Project 8 na mídia

O 1o eléctron do Project 8

  Publicamos nosso artigo na Physical Review Letters (PRL), e deu uma boa repercussão na mídia! A PRL escolheu nosso artigo como uma das "manchetes" e fez um artigo especial, e se prestarem atenção, vão ver que a figura de capa é minha ;) :

http://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/36

Este site tem a lista de revistas e jornais em que saiu notícias sobre a nossa experiência:

http://aps.altmetric.com/details/3924136/news

Contexto: Desde que vim para Santa Barbara (UCSB), tenho estar a trabalhar na experiência Project 8, que tem como objetivo medir a massa do neutrino. Para fazer isso, primeiro é preciso medir a energia de eléctrons com alta precisão, e para isso desenvolvemos uma nova técnica que permite medir a energia de eléctrons individuais sem pertubá-los, detectando a energia ciclotron emitida por um único eléctron. A foto acima mostra o nosso primeiro electron - é uma figura da frequência da radiação ciclotron vs tempo.  Publicamos o nosso artigo na Physical Review Letters, e teve uma boa repercussão na mídia científica, aparecendo em várias revistas e jornais. O único problema é que em vários dos sites eles só dão crédito ao MIT, que é só um dos colaboradores fazendo a experiência...

The Last Hero (Discworld 27), by Terry Pratchett

The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another masterpiece by Terry Pratchett! Ok, maybe not “masterpiece”, but a really, really fun book! The Last Hero is a great adventure taking place in the Discworld, with the titular “last hero” (Cohen the Barbarian) climbing Cori Celesti, the “Olympus” of the Discworld, to return that which the first hero stole - fire, and lots of it!

The book is a unique blend of fantasy, sic-fi, and satire. This time Terry Pratchett has some of our favorite heroes, the wizard Rincewind, Captain Carrot, and a surprise stowaway (among others) become astronauts! In order to save the world, they have to race to the top of the Cori Celesti, before Cohen and his Silver Horde reach it, and the fastest way there is going around the world, flying in a in a dragon-powered-spaceship after it has dropped off the edge of the ocean - remember, this is literally a *disc* world, it’s flat and the ocean just falls off the edges!

The book is structures so that the two narratives intertwined, and each has its own separate sets of characters and separate themes. While the narrative of Carrot and Rincewind focus on engineering and science (mixed with magic), and the adventurous spirit of explorers and astronauts, the narrative of Cohen focus on themes of old age, of what it means to be a hero, and pokes fun at staples fantasy novels. I think one of the readings of the story is that although we don’t have heroes like in the ancient mythologies (like Hercules or Beowulf), we have heroes like the watchmen (police) that put their lives on the line for the safety of citizens with no rewards, or explorers (astronauts) that fling themselves into the unknown.

When I picked it up, I was a little surprise with how short it was, but in the end it felt just right. Although the story is fas-paced, it does not feel rushed. It’s full of wit and fun, and with an excellent ending (which turns out to be yet another satire, this time of cliffhangers and ambiguous endings).

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"The War of the Worlds", by H.G. Wells

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The War of the Worlds tells the story of the Martian invasion of Earth, written at the end of the 19th century. It is a classic of sci-fi and literature in general. But it is written before man had ever gone to space, had computers, radio communication, or airplanes, so it’s both amazing that the author H.G. Wells can write about alien invasions, but also very, very dated in both the science and ideologies. As I read it, my opinion kept going back and forth between finding it good or bad: sometimes he gets sic-fi, and shows good imagination; sometimes the book just shows how antiquated and limited the authors ideas were.

One example where the lack of imagination of the writer shows is the means of travel from Mars to Earth: a cannon bullet, which opens with a really tight screw-on lid. Maybe it's clever for the 19th century, but really implausible for today. The author would have been better served by coming up with some fantastical device that he couldn’t explain, but that would be more likely for an advanced civilization. However, we must keep in mind that the author is trying to present an alien invasion before we knew anything about space flight, or even normal flights. Even tanks weren’t commonly used in war at the time, and Wells’ martians use walking war “mecha” (the tripods), before anything remotely similar was used. So he can come up with some pretty good sci-fi.

The aliens themselves are another good step in the right direction: there is nothing human about them, they are no little green men, they are truly alien lifeforms. It’s incongruous to me when sic-fi stories come up with all sorts of aliens lifeforms and technologies, but the intelligent life is still humanoid. *That* is a sad lack of imagination, and Wells manages to avoid it here.

The book has a fantastic opening - it’s really well written, and it’s an exciting set-up for the story. The book is very descriptive; this is very unlike Wells other famous book, The Time Machine, in which lots of pages are filled with the narrator’s musings, opinions, and monologues. In this book, there is a lot more action (not in the sense of adventure or fighting, just in the sense of things happening), it’s just one thing after the other. Having heard about the famous radio broadcast by Orson Welles based of this book, this is something I had expected - I was expecting a good description of the invasion, with lots of facts, and with the reactions of the people. The authors delivers in this point, even if it doesn’t read like a news account of events.

I listened to the audiobook read by Roger Watson, and the reading is superb. His voice is very pleasant, he is easy to understand, and his narration adds the proper nuance and excitement when needed.

In summary, you should read it because it’s a classic, and shows the foundations of the genre, not because it’s great sci-fi. But take heart that it’s actually good and well-written, and explores great themes, like the place humanity might have in a larger universe.

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