BroadBarn acquired this document from the Profiles in History auction house. It is a letter to Gene Roddenberry from a fan of the original Star Trek series. Gene thought enough of this letter to send it to Joe Jennings, Art Director of Star Trek, The Movie. For what may be the first time ever, the entire fan letter along with the note to Joe are being displayed to the public.
The Note to Joe from Gene is regarding a letter from an astute Star Trek fan. There appears to be enough clues in the fan's letter to Gene to pinpoint the time it was written. If anyone can decipher those clues, please suggest the date it was authored.
The note to Joe Jennings may have been sent sometime prior to the production of the first Star Trek Movie, for which Joe was the Art Director. The fan letter could have been written several years earlier.
New Star Trek Convention Video goes viral!
The Star Trek Chicago '75 film premiered on YouTube, Feb 19 2010. Since then, It has been picked up by many Sci-fi related sites around the globe. "This convention was attended by the entire cast and may the reason for the video's popularity", says Rich Portnoy who filmed the event. "The fan response has been incredible", noting the barrage of comments on YouTube and personal emails, "One pointed out that David Gerrold, author of The Trouble with Tribbles, is the one kissing Nichelle Nichols". "I was also contacted by members of the The Dorsai Irregulars", Rich referring to the ones dressed like Klingons, "Turns out, they're a hardworking band of SciFi fans who [still to this day] provide operation support and crowd control for similar events." The number of views have now exceeded 22,000.
We wish to thank the following sites for making this video a success:
July 31st, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400 End of Another Great 25×25 run
I’m on pixel shift in the ATLAS control room at the moment. We’ve had a very successful run, with stable LHC beams for about the past 12 hours. The luminosity of the detector is another step forward, because the past two nights have seen more bunches per beam than ever before. The lifetime of the beam is also excellent. You can see below that the luminosity of the beam has only been decaying very slowly for the past 9 or 10 hours.
The LHC reports that, after the dump, they will fill the LHC for another physics run. I’m actually not sure why they’re dumping so soon, given that it will likely take a few hours to dump and refill, and the beam still has a lot of oomph in it. Some ideas off the top of my head: maybe the LHC experts think it’s best to do the dump and refill during the day shift; maybe they think that the luminosity in the next run can be made even better; or maybe they want to get more practice and collect more data about the start of physics fills in this configuration. But the bottom line, for me and for ATLAS, is that when they dump the beam, we reset our detector and get ready for the next physics run.
July 29th, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400 Right now: Trying to collide 25×25 bunches
As we speak there are 25 bunches of protons in both proton beams in the LHC. See all those steps in the graph (red and blue lines)? Each little step is one bunch being added, and each “big” step is 4 bunches being added. So if you count the steps yourself you should get a total bunch count of 25 in each beam. The red and blue lines correspond to the left-hand y-axis showing “Intensity”.
The energy of the proton beams is in black and goes with the right-hand y-axis, “Energy (GeV)”. As I write this the protons are around 500-some GeV and being ramped up to 3500 GeV which should take about half an hour.
Once both beams are at 3500 GeV and they declare stable beams, it’s time to record some data with the most bunches in the LHC to date!
July 27th, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400 ICHEP’s Biggest Day
Yesterday was, I suppose, the biggest and most formal day here at the 35th International Conference of High Energy Physics. I wore my suit, and took some ribbing from some of my colleagues for dressing up so much, but I’ve worn it for far less excuse and am not sorry in the slightest. It’s not every day, or even every ICHEP, that one hears an address from the President of the French Republic!
Mr. Sarkozy’s speech was great to hear. He is a very emotive, enthusiastic, and informal speaker, which made him relatively easy to understand for those in the audience (like me) with limited French. He didn’t claim to know the details of our work, and seemed to think we’re all a little weird, but spoke mostly about the importance of fundamental questions about the universe and his support for basic research. This was very well received indeed. He also talked a bit about the contributions of the French labs to the LHC and other projects, which is fair: France plays one of the central roles at CERN, and the French particle physics community has made significant contributions throughout the field. This is reflected in the excellent and informative conference that they’re hosting here in Paris.
If there was one thing I would ask to be improved for the next ICHEP, however, I wish there had been a bit more food at the banquet! You can see the banquet, which was held in the National Natural History Museum, at right. It was a very impressive museum — the main hall reminds me of the ATLAS cavern, and seems to be just about the same size — and the food was certainly varied and interesting. But the lines were long to get even a little of it, and we had to go out to dinner afterwards to be full.
Yesterday was also the final talk on the combined Tevatron Higgs results. Fermilab sent out the press release while we were still on coffee break, so I saw the excluded mass range on Twitter before going into the talk. (I overcame the temptation to shout out the answer at the start.) It was still a very entertaining talk, and obviously the details of how the measurement was done were as important to see as the final numbers. Of course, we all wish there had been more to see than mass limits in the expected range and a few possible tantalizing hints. We also had talks from the CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology on the LHC and from the spokespeople of the LHC experiments. Although we haven’t seen anything really new at the LHC yet, it’s clear that the accelerator and experiments are all making great progress in getting ready to make the exciting discoveries that we’ll see at future conferences!
July 23rd, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400 Particles and Searches
Lots of us bloggers have been talking about ICHEP which is going on this week. I’m not attending the conference, although some of the work I’ve been doing is .
Now I’ve been turning my attention back to my physics analysis. As of about a week ago we have 200 nb-1 (now closer to 300 nb-1) of data – which is about 1/50th of what I hope to get for an analysis.
I briefly mentioned that I’ll be doing a search in a previous post. Now I’d like to share a bit what this particle beast is. A leptoquark carries quantum numbers for both quarks and leptons. It would decay by generation such that it mixes families of quarks and leptons. So why do we think it exists? In a word: Symmetry.
Physicists love symmetry (and symmetry breaking ). Symmetry in forces (like electricity and magnetism), symmetry in families and generations of particles, symmetries everywhere. Since the quarks and leptons in the Standard Model have the same family structure it seems like there should be something that ties them together, like leptoquarks.
Granted this is a bit of an oversimplification, theorists have put in lots of work into understanding how these particles work. And now I’m going to be looking for them.
I’ll be giving updates over the next few months explaining more about these particles over the coming weeks.
July 21st, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 Supercomputer Reproduces a Cyclone's Birth, May Boost Forecasting
NASA's Pleiades supercomputer has helped develop a simulation of tropical cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008. The result is the first model to replicate the formation of the tropical cyclone five days in advance. more...
This weekend, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center will be using satellite data to watch two low pressure areas in the Atlantic Ocean Basin for possible tropical development. more...
NASA Satellite imagery has indicated that the low pressure area in the eastern Pacific Ocean that forecasters are watching for possible development is slow to grow. more...
July 31st, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA Hurricane Updates on Twitter
Check NASA's Hurricane Twitter feed for a daily behind the scenes look at storms in the tropics. more...
NASA News
July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA's First Robotic Crew Member To Tweet From Space Station, Available For Interviews NASA's Robonaut 2 has no voice but is ready to tell you its story -- in 140 characters or less. The prototype robot will travel to space this fall to give NASA a deeper understanding of human-robotic interaction. more...
July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA Awards Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility Support Contract Nasa Awards Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility Support Contract more...
July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA Awards Electrical Systems Engineering Services Contract NASA has awarded a sole-source interim contract for electrical systems engineering services to MEI Technologies in Houston. more...
July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA's Hibernating Mars Rover May Not Call Home NASA mission controllers have not heard from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit since March 22, and the rover is facing its toughest challenge yet – trying to survive the harsh Martian winter. more...
July 28th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400 NASA Selects Sounding Rockets Operations Contractor NASA selected Orbital Sciences Corp.'s, Technical Services Division in Greenbelt, Md., for the agency's Sounding Rockets Operations contract. more...
NASA pic of the day
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT Tweetup at HQ
NASA astronaut TJ Creamer talks about his experience in space during a "Tweetup" at NASA Headquarters, Thursday, July 29, 2010, in Washington. Creamer, who spent 161 days living aboard the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 22/23 crew, set up the orbiting outpost's live Internet connection and posted updates about the mission to his Twitter account, sending the first live tweet from orbit. Image Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers
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