I met an amazingly smart 2nd year grad student on my geology trip. A bit of background - two dozen geologists (actually, two astro kids and a Mech E were included in the jovial bunch) traipsed their way down to Baja California -- not in such a lackadaisical manner, with more intent -- but we made our way down to explore a bunch of rock formations, paleomag, a bit of cretaceous-dinosaur-fauna things, etc.
A few of us had wandered down to the beach at the Salton Sea the first night. When lasers came out, there was a period of comparing the power output of the lights and the distance this corresponded too.
But when you put a slight obstruction in the beam of the light -- we were using green lasers, best for seeing in the dark and for pointing out stars -- you get a diffraction pattern in the output light. There is a very obvious pattern of dark and light. Now, apparently, these are the Fourier transform of a single slit diffraction pattern! The light is blocked for exactly a top-hat function, and the resultant pattern has an intensity (not energy) that we see. The transform of the energy is the sinc function, but the intensity of the light is the sinc function squared.
Now, imagine two obstructions -- two hairs. On the ground, then, you see the pattern repeated, the standard diffraction of light and dark that progressively gets dimmer farther from the center. This is the first and the second fourier transform.
Yay :) You can do this for any number of obstructions!
Reflecting the laser off your teeth, your are confronted with a large number of organic shapes that have an apparent depth to the layers. They form moving shapes that crawl in green shadows across the ground, changing and disappearing. These are the fourier transform of...saliva. Ha ;)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Impressions of astronomy
Why hello!
The sense I currently have about astronomy, astronomers, and the goals involved is perhaps quite normal. To be a professional astronomer seems to take a significant amount of time in studies, years spent toiling in grad school and beyond as a postdoc and researcher. Then perhaps a career in academia, hard-won and deserved.
It takes a good work ethic and a certain level of intelligence, as well as patience and creativity and pride. An astronomer must be able to stand in awe of the universe and simultaneously label it, unfold it, render it in one dimension so that the world is much less mysterious than it was a moment ago. (Or for some, the opposite -- thinking too hard about something in the field often reveals untold complexities...)
And he needs to enjoy it.
What's the ultimate goal? It's certainly not wealth and fame -- those are attendent much more commonly upon other professions -- but, I think, a chance to resolve your fundamental questions on -- dare I say it? -- life, the universe, and everything.
It's a nigh impossible ambition.
And yet it's a conviction and creed that so many hold onto. The aim of an astonomer is to work hard, perhaps, in order to ascribe some meaning to the vastness we inhabit one miniscule fraction of.
I'm not currently sure this is what I want to do. In a dream world (not the best or first, but very close; in the timeline that includes astronomy), I guess, my goal is to graduate with a doctorate, work in deserted observatories for a while, and move on to a job in industry. How? Well, I've been in love with our sun (yes, it's proprietary) for years. Perhaps there is some more practical application of knowing how the sun works, how it reacts, how the earth reacts to it. There might be some correlated study in the much-hyped "green tech", which is a huge fancy of mine.
I guess I see the world as a multifaceted template, which needs to be slightly better understood. What better way to approach this than through the most far-away, esoteric examples of creation?
The sense I currently have about astronomy, astronomers, and the goals involved is perhaps quite normal. To be a professional astronomer seems to take a significant amount of time in studies, years spent toiling in grad school and beyond as a postdoc and researcher. Then perhaps a career in academia, hard-won and deserved.
It takes a good work ethic and a certain level of intelligence, as well as patience and creativity and pride. An astronomer must be able to stand in awe of the universe and simultaneously label it, unfold it, render it in one dimension so that the world is much less mysterious than it was a moment ago. (Or for some, the opposite -- thinking too hard about something in the field often reveals untold complexities...)
And he needs to enjoy it.
What's the ultimate goal? It's certainly not wealth and fame -- those are attendent much more commonly upon other professions -- but, I think, a chance to resolve your fundamental questions on -- dare I say it? -- life, the universe, and everything.
It's a nigh impossible ambition.
And yet it's a conviction and creed that so many hold onto. The aim of an astonomer is to work hard, perhaps, in order to ascribe some meaning to the vastness we inhabit one miniscule fraction of.
I'm not currently sure this is what I want to do. In a dream world (not the best or first, but very close; in the timeline that includes astronomy), I guess, my goal is to graduate with a doctorate, work in deserted observatories for a while, and move on to a job in industry. How? Well, I've been in love with our sun (yes, it's proprietary) for years. Perhaps there is some more practical application of knowing how the sun works, how it reacts, how the earth reacts to it. There might be some correlated study in the much-hyped "green tech", which is a huge fancy of mine.
I guess I see the world as a multifaceted template, which needs to be slightly better understood. What better way to approach this than through the most far-away, esoteric examples of creation?
Monday, November 14, 2011
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