Entered Apprentice
359. Michael Griffin to fill professor’s position in Alabama
The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville) has named Michael Griffin, one of the world’s leading aerospace engineers, as an eminent scholar and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
The announcement was made today by President David Williams.
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355. Introduction into thermonuclear reactors
After a brief layman review of the theory of thermonuclear fusion let me get more practical and discuss a bit how thermonuclear reactors are supposed to work.
Basically, we want the energy release of the thermonuclear reactor to be larger than the energy we pump into the reactor. Depending on a particular scenario of the energy pumping, we will distinguish two types of thermonuclear reactors.
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353. Vortex line representation. Cauchy invariant
Several days ago I’ve promised in comments to discuss dynamics of vortex lines in turbulent flows, today is probably a good day to start. And the natural starting point of course is the Kelvin theorem and Cauchy invariant.
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352. 48 years ago
Those were the days of our glory. By us I mean all intelligent people, all passionate, sensible people, all people who are able to discriminate objective reality from the bare wishful thinking. And, of course, people who are able to distort objective reality to match their wishful thinking.
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351. Girls only
I think, it is a scientifically proved, established fact that women are so much more explicit in conversations between each other than men, isn’t it? 
Via uzhas_sovka.
350. V for Vendetta
Happy Easter (and Pesah), everybody!
Via uzhas_sovka.
349. The question of quality
Last time we had a nice, surprisingly long discussion trying to answer the question how much should you publish in order to be considered a successful postdoc 
From Michal’s point of view, this is not quantity but quality of your publications that should matter.
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348. Trading olympiad
As usual, no physics today, True Geeks, only fun very distantly related to physics is allowed!
Interactive Brokers has just announced that the 2009 IB Collegiate Trading Olympiad is now over. What is the idea of the olympics? Naturally, an unspecified number of guys – mostly, students of various universities – each create a piece of software for online real-time trading and compete with each other trying to generate the largest profit. To enter the olympics, you don’t have to deposit a non-zero amount of your personal hard earned money to the IB account, while the prize money that you get after winning the competition are very much real: being the 1st will bring you $100000, the 2nd and 3rd – $50000, etc.
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347. Numerical simulation of vortices: video of the day
A video by New Scientist magazine featuring some really nice simulations of developed turbulence in the presence of vorticity field.
346. Thermonuclear fusion. Nuclear reaction rates – second part
Last time we have figured out that two factors determine effective rates of nuclear reactions – the probability of quantum mechanical tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier and the probability of nuclear transformation. Let us talk today about the second factor a bit.
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345. Lagrangian turbulence: video of the day
A simulation by Guido Bofetta, U. of Torino. Recall that Lagrangian description of hydrodynamics is when you pick a liquid particle and keep track of its motion. Here it is shown how particles are transported by a turbulent flow in the presence of a vortex.
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344. Thermonuclear fusion. Coulomb barrier and reaction rates
This post is the next in the series devoted to the discussion of our main energy source in the 22 century – thermonuclear fusion
Today let us talk a bit about reaction rates. Somehow, it is accustomed that we estimate these rates in terms of the maximal effective cross-section of the reaction. Here are some important and most common reactions that happen in Sun (as well as their cross-sections):
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343. Followup: BumpTop
Just wanted to let you know that BumpTop finally went public – that is, you don’t need to be invited to the private beta to have fun with you desktop. The version 1.0 can be downloaded for free on the BumpTop website.
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341. Nuclear fusion – energy of the future: video of the day
A nice quantum flapdoodle promo video about thermonuclear fusion by the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (as usual, physics behind the video is extremely nice while actors are pathetic).
340. Thermonuclear fusion: some basic facts about thermonuclear reactions
When I wrote Ten open problems in physics, the ultimate plan behind the post was that I first list those problems and then discuss every single one of them to some details – just to learn something new and relevant about each of the problems would already be enough fun for me to consider this idea seriously. As I said before, discussing important open problems is a) fun, b) it makes physics interesting and c) it makes it also relevant.
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