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14 March 2008 @ 01:11 am
 
So far I have spent 90% of my vacation tied to my computer, analyzing gravitational waveforms. Nifty? Sure. But it means not only have I gotten no rest, I have also not had time to start next week's homework, or the end-of-term report for one of the classes, or get my taxes done, or go shopping, or...

In other words, at the end of this week "off" I'm going to be more tired and further behind than I started.

The only other thing I've accomplished, and I use that term extremely loosely, has been to extract the cell phone sounds from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for use in my email client.

(Update, 3:21 am: The programs finally finished running, the plots are finally plotted, and I'm going to bed. Unless I decide that's too much effort and I just fall asleep in the desk chair).
 
 
Current Mood: I'm in despair! The lack of time off has left me in despair!
Current Music: The hum of the computer
 
 
( Post a new comment )
(Anonymous) on March 24th, 2008 04:08 pm (UTC)
Absolut Otaku. :)

Such were the depths of my ignorance, I had no idea they'd managed to detect gravitational waves; the LIGO stuff is pretty neat, tho. Wonder how they manage to isolate the system from thermal issues and tectonic jitter? Maybe the signature of a gravity wave is so obvious there is no need. Off to Wikipedia I go.
Broken Symmetry[info]brokensymmetry on March 24th, 2008 06:35 pm (UTC)
Absolut Otaku.

Heh!

I had no idea they'd managed to detect gravitational waves

Oh we haven't detected any yet... at least we probably haven't, people are still scrutinizing the latest data. Anyway the waveforms I've been examining came from numerical relativity and various approximations.

Wonder how they manage to isolate the system from thermal issues and tectonic jitter?

The thermal noise cuts off our high-end sensitivity and techtonics cuts off the low, but we're pretty sensitive in a middle region that's wide enough to capture a range of interesting events if they're close enough.

Even here though pulling the signal from the noise is an interesting challenge, which connects to the stuff I've been doing. Fun!



(Anonymous) on March 25th, 2008 11:05 pm (UTC)
Thanks, that definitely makes sense. Here's hoping you get a chance to tease a real gravity wave from that mountain of data some day (the LIGO website hinted at a spiffy set of Advanced LIGO upgrades that were due to be funded in 2008, but not finished until 2013 unfortunately).