wheresmysciencesoft? and the DETF
Well so much for free equation hosting. I just wish they had shared their scripts with someone. They were so much better than any equation place on the web. It doesnt really matter. The work I did with it didnt really mean anything anyway.
Newest project. Evaluating the Dark Energy Task Force report for career opportunities. This is interesting in that it is basicly astrophysics written for management types. Lots of repetition and very little science that makes sense beyond the "Figure of Merit" statistics. In places it seems like when they want to mention the basic physics they throw in the "scale factor" equation or something without actually explaining or using it.
But because it was written in this way I was able to see several new concepts without lots of clutter. The things I am wondering about now are:
1) growth factor. This has something to do with density perturbation evolution and compliments the scale factor as an observable. Never heard about this in 2 years of astrophysics.
2) Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. Acoustic waves which get frozen out during the epoch of recombination. My question is, if they are density rings in the CMB and beyond, why dont they show up in topology searches?
3) People dont really think dark energy will be the result of a GR modification. The way they've parameterized the problem in terms of equation of state and used one set of GR equations to model the results make me wonder how we'll be able to tell if it really isnt parameterized by w(a) = wo+(1-a)wa. So much model! Nerve wracking...
4) If one is predisposed to optimism weak lensing holds the most promise weighing in with a figure of merit above 13! This is for a Square Kilometer Array survey of galaxies and 21cm background. (Of course the pessimistic FOM is only 2.1. ) However, weak lensing holds the highest pessimistic possibilities in a space based mission. The cool thing about weak lensing is that its essentially a data mining project. The pictures can be taken for one purpose, say an optical survey of clusters, and then processed to get statistics about the shear of the background galaxies. The measurements of the clusters are important too because they help reduce the source location error.
Theres lots of fun stuff in this report. I like the idea of using data mining to solve problems. When I was an undergrad I wrote a proposal for a class that outlined the creation of a astrophysical data mining center. This would be an institute whos job was to archive astrophysical images and data. The focus would be using new and old data to find planets. Apparently such a thing has since been proposed and funded! To bad Van Romero wasnt a funding agency.
Question: Should I try to write in a more coherent fashion? This would be good for my writing but bad in terms of time usage. Also I am not a huge fan of the little tiny editing window so I would have to find a good plugin for an editor and an editor. Maybe googles beta blogger will solve this problem. Dear diary, I hope I get invited soon! Maybe a google guy will read this and invite me. Gosh I hope they'll add inline latex like mediawiki has. *Fingerscrossed*
Newest project. Evaluating the Dark Energy Task Force report for career opportunities. This is interesting in that it is basicly astrophysics written for management types. Lots of repetition and very little science that makes sense beyond the "Figure of Merit" statistics. In places it seems like when they want to mention the basic physics they throw in the "scale factor" equation or something without actually explaining or using it.
But because it was written in this way I was able to see several new concepts without lots of clutter. The things I am wondering about now are:
1) growth factor. This has something to do with density perturbation evolution and compliments the scale factor as an observable. Never heard about this in 2 years of astrophysics.
2) Baryon Acoustic Oscillations. Acoustic waves which get frozen out during the epoch of recombination. My question is, if they are density rings in the CMB and beyond, why dont they show up in topology searches?
3) People dont really think dark energy will be the result of a GR modification. The way they've parameterized the problem in terms of equation of state and used one set of GR equations to model the results make me wonder how we'll be able to tell if it really isnt parameterized by w(a) = wo+(1-a)wa. So much model! Nerve wracking...
4) If one is predisposed to optimism weak lensing holds the most promise weighing in with a figure of merit above 13! This is for a Square Kilometer Array survey of galaxies and 21cm background. (Of course the pessimistic FOM is only 2.1. ) However, weak lensing holds the highest pessimistic possibilities in a space based mission. The cool thing about weak lensing is that its essentially a data mining project. The pictures can be taken for one purpose, say an optical survey of clusters, and then processed to get statistics about the shear of the background galaxies. The measurements of the clusters are important too because they help reduce the source location error.
Theres lots of fun stuff in this report. I like the idea of using data mining to solve problems. When I was an undergrad I wrote a proposal for a class that outlined the creation of a astrophysical data mining center. This would be an institute whos job was to archive astrophysical images and data. The focus would be using new and old data to find planets. Apparently such a thing has since been proposed and funded! To bad Van Romero wasnt a funding agency.
Question: Should I try to write in a more coherent fashion? This would be good for my writing but bad in terms of time usage. Also I am not a huge fan of the little tiny editing window so I would have to find a good plugin for an editor and an editor. Maybe googles beta blogger will solve this problem. Dear diary, I hope I get invited soon! Maybe a google guy will read this and invite me. Gosh I hope they'll add inline latex like mediawiki has. *Fingerscrossed*
Labels: Citations, DETF, Readings, Research Tools
posted by Danny at 11:02 AM
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