It’s Day 3 of Yorkshire versus Glamorgan at Headingley in the first round of this season’s County Championship matches.
Or it was because there won’t be any further play today owing to the inclement weather….
Glamorgan are actually doing well at 161 for 4 in their second innings after bowling out Yorkshire for 193 to establish a first innings lead of 137. That’s very good considering that they were 29 for 4 at one point. Currently 298 ahead with six wickets remaining, can they force a result tomorrow?
UPDATE: Glamorgan batted on for an hour on Sunday morning so both Clarke and Root could get hundreds, eventually declaring on 241-4 a leady of 378. Clarke and Root came together with the score on 29-4 so that was an unbroken partnership of 212 for the 5th wicket. Despite a wobble here and there, Yorkshire batted out the day and eventually a draw was agreed with their score on 223 for 4.
Here’s a discussion of the status of the latest measurements of (g-2) versus theory. This kind of problem is not confined to particle physics. It also happens in cosmology that we have problems making accurate predictions to compare with observations, especially when using galaxies to trace large-scale structure. There’s a lot of messy astrophysics to be accounted for.
Yesterday, Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment announced a new measurement of the magnetic moment of the muon, a number which describes how muons interact with magnetic fields. For what might seem like a small technical detail, physicists have been very excited about this measurement because it’s a small technical detail that the Standard Model seems to get wrong, making it a potential hint of new undiscovered particles. Quanta magazine has a great piece on the announcement, which explains more than I will here, but the upshot is that there are two different calculations on the market that attempt to predict the magnetic moment of the muon. One of them, using older methods, disagrees with the experiment. The other, with a new approach, agrees. The question then becomes, which calculation was wrong? And why?
What does it mean for a prediction to match an experimental result? The simple, wrong, answer is…
I noticed a little news item this morning about school uniforms and thought I’d comment, because I think the author of the piece misses some important points.
I had to wear a uniform when I went to my secondary school, the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne. I got a place there under the Direct Grant system, after passing the 11+ examination. It was basically a private school but I won a scholarship and my parents didn’t have to pay anything, which was just as well as they would never have been able to afford the fees.
I should mention that when I went to the RGS, in the 1970s, it was only for boys, but it is now for boys and girls.
Before actually starting at the RGS (in September 1974) we were sent a list of things that would be needed including various items of sports gear and, of course, the uniform. This included a distinctive blue* blazer with the school crest on the pocket. That was for the first two or three years. After that we got to wear a black/dark grey blazer which more closely resembled what other schools required and in the sixth form it was even more flexible, with many of the boys wearing a suit.
The list of things to be bought was quite long but we didn’t have to worry about the cost because we weren’t very well off and I qualified for vouchers from the Council to buy everything.
I was mightily relieved that I got to turn up for my first day at school in a new uniform because I didn’t have any good clothes – most of my normal clothes were hand-me-downs from my older brother. If I’d just worn my usual things it would have made be feel even more out of place than I did anyway, as all the posh kids would have been dressed much better than me. The uniform was a relief because it put everyone on the same footing – at least at a superficial level.
The big problem was that I had to travel every day on the bus from Benwell (a rough area, where I lived) to Jesmond (a posh area, where the RGS was and still is). The bright blue blazer was very conspicuous and I often got picked on by local kids while en route there or back. I remember getting spat on more than once. In the end I decided to wear a big coat over my uniform to avoid it being recognized, even on hot days.
The value of the uniform seemed to me that it was a leveller. It wasn’t really anything about expressing loyalty to the school, nor was it a means of imposing discipline and obedience, it just helped diminish the effect of parental wealth. In an environment in which social class was such a prominent factor it seemed to me that the uniform was a good thing. My friends from wealthier families disliked the uniform, usually for the same reason that I liked it.
I’m all in favour of updating the style of uniform to a more neutral, less gender-specific style – especially for coeducational schools – but I think as long as schools take in kids from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds then on balance they’re a good concept.
Anyway, you probably disagree so here’s a poll:
P.S. Our school had an exchange programme with a school in Germany – the Max Planck Gymnasium in Gelsenkirchen. When I was told the name I assumed the kids were all fantastic athletes, but then a teacher explained that the name came from the Greek word gymnos meaning “naked”. That minimal approach to a school uniform would never have taken on in Newcastle, on grounds of the weather among other reasons, but I learnt (to my disappointment) that it was only a metaphorical term anyway.
Today’s announcement of a new measurement of the anomalous magnetic dipole moment – known to its friends as (g-2) of the muon – has been greeted with excitement by the scientific community, as it seems to provide evidence of a departure from the standard model of particle physics (by 4.2σ in frequentist parlance).
My own view is that the measurement of g-2, which seems to be a bit higher than theorists expected, can be straightforwardly reconciled with the predictions of the standard model of particle physics by simply adopting a slightly lower value for 2 in the theoretical calculations.
P.S. According to my own (unpublished) calculations, the value of g-2 ≈ 7.81 m s-2.
It’s time I shared another one of those interesting cosmology talks on the Youtube channel curated by Shaun Hotchkiss. This channel features technical talks rather than popular expositions so it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but for those seriously interested in cosmology at a research level they should prove interesting. This one was published just yesterday.
In the talk Dan Thomas discusses his recent work first creating a framework for describing modified gravity (i.e. extensions of general relativity) in a model-independent way on non-linear scales and then running N-body simulations in that framework. The framework involves finding a correspondence between large scale linear theory where everything is under control and small scale non-linear post-Newtonian dynamics. After a lot of care and rigour it boils down to a modified Poisson equation – on both large and small scales (in a particular gauge). The full generality of the modification to the Poisson equation allows, essentially, for a time and space dependent value for Newton’s constant. For most modified gravity models, the first level of deviation from general relativity can be parametrised in this way. This approach allows the method to use to constrain modified gravity using observations without needing to run a new simulation for every step of a Monte Carlo parameter fit.
P. S. A couple of papers to go with this talk can be found here and here.
First performed in 1963, this classic anthem of the civil rights movement in the USA the words to this song (written by Billy Taylor) seem to me to have a few relevance in this time of enforced isolation.
Regular readers of this blog – both of them – will know that I am a huge fan of Jeremy Brett‘s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Granada TV productions of the classic detective stories by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle first broadcast during the 1980s.
It turns out that Virgin Media in Ireland is now broadcasting the series The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first episode of which, The Empty House, was on last night (Easter Sunday). I watched it with all the pleasure of meeting an old friend I hadn’t seen for years. It’s hard to believe that episode was first broadcast way back in 1986.
For those of you not up with the canon, this story (based on the original story The Adventure of the Empty House) is set three years after Holmes apparently fell to his death, along with his arch enemy Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls.
Holmes’s body was never found, for the very good reason that he didn’t die! It turns out he escaped and spent three years on the run exploring the world and evading Moriarty’s confederates. Much of the first episode is taken up with an account of these goings on, and the case that brings Holmes back to London is fairly slight, really just providing an excuse for his return. A murder in London provides Holmes with an opportunity to trap the last of his erstwhile opponent’s associates.
I did however experience a little frisson of surprise when I heard the identity of the victim of the murder at the heart of the story, namely the Honourable Ronald Adair, the second son of the Earl of Maynooth*…
*The title is fictional, there was a title Earl of Kildare but never an Earl of Maynooth.
Now, for bonus marks, and without using the internet, can anyone tell me the connection between Sherlock Holmes and the field of astronomical spectroscopy?
If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.
But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by, At the right hand of majesty on high You sit, and sitting so remember yet Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat, Your cross and passion and the life you gave, Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.
The Dead Christ, 1521 (oil on limewood) by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543)
Twitter reminded me this evening of this extraordinary painting by Hans Holbein the Younger and I thought I’d share it here because I realize it was painted in 1521, which means it is 500 years old this year. Despite its age this work still has the power to shock, not least because it is so different from so many works of religious art of its period. The depiction of the dead Christ is 2m long, life-size (so to speak). His eyes and mouth are open, the clear signs of putrefaction appearing in the colouring of his face, hands and feet, the body marked by wounds, is brutal in its frankness and shocking in its authenticity.
But what is the message of this work? Was Holbein questioning the reality of Christ’s bodily resurrection? Or was he emphasizing how miraculous it must have been? And where was a painting of this enormous size and peculiar shape supposed to be displayed? What purpose was it meant to serve? And what’s the reason for the extended middle finger?
I’m not the only one to have asked these questions. The author Fyodor Dostoevsky was famously moved by this work, so much so that in his novel The Idiot he has a character remark “Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!”.
I don’t expect we’ll ever know what Holbein was trying to say, but perhaps that doesn’t matter. Great art should make you think, but should not necessarily tell you what you should think…
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
In the Dark 