the Mellon Institute each year to talk about physics.

This generally highly publicized event is the single physics lecture I go to each year, and is always quite enjoyable. For information on the Buhl Chair, and past speakers you can check their website, here which hasn’t been updated since 2005.

This year’s Buhl lecture was extra-exciting (seriously) as earlier that afternoon the Bruce & Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology was announced at Carnegie Mellon. This new center, made possibly by the McWilliams, “will strive to unravel the mysteries of the universe.” While this sounds like quite a hard task, they are going to do it multidisciplinarily and so it is hot.

So in continuing the cosmological astro-physics trend, the Buhl Lecture for 2008 was given by Joel Primack and called “A Brief History of Dark Matter.”

Short notes here (long notes, to come):

A Brief History of Dark Matter

Joel Primack, University of California at Santa Cruz

Part I – History.

Fritz Zwicky is the beginning. Described by Primack as “one of the most profound and annoying astronomers of the 20th century,” this man, while studying the Coma Cluster in 1933 realized something was erm… strange. Without getting too much into real physics, Zwicky calculated the mass of the whole Coma cluster, based on how fast the edge galaxies in the cluster were spinning. He also calculated how much mass should be in the cluster based on the number of galaxies and the amount of light reaching us here on Earth. The numbers didn’t match.

So, let’s say we are hanging out, adding up masses of galaxies 100 Mega-parsecs, which means the light we are looking at is 326 million years old, which is around the time the Appalachian Mountains were formed (i.e. no people hanging out). And as we are hanging out looking at this really old light we realize the masses of the Coma Cluster aren’t adding up. We need to brainstorm some solutions for why this could be the case.

Conveniently, Zwicky has done this in his paper. As summarized by Michael Richmond Zwicky discuss four possibilities:

1. Stars in the Coma Cluster are different from stars in the Milky Way (which is where we had nearly all our information about masses and light emitted back in 1933).
2. The Coma Cluster is not in equilibrium
3. The laws of physics are different in the Coma Cluster!
4. The Coma Cluster has lots of mass which is not part of the stars

And this is Dark Matter. Of course, Zwicky did not call it that, but that is what he is getting at, lots and lots of mass (more than ten times that which the stars account for) which we cannot see.

Alright, but as discussed Zwicky is sort of a hassle and this wasn’t much to go on, so we can basically leave his work as open question, and move on. Also, I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find a digital version of Zwicky’s 1933 paper, which doesn’t seem to be online. Hint: it was published in 1933 in Helvetica Physica acta – if you do procure this, e-mail me.

So then, some 40 years later, Vera Rubin was also hanging out measuring masses and speeds of galaxies and stars. (This is what astronomers do, have you noticed?) Vera measured the speeds of stars near the center and also at the far reaches of spiral galaxies and found something very counterintuitive, which was the stars near the ends of the spiral arms were moving very fast. Just as fast as those closer to the center. However, the gravity out at the edges should have been much weaker than that near center, which means the galaxy should not have been able to hold in those fast moving edge stars and they should have been sped away from the spiral galaxies.

But if the gravity out at the edges was similar to the gravity much closer to the center of the galaxy then Vera decided their must be much more mass throughout the galaxy than could be seen. And by the early 80s the community was convinced, there was a lot of mass in the universe that we simply could not see.

So theoretical physicists jump in, to what is a new and interesting and open question. Questions like: What is dark matter made of (on a particle level)? How fast does it move? Where can it be found? How can we detect it?

Now unfortunately, I must be a bit critical here. Primack is one of the scientists behind the theory of Cold Dark Matter, so when discussing the other proposals for explaining this lack of mass he … brushes them aside faster than he possibly should. However at this point Cold Dark Matter (CDM) – and the Lambda-CDM model does seem to be the leading candidate for the explanation of dark matter.

Now, to explain the last thirty years of work in this field in a paragraph, physicists came up with possible explanations for the type of particles that could possibly make up the dark matter. CDM calls for matter that we can’t see, but isn’t much more specific than that. One possibility could be matter that does not interact with normal matter, except through gravity, possibly some sort of very heavy particle that is similar to a neutrino. Or there could be an abundance of large objects of normal matter that just emits very little (or no) radiation, however this seems unlikely. Simulations tend to favor the first idea, lots of heavy particles that we can’t see. Other proposals involve modifying newtonian dynamics to account for the mass, and revising our definitions of gravity but people don’t seem to like these.

Part II – Pretty.

Primack then moved on to lighter material. Explaining how as you travel further away from us you can see galaxies that look different, as they are younger, he showed images taken from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. He additionally showed a video of the Millennium Simulation by the Max-Planck Institute. This is a 10 billion particle simulation that attempts to show the possible dark matter distribution in the universe, and gives some sense of scale.

Primack also gave the quick numbers that everyone wants to hear. How much of the universe is dark matter? His current estimates put Cold Dark Matter at 25% and Dark Energy at 70% (note again bias towards the CDM model). He also has an interesting representation of that, which I will re-post here:

© Joel Primack & Nancy Ellen Abrams

(And further I will ignore any sort of distortion given to the percentages by the choice of visualization by cartoon pyramid.)

Videos shown:

• Hubble Ultra Deep Zoom-In (credit – Hubble) – quicktime – 29MB
• Millenium Simulation – Long Version (which is pretty boring) – youtube

Part III – What’s Next.

As Primack believes CDM has nailed it, what is left is actually finding experimental evidence of dark matter – and he thinks this will be done by 2010. He suggests ways this might occur.

• We could produce dark matter. The Large Hadron Collider could possibly produce micro black holes, super symmetric particles, or other particles which could be candidates for dark matter particles. Experiments should begin at the LHC in June 2008.
• We could infer dark matter’s existence through the use of the Planck Surveyor, a cute little satellite, who among other things plans to go find lots of gravitational lensing. It should launch on Halloween this year. (it is really a cat dressed up as a satellite)
• According to NASA’s description of GLAST, The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope – it will: “Search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious Dark Matter.” Yes that is right we will determine dark matter with “new laws of physics.” Look forward to that on May 16th, 2008.
• We could also directly detect dark matter using my third favorite noble gas, Xenon! Yes the Large Underground Xenon Detector is an experiment where you put a bunch of Xenon in a cave deep underground and then wait. and hope. and maybe they even pray, for some dark matter particle to crash into the Xenon. So far, nothing, but they keep using more Xenon, so maybe they will get there soon. New results coming this fall.

Conclusion

Within the next two years we might find evidence of dark matter, any sort of material that is invisible on the electromagnetic spectrum, or we may not. Each of the experiments above may turn up nothing and we may be left having to admit that it is possible we have framed the problem incorrectly. As this New York Times article explains dark matter is a practical necessity to make the current theories work.

To give a single example, our understanding (or lack thereof) of gravity has always been a bit of a problem for physicists, it doesn’t quite mesh with quantum mechanics and relativity, and it may not work as we expect when we begin to probe the depths of our universe – and thus may have introduced such a concept as dark matter/energy to fill a void that was only imagined.

But this is how science works, we design tests for the hypotheses that we have, and if these fail we create new hypotheses and new tests. So, now we non-physicists wait for one of these experiments to result in actual experimental evidence for dark matter. Remember to check back in two years to see if Primack was on his game and we are a few steps closer to figuring out what roughly 22% (and more likely 96%) of the universe actually is composed of.

If in the meantime you need some light and physicsy reading material you can check out Primack’s book (co-written with Nancy Ellen Abrams), The View from the Center of the Universe which I have not read and therefore will not comment on the quality of the writing or science within.

So. Happy Spring Carnival. The Roots played today on campus and I don’t really listen to that kind of music. But i spent hours and hours outside today, talking with Aaron (happy birthday!) and watching people with Marissa, and then enjoying the concert atmosphere with Kristen & Liz so that was cool. It is just a great time of year. I posted photos from random things this spring that had not yet been posted yet here and the ones from today are all taken with my new lens – just a cheap little Canon 50mm, which I keep trying to zoom, but there is no zoom, so my fingers just spin around the lens with nothing to do but fail.

This photograph is not actually a still from the movie but is a photograph by Seamus Murphy who documented the making of the movie – read more about that here and see the rest of his pictures. Super interesting article about how much of this was filmed in Palestine and the environment wasn’t exactly friendly.

Now, I was sort of exhausted while watching this movie and had some issues getting through the first third totally … err, awake. But then I think it picked up or I found some reserve energy, and I did enjoy this. It is a very artful take on suicide bombing, while at the same time goes through pains to make it as truthful to the process as possible.

Today John McCain gave what I am told is a very important speech laying out his full economic policy with details that I guess up until this point he neglected to mention. At least the New York Times and a bunch of other media outlets seem to think so.

Interestingly this talk was at Carnegie Mellon, which means I was sitting in the third row (see picture taken by my iPhone – it was a mistake not to take a real camera) and I got pretty bored. It might be that I just can’t bring myself to care much about politics at the national level. It might be that as he spoke I could read ahead of him on the teleprompter.

It is likely the best part of the experience was being able to represent the Graduate Student Assembly at the greeting before he went on stage. He came in quickly, shook all our hands and seemed ready to move on before President Cohon slowed him down and brought him back around to introduce each of us. He seemed very lively, very human, and very much ready to get out there and speak. Also his mannerisms seem very similar to a certain president who is currently holding office, which I found a bit jarring.

Soon (once I get a copy of it) I will post the picture of the students posing with him from whoever all those people were with the cameras, but for now I can hold on, excited for an even more spectacular person who will be speaking at Carnegie Mellon: Al Gore (at commencement, May 18th).

The website “glitch” is over.
Also, I have a confession to make – it wasn’t a real glitch! Nothing was even broken, I was just hiding the website from you because I wanted to make it whiter. You know?

Alright, so here is a simple white version of the website. It is kinda boring and I am not done, but you see I told you there would be a post everyday in April, and now you can actually read them. So, do that.

I was just thinking, hey maybe a visualization of data on a hard disk would be nice after learning of a bit of a RAID issue that may have occurred with someone’s disks. So then I wondered what these different disk patterns would look like, different configurations of RAID, different volume formats, drobo likely has some crazy pattern. Though when I pictured them, all I could think of was Disk Defragmenter.

And as I installed Vista on the new desktop, I thought I would get Mr. Defrag up and running. Which is when I found this:

Vista Defragmenter seems to have taken all the fun (and intelligence, and usefulness) out of XP Defragmenter. Not only have they taken away the ability to see actual block use on the disk in a visual way, they have also taken away any sort of user control, including the ability to specify which drives it defrags (it seems to do them all).

Worst of all they even dumbed down the progress meter, which is now (as shown) a spinning circle, and a comment saying “This may take from a few minutes to a few hours.” No sense of progress is shown at all, which is weird because Windows loves progress bars that are horribly inaccurate (the installation progress bar for XP strikes me as the best example of awful) and Disk Defragmenter is a place they can acheive perfect accuracy, at least with percentage complete (if not time), and they give the user … nothing. How Microsoft.

Getting their act together, they pulled together a second half which is respectable and sends some people back off in the right directions. Sure there is more awkward bickering between Starbuck & Adama, Adama & Roslin, Roslin & Starbuck (and seriously did anyone actually think that either of them were going to shoot the other?), really Starbuck & everyone, and then of course between the cylons, the real ones. Then we also have our human-variant cylons who are still hanging out and having meetings (anyone notice that cylons absolutely love meetings).

But the coolest parts of this episode (as is seemingly more and more often the case) take place away from humanity. The internal cylon struggles are just more interesting, debates on cruelty to lesser species, removing and adding sentience, and some sort of crazy voting structure that … I haven’t yet figured out. So the future here looks bright, and maybe just maybe I can start hoping they will un-box Xena.

Microsoft, while I might rag on them, does occasionally put together good or at least interesting work. One example of this is a document created by Microsoft Research called Being Human (download here)   Being Human is the final report based on a forum Microsoft Research hosted a year ago on what HCI (Human Computer Interaction) would be like in the year 2020. The report came out April 2nd, 2008 and has four parts, a brief history, a categorization of how HCI is changing, how the field should move forward, and recommendations for how the field should change.

I will only focus on the second part of the report today, as the history of computing and interaction with computing is pretty silly and not that interesting. Part 2, titled “Transformations in Interaction” deals with five main changes and I will mention each one (long post!) by their deep and frequently foreboding names.

The End of Interface Stability

We can no longer tell if the computers are touching us or we are touching them.

This, one of their better points, strikes close to home as it firmly deals with issues of privacy. Ubiquitous computing is meant to lead to people interacting with thousands of computers by 2020, and while this seems ridiculous, it is only ridiculous for traditional definitions of computer. We can start to take into account intelligent surveillance cameras, RFID readers and tags in our clothing, groceries, physical access devices, cell phones, vending machines, cars, parking meters, music devices, our shoes, our glasses, our jewelry, let alone traditional computers. And the further we push towards injecting technology into our bodies and having better remote sensing capabilities, the more we lose the once clearly defined interface of keyboard, monitor, mouse. Now our fingertips, our movements, our heartbeat, our glances all become inputs to the myriad computers in the room. And better, they all communicate. The question is how much control do we want, should we have, will we be given?

The Growth of Techno-Dependency

You can’t go back.

While I suppose this is in some ways a change, “technology” as a scary pervasive force has been pretty constant for a good two hundred years. And while there are some interesting policy questions brought up here, like what will happen when computers take over all the human jobs, the implications for HCI here seem to be less about developing new technologies, but more on mitigating the damage caused by the crazy-evil robots. (I exaggerate, but when asked “As society grows ever dependent on technology and the interaction underpinning this, who is accountable?” I laugh as if the answer should be: the scientist should never have given us these powers.)

The Growth of Hyper-Connectivity

I am alone in a crowded room, only if the wifi goes down.

My laptop has had a bit of an issue for about three months now, both of the fans have died. This means I simply cannot run certain programs (EVE, Aperture – for very long), and my computer consistently runs at 70degC – CPU temp. But while it is still under warranty that would involve shipping it off to Apple for a week, and I can’t allow that. I need to be with my laptop all the time, because it is connecting me socially to friends around the world, to news, to the tasks and communications that form my workplace, as well as to my source of all media, my photo archives, my music library, my Netflix subscription. Physical boundaries disappear, new social relationships are formed, and it seriously is HCI that is shaping this.

How do you design for global interaction between different languages, cultures, customs, time zones? How do you prove that I am who I say I am when I hide behind my avatar? How do I maintain thousands of digital links but still keep them personal? How long before online dating is seen not only as socially acceptable, but the obvious choice? And seriously, when can all of my friends be digital?

I think twitter has to be the current best example of hyper-connectivity, I read it through a specialized application, but can check it through the web, it ims me my friend’s messages, txts me direct messages. It is on my computer, on the web, on my phone. On my road trip through the middle of nowhere (the central USA) twitter was our reliable source of communication.

The End of the Ephemeral

I thought it was fleeting, but you remembered!

Buckminster Fuller supposedly had the most documented life in the history of history, he wrote down what he was doing every fifteen minutes, for about seventy years. However fifteen minutes is now entire lifetimes of data. Much of what I covered above in the end of interface stability is recorded, and the point here is that the data now exists.

Research I have been working on involves allowing your friends to query your location through a system we have been working on at Carnegie Mellon by the name of PeopleFinder. While it allows my friends to request my current location, one of the side effects of this, is we have a server which is accepting our users locations every minute. Thus as I move around with my phone or laptop running our application, I am building up a relatively precise history of my location. Through twitter, aim logs, blog posts, Facebook statuses, my web history, I add semantic information to these locations. In 2020, with the addition of more RFID readers, more cameras, more sensors, this history becomes even more powerful. Aggregate it all and my whole life story is there, stored on disk, and it is likely I can’t erase it.

The Growth of Creative Engagement

We are all designers, writers, journalists, curators, creators.

My favorite of the changes is this, the intellectual and artistic power that computing has given to every person who touches these technologies. And while sure this has its downsides, reading every Livejournal is a bad idea, listening to every bad techno remix made by a thirteen year old with garageband and some angst is torture, and not everyone is cut out to design a poster, the potential is huge.

Take the huge success of YouTube, millions(?) of actors, directors, scriptwriters, who would never have been able to have an audience or create a film before they could pick up a Flip and post their video five minutes later. And this is a place for HCI researchers to shine: designing tools that people want to use that allow them to access their potential to create. Designing tools that allow scientists to produce science, and the computer can take care of the processing. And speaking of processing giving artists enough tools that they truly hold the creativity and a single suite does not drive the direction of art.

We are just now nearing the precipice of creativity as a species, where more people than ever are taking part in using their ability to think as a way to make something new, something interesting, to discover something yet unknown, to write something not ever dreamt of, and technology needs to support that.

Summary

There are five main ways in which our interactions with computers will be transformed as we approach 2020. How we define and think about our relationships with computers is radically changing. How we use them and rely on them is also being transformed. At the same time, we are becoming hyper-connected and our actions, conversations and interactions are being increasingly etched into our digital landscapes. There is more scope than ever before to solve hard problems and allow new forms of engagement and creativity.

And that is where Microsoft leaves us with the changing aspects of computing. The points raised are interesting and relevant for anyone designing software, designing experience, or contributing to the internet in any way. Together we can be aware of where we are going, you know – post web 2.0.

Let us now take an easy definition for Emergency like say: a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action. Good. Now, it turns out the Art Store on Craig Street has suddenly started a clearance sale and urgently wants all of us to immediately come buy their products which may be (up to) 75% off!

Walking past the other day a mutual acquaintance of you, fair reader, and myself, asked: Are they going out of business? To which my answer was – no no, they have had giant signs up since the day I arrived in Pittsburgh (two years ago), however things have only become an emergency as of the last few weeks. How unexpected.

I had a lot more hope for this movie than I should have. I guess Caro & Jeunet are allowed to mess up sometimes. But seriously, this is just really, average – or it just hasn’t held up for thirteen years – I am glad that I watched it on a whim or I would have seriously been disappointed.

I have never wanted the nice weather to come back this much. I don’t know what happened to me, if it was the warmth from traveling last summer, especially just spending so much time out in the sun in the badlands and cheyenne and albuquerque, and white sands, or if this winter was particularly cold but I find myself really feeling deprived of the light of our local star.

Pittsburgh is just starting to get nice out though and so Kristen and I had our first outdoor dinner of the spring/summer tonight at Murray Avenue Grill and it was real great. I am excited for summer, warmth, sun.

This movie is rated NC-17. You can tell that because her awesome 40s style dress (I love those) is all pulled up and you can see skin. I like this movie though, even with the basically excessive sex. I mean, it has Tony Leung and he is really good at poignantly looking at people … so how can you go wrong with that?

Also it turns out I might like Ang Lee, which maybe I should have realized sooner but it has thus been decreed that I must go back and watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Hulk both of which I have not seen!

Also I liked this article however I really don’t think Lust, Caution has saved the curse of NC-17.

æther, aether, ether

1398, from L. æther “the upper pure, bright air,” from Gk. aither “upper air,” from aithein “to burn, shine,” from I.E. base *aidh- “to burn” (cf. Skt. inddhe “burst into flames,” O.Ir. aed “fire,” L. aedes, see edify).

In ancient cosmology, the element that filled all space beyond the sphere of the moon, constituting the substance of the stars and planets. Conceived of as a purer form of fire or air, or as a fifth element.

From 17c.-19c., it was the scientific word for an assumed “frame of reference” for forces in the universe, perhaps without material properties. The concept was shaken by the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887) and discarded after the Theory of Relativity won acceptance, but before it went it gave rise to the colloquial use of ether for “the radio” (1899).

[online etymology dictionary]

Intelligent commentary on Battlestar episodes could be a challenge. One that I am ready to fail at. However so that I can actually use things like specific events and proper nouns these posts are going to be absolutely full of spoilers. So if you don’t want to know, just don’t read it.

I have a really hard time with this episode, the first standard ep. of the season (the internet unanimously seems to be calling Razor, episodes 1 & 2 of season four), and most of my dislike for it spans from an … interesting decision at the end of last season, which I will bet had less to do with where they wanted the series to go, and more to do with coming up with something really surprising for a season finale.

Two things I want to talk about from this episode, which I think should quietly disappear as not-so-relevant and one of those episodes where everyone talks a lot and then we all immediately forget it.

1. The new intro: Twelve cylon models, seven are known, four live in secret, one will be revealed. So this seems incredibly short term to me, as I find it hard to believe that only one of them is going to be revealed all season (won’t they all be?), so are they going to change this halfway through the season (yes). And even past that, this used to summarize what the series was about, cylons rising up and fighting back. I do think the whole show has become too focused on who the cylons are, who are the final five, who is the missing one, blah blah blah, and lost sight of the interesting questions about what it means to be cylon or human?
2. And more important, yet related, now that they have revealed these four cylons whom are living in secret, does it not seem like every single character on the show is a cylon? It should – because they all are. Thus ridiculous scenes can be created with cylons looming in the back of every shot, since … well humans are in short supply. We will now joke that Adama & Adama can just walk around saying “Good thing there isn’t a cylon in the room” at which point the camera can zoom to, well basically anyone for … umm tension?

I have decided that I do not write enough about my work on my blog. This is a semi-complicated issue, because as with most work, other people also hold stake in it, and it is good to keep certain things close to the chest – even in research there is competition! However, these are just excuses I make for being lazy, and with all good problems once the conditions and limitations are defined there are good solutions.

So, starting next Friday, I will begin posting once a week on topics at least related to Computer Science, Design, User Experience, Privacy, Human Computer Interaction generally, or at least something some what science-related and interesting, and occasionally,

So … look forward to that! (up first a Microsoft Report on the future of HCI)

Tomorrow at 10pm is the fourth, and possibly maybe, probably (love?) last season premier for Battlestar Galactica. Considering the first three-episode sequence that made up last season’s premier is likely the best television I have ever watched (yes, well – I don’t watch much – really any, television) I should be looking forward to tomorrow evening.

Yet, I look on warily. The end of season three made me really angry (mostly with the writers/producers) and they have some work to do if they are planning to win me back. I don’t want to get into the specifics of that, as it could include spoilers for people who are not completely with it – and I am still willing to entertain the possibility that over the next twenty episodes they can make me come to agree with the direction of that which has happened.

But since depending on who you believe (and when you believe them) this is the end of the road, I will watch it through to that end – I owe it that much in loyalty points. And even if the end is all bad electronica covers, earth-addicted toasters, and a numbers game … I could always drown myself in fan fiction.

ha.

Again a movie I thought was meant to be horrible. But it wasn’t so bad. I mean SURE the original had French people going to Thailand, and this is stupid Americans going to Japan. But we love Japan right? Japan is sooo cool. It had to be there. But if you can get past that, and the fact that Pacey will always be Pacey and never anyone else, this movie is not completely horrible. Plus Pacey could have grown up and become a photographer. Also I like Rachel Dawson. Also it wasn’t really scary.

Yes. Seriously.

So many things are going to happen. It might be the busiest month ever. I might actually get caught up to date on movies. The site is probably going to switch to black on white. It might even switch over to Wordpress, alright, I won’t go that far, but I do really like the re-designed admin. I might get a lot of really good work & research & projects & art & reading done. I will post everyday.

And with that, I leave you tonight with patrickgage.com/o/ or oh-slash, as it were.

The real question: Why have I not seen this movie till now (or, last weekend as it were)? Where were my friends who should have been saying, Patrick – don’t you want to see Gattaca? Where was Netflix, telling me that I had missed a movie which is full of actors and actresses I like, has an interesting sci-fi plot, is well written, and pretty to watch? Where were all of you?

So yes, I enjoyed Gattaca, and if you like Uma Thurman or Jude Law (or even Ethan Hawke, though I wasn’t sure I liked him till now I suppose) or if you need a good science fictiony movie where they can print out your entire genetic code on a piece of paper only eight feet long, or you are just bored, you should likely spend some time with Gattaca.

For those of you who like complaints or possibly want to hate this movie, I will now provide two possible reasons:

1. I personally can’t stand movies where the entire set-up leads you to believe something bad must happen and you must sit in constant foreshadowed terror for the inevitable. And they did this a whole lot.
2. Whenever there is a mystery, and there is a slight keyboard to the head bashing mystery going on, you need a bunch of possible characters who could have committed it. This movie only has one. Right, just one. So it isn’t exactly a stumper.