Links to check out over a coffee.
News:
LHC setback
If you haven’t heard (where have you been living?) the LHC has been setback due to the technical failure / magnet quench. I really hope that this is the only major problem and that they get back onto track soon.
Sciencewoman has put together a list of women bloggers [...]
Archive for September, 2008
Coffeebreak links 250908
Posted in links on September 25, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Sir Brian Pippard
Posted in Uncategorized on September 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am saddened to hear about the death of Brian Pippard. Pippard made pioneering studies into the field of superconductivity at the University of Cambridge, including foundations for the BCS theory, and the introduction of the coherence length and the non-local model. He demonstrated real insight in both experiment and theory. See here for an [...]
Experimental insights: Nuclear Orientation Thermometry
Posted in experimental insights on September 21, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Part of the reason I started this blog was to disseminate information about what experimental physicists actually do in the lab on a day-to-day basis, and why these things are interesting. The posts should be accessible to a wide audience. Here’s the first one…
Experimental insights: Nuclear Orientation (NO) Thermometry
I spent some of last week playing [...]
FLUXONICS
Posted in RSFQ, research blogging, superconductors on September 14, 2008 | 5 Comments »
FLUXONICS is a european framework dedicated to furthering research into superconducting electronics and digital circuits. Within this framework is the S-Pulse project, which I am currently involved in. As part of this project, I recently visited the FLUXONICS foundry for superconducting electronics at IPHT, Jena for a Technology training workshop.
There are several institutions involved [...]
The fabric of reality
Posted in book reviews on September 8, 2008 | 7 Comments »
I just finished reading ‘The fabric of reality’ by David Deutsch. It is a very thought provoking and impressive book. The book argues that the (current) reductionist approach to understanding modern physics and the universe is, although useful to a certain extent, unable to explain certain higher level emergent phenomena. The book ties together [...]
A fridge is born
Posted in artsey, research blogging on September 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
New arrival in the lab!
Our new dilution refrigerator from ICEOxford. We’re currently installing extra thermometry to prepare for the first run. It should reach base of ~12mK. So I thought, as usual, artsey pictures were necessary.
Visiting D-Wave Systems
Posted in quantum computing on September 5, 2008 | 10 Comments »
So I spent last week hanging out at D-Wave systems which was awesome. For anyone not in the know, they are (to the best of my knowledge) the only company pursuing the ambitious goal of building a large scale quantum computer.
Their architecture consists of superconducting flux qubits implemented in the framework of Adiabatic [...]
