Did they see it?

Has dark matter been detected (rumours were abound)? The CDMS (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) experiment has detected some potentially tantalising evidence for the first direct detection of WIMPs - it saw 2 events! (I think the paper will be on the arXiv here.) However, they make no claim for detection, as they say:

In this new data set there are indeed 2 events seen with characteristics consistent with those expected from WIMPs. However, there is also a chance that both events could be due to background particles. Scientists have a strict set of criteria for determining whether a new discovery has been made, in essence that the ratio of signal to background events must be large enough that there is no reasonable doubt. Typically there must be less than one chance in a thousand of the signal being due to background. In this case, a signal of about 5 events would have met those criteria. We estimate that there is about a one in four chance to have seen two backgrounds events, so we can make no claim to have discovered WIMPs. Instead we say that the rate of WIMP interactions with nuclei must be less than a particular value that depends on the mass of the WIMP. The numerical values obtained for these interaction rates from this data set are more stringent than those obtained from previous data for most WIMP masses predicted by theories. Such upper limits are still quite valuable in eliminating a number of theories that might explain dark matter.

so these results can't be heralded as a significant for a while (with the events having a one in four chance of being background you're not going to convince anyone), but there is maybe room for some excitement - and setting upper limits is still fun! Right! It's nice to have definitive results in science, but in new discovery fields like this (and probably as will happen in my own field of gravitational wave detection) you need to take your time.

What's particularly ironic (from a UK perspective) is that yesterday's STFC funding announcement dropped the Dark Matter experiments at Boulby mine!

Administrative error

After posting about the current financial woes of the physics and astronomy community I saw some other depressing fiscal news. It seems that Watford may be facing administration! We're being asked to pay back almost £5 million in loans (from a salad supplier!) by close of business today, which looks kind of unlikely. If we do fall into administration then the Football League will automatically deduct 10 points from us, and leave us just above the relegation spots - not a fun place to be. I really hope we don't go the way of Luton.

[Update: We seem to have been saved from administration after our major shareholder Lord Ashcroft stepped in and agreed to pay off our loan. We out of the worst for now, but there may be other problems going into the future. Unfortunately we lost our game today.]

Tomorrow, tomorrow

Tomorrow sees the announcements from today's STFC science prioritisation meeting (hilariously title "Investing in the future: 2010-2015" [my emphasis]), which will describe how UK funding for Astronomy, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics will be distributed over the next few years. Due to certain issues there are likely to be some big cuts in many areas where the UK has been doing excellent science, and many people are on tenterhooks waiting to see if their area (and in many post-docs cases their jobs) are on the line. Other people have written in more informed, and better ways, about this, so I'm not going to add anything other than the obviously selfish thing of hoping that my area of gravitational wave research fares well. I hope things aren't as bad as predicted and most people (in all STFC-funded areas) see their funding at least kept at its current level, but that's probably hoping in vain.

[Update: The report can be found here. Gravitational waves fared well, but even we can expect to have to deal with cuts of order 10% (maybe more) - I think we'll do this through various efficiency savings. There is a lot of discussion online of the aftermath of this report and its effects over all the STFC areas (for example see the comments on Peter Coles blog, or the #sftc tag on twitter.)]

Heading south for the winter

Another week, another kayaking trip. This time we sought out warmer climbs by heading south to the River Nith - this is a grade 3/4 river depending on the level, although for us it was mainly grade 3 or less. It was an intermediate trip, but I think that the Nith was a new river for everyone on this trip, so we didn't really know what to expect.

When we got down there we first went for a look at one of the rivers that flows into the Nith, the Euchan - we didn't really plan to paddle it (fortunately!), but wanted to have a scout out for possible future trips. It did look fun, but there was a gorge section containing a very narrow channel that looked potentially rather nasty. After this diversion we headed back to the Nith to find a suitable get in. We decided not to start at one of the regular get ins at Sanquhar (which to me is a bizarre name for a village - it contains an inappropriate "q"), but head a bit further down stream to where the river looked a bit more interesting (and to cut down on the length of the shuttle run, seeing as we only had a bike for that). We found a good spot about two miles further along the road, although we didn't realise quite how long it would take for Mike to make it back on the bike after taking the bus down to the get out - at the time we thought he was just being slow, but we felt quite bad about that when we drove back along the road after paddling and saw just how far it was.

There were a couple of minor rapids soon after getting in which we all got over fine, although at the bottom of one I stupidly came a cropper on a eddy line and capsized. I tried a couple of rolls, but failed and some had a pretty lame swim - my general ability getting into and out of eddy's is still pretty poor and something I should really practice more often (and have practised more on this trip too, as the other were quite nifty at getting into small eddy's behind rocks). Unfortunately there were then large sections of pretty flat water between the rapids until we got to the gorge section. From then on the rapids were a more closely spaced and things got more fun, but the light was drawing in, so we couldn't hang about and there wasn't much time for people to play about in the waves (I was generally avoiding playing about anyway, as my early swim [and uncomfortable boat] had slightly dented my confidence). I had another swim during, or just before, the gorge section (we weren't too sure where the gorge started, but it was just before a point where there was a large tree stump in the middle of the river). Again this was quite a lame swim, as I just got through the rapid fine, but capsized at the bottom and again couldn't quite manage to roll up. The rapids near the end were a lot more fun, and we did most of them blind due to not having the time to hang about. There was only one more swim on the trip, although not from me this time (and at a point just off the last drop on one of the rapids, where a swim is much less lame).

I think the general consensus was that there was far too much flat water on this trip, but the end section was good. It'll probably be a while before the Nith is done again as a club trip, but it could be better in higher water, or if you just do the gorge.

For the journey home, at the insistence of Tom ;), we decided to try and get Reggie Yates (on his Radio 1 requests show) to play Meatloaf's I would do anything for love. We all texted in, and Ben even managed to get through on the phone and have his details taken, but unfortunately our request went unheard.

Scrolling drum tabs

Since playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero I've thought that having a scrolling drum tab in the same style would be brilliant for learning to play new songs. Well fortunately I'm not the only person to think this and someone with some coding skills has actually mocked up a working code to do this. It seems that at the moment it basically takes in a text file with a tab that someone has already written (I don't know what format would be required), and then you sync that up with the music from the song. It would be nice if you could just pass it the music files and it works out the tab, but that's probably asking a bit too much ;) Anyway, I'm not sure if the guy who wrote this code is planning on actually making a production version and selling it, but I'd definitely be a customer if he does.

Brass monkeys

Today four of us went on a non-official-club trip up to the Etive (by far my most kayaked river) where we were thinking of joining up with the Glasgow Caledonian University Kayak Club who had been wig-wamming up that way for the weekend. The day started off bloody freezing and didn't really improve temperature-wise. When we arrived at the Etive it seemed that half of the kayakers in Scotland were also there (however the Caly crew weren't actually there yet). It required quite a bit of will power to actually strip off and put on our kayaking gear, which wasn't helped by the very bracing wind racing through Glen Etive. By the time the Caly group arrived we were ready to go, and seeing as they had a big group and we wanted to do the river at a reasonable pace we decided to just go down as a four (the other reason we headed on was that we thought some other guys we knew who where also on the river [current and ex-GUCC members] would be giving us a shuttle back to our car from the get-out, but they were a bit too quick for us!).

This was the first time I'd done the river in such a small group, and as such we didn't set up safety (people with throw lines) on the banks at each fall, but just went down them. We didn't even get out to take a look at the drops before we did them, and put our trust in Chris that it would be fine. For me all the drops went pretty well, and I stayed upright and put in a couple of decent braces when needed, up until Right Angle. On the fall there I had a quite scary swim, as I capsized, got pushed against the wall on the side I was trying to roll up on, and then in the panic couldn't find the release handle on my spray deck - I found it in the end and was fine, but it shock me a little bit, and I was more timid with my paddling from then on (although it was reasonably near the get out anyway.) I was slightly wobbly going through a couple of the rock fields after that, but stayed upright until the very last rapid, when I hit a rock, got spun around and went over - I almost righted myself a couple of times using braces and the rocks near me, but in the end I succumbed and swam. In general though, despite the swims, I think I did some of my best paddling on this trip, and I was manoeuvring myself far more confidently than I have before.

Even with the swim before the get out I'd warmed up well during the paddle, but the weather didn't want to keep things that way, because as soon as we stopped it decided to start raining - and not just regular rain, but ice. There was a van to shelter behind when getting changed, which protected us from the elements a bit, but it would be nice for all rivers to be equipped with dry, warm changing rooms. Fortunately it wasn't as cold as this trip though - there was no ice forming on us. In the end it was probably for the best that we didn't wait for Caly, as they were only about half way along when we drove past on our way home.

The company I keep

This afternoon I'm giving a talk in the Physics Department at Queen Mary, University of London (I used to know it as Queen Mary and Westfield College, but I don't know why they dropped the Westfield!) Looking at the other people giving departmental seminars this semester I seem to be in good company - three FRS's, a dame, an OBE, the Lucasian Professor, and mainly Professors (not lowly Post-docs!) I hope my talk on gravitational waves doesn't disappoint.

Low tummel

I will follow in the grand tradition of very late posts about my kayaking trips by only just getting round to telling you about my trip from just over a week ago. A small group of six of us went to the River Tummel, which was a new river for me. It had been raining reasonably hard the week prior to the trip (nowhere near as hard as the past week though) and as we drove up most rivers seemed to have a good amount of water in them. But, the lower Tummel is a dam release river and when we got there it was very low due to there having been no recent release. This meant there were going to be large sections of the river that were quite scrapey. Once we were on the river it wasn't too bad, although for the first half of the river there wasn't much to do except dodging rocks. The second half of the river had the majority of the falls and rapids and things picked up well when we got to these. On one of the first drops (probably the easiest) I managed to get myself stuck against the rock at the top, and due to not leaning into the rock I capsized and went down the drop on my head, and eventually had to swim. However that was the only swim of the trip (we had been hoping to have none). Further down the river we stopped to play at the bottom of a rapid by dipping our kaykak's noses into the water and popping out - I only tried this once as I got flipped - I had a couple of attempts at rolling (the second of which almost worked), but had to be T-rescued this time. There were some good fun drops. We all negotiated S (or Z) falls without any problems. The final fall was the Linn of Tummel, which is a grade 4 or 5 depending on the water level - due to the low levels it was probably a 4 when we did it, but it did mean that to the left of the second drop there was a nasty rock shelf that was exposed. After quite a bit of scouting out the line to take and setting up safety, we all decided to go for it. Everyone made it down without any mishaps, and we all avoided the rocks (after this I heard a story of someone breaking their arm when the hit those same rocks). Despite the low water levels, and my one swim, it was a really fun trip - small trips seem to work quite well. I should be out again next Sunday.

Handling things

The events in Paris last night (for those who've not seen the news this refers to the World Cup qualifying play-off game, involving France and Ireland, in which Thierry Henry performed one of the most blatant handballs ever seen, leading directly to a goal that in the end knocked Ireland out) have lead to the inevitable calls for a rethink over whether we have video referees in football, especially for decisions such as this. I have mixed views on video referees in football. On the one hand I like the fact that in real time during a game controversial refereeing decisions will get made and are allowed to stand, because I think it adds something to the game as a form of entertainment - basically it gives people something to discuss/rant/argue/complain about during and after the game, which a lot of people get enjoyment out of, even if it's a strange perverse masochistic enjoyment when bad decisions go against your team. It would be nice to just discuss a game with regards to the actual football that was played, but to be honest a lot of the time refereeing decisions have far more mileage, especially in often otherwise dull games.

But that said, when refereeing decisions do go against your team it can be really infuriating when you know that a quick replay of the event by the fourth official, and a word in the refs ear, would have easily set things right. You generally have to hope that such decisions even themselves out over the course of a game/season/tournament. Last night's event was slightly different in that it was a one off (over two legs of course) knockout play-off game, so one bad decision against you could be, and was, disastrous. When huge amounts of money are involved in the outcome of a game, or it involves missing out, or not progressing in, a major tournament, I can see that video refereeing may be very welcome.

But, I'm still not entirely swayed back to the arguments for video refereeing. I'd like to see something else first, although it may be far harder to implement than video reffing, and that's trying to make the players more honest! This again is something that's been bandied about in football discussions for quite a while, whether it's been trying to stop player diving, or trying to stop them abusing referees. Often the argument goes "Rugby [or insert your idea of the most honest and respectable sport here] players don't fake injuries (hehe), or abuse the ref, so why can't footballers be more honourable in their conduct?", and I still don't see why this idea of trying to make footballer's less inclined to cheat can't be encouraged more. This has started to some extent, via some disincentivisation, in that footballers who are caught diving after the event can face game bans and fines. But for things like blatant handballs that the referees/linesmen don't spot, how about having the players own up to these infringements straight away, and if they don't, and this is spotted afterwards, then they suffer similar consequence. To get more honesty it might just be a case that refs should start questioning players more when something untoward is noticed by opposition players. For example last night Shay Given was telling the ref that he'd seen a handball, so had the ref asked Henry what happened maybe be would have admitted it (as he did after the game!) - whether a player would admit it is why you'd have sanctions in place for dishonesty. It was interesting to read some of Trapattoni's comments after last night's game, when he said just that

"The referee had time to ask the linesman and then after to ask Henry... It would not have been the first time a player would have asked and it would not have been out of turn."

so maybe the onus should lie more with the referee than the player.

To be clichéd and just go back to the well trod "XXX players are more honest than footballers" argument that I mentioned, I'd just like to say that in some sports (e.g. snooker [some might argue it's not really a sport, and more a game, hobby or past-time, but in my eye's it has balls and they're being hit with something, so it counts as sport!]) players are expected to indicate whether they've committed a foul, and as long as you have mutual honesty from both sides things work out fine. I don't expect football players to now start confessing their every onfield indiscretion to the ref, but for certain things if the ref asks them what happened I'd hope they could be honest about it.

At the start of the post I said that one of my dislikes of video refereeing was that it might makes games less exciting to discuss by taking away the controversy. I think my idea could well make thing's even more dull, but at least it'll be honest! ;)

SciMon Diary: Day 14

Unlike my last post this one's coming to you a bit earlier than normal. That's because when I leave the detector today I will be hitting the road and not coming back. It's my final shift! And afterwards I'm going to be driving up to Vancouver.

As shifts go this one has been very easy. It would have been nice to have an easy shift due to the detector being stable and locked in science mode, but unfortunately this has been easy due to the detector being out of science mode for the whole time! In fact we've been like that for nearly 24 hours (since just after the end of my shift yesterday). It seems that one of the operators (naming no names) yesterday changed some filters that have kind of screwed with our ability to get back into lock - until this morning they weren't even able to initiate the first stage of locking the detector (there are a few stages you go through before you have light locked down both arms at full power). The large earthquake in Indonesia then didn't help things. We^* have managed to come back into lock for a while, but with quite a poor range. Hopefully things will improve by the end of my shift, by which time I can hand over the reigns to someone else. [As I type this we've come back into lock!]

^*in all these posts when I've said "we" I've generally been talking about something that's been done by the detector operators, whilst I've sat back an watched.

SciMon Diary: Day 13

I'm a day late in posting this, but for completeness feel I should write something. Yesterday's shift involved quite a lot of going in and out of lock. There were a few seismic spikes that may well have been caused by the wind, which had picked up considerably yesterday. This wind made the drive home a bit more fun as I had to battle against it a bit and avoid the tumbleweed flying across the road.

I've not really got anything more to say about the shift, so I'll just add that yesterday evening I watched an episode of Stargate Universe. I've not really watched any of the other Stargate franchise (well I've seen the original film, and caught the odd episode of the original series), but I thought this was very good. From what I've seen I think this is rather darker than the other Stargate spin-offs, and more in the mould of BSG. I don't think there will be many light and fun episodes, with rather more emphasis on lurching from one seemingly hopeless situation to another. Unfortunately I caught episode four (and most of episode five), so I think I'll be having to download the first three (which sort of form a three-part opening episode) when I get home. Robert Carlyle is very good in it too.

SciMon Diary: Day 12

I've not been feeling too well today (I suspect a mild case of radiation poisoning), so I can't really be bothered writing anything. But to satisfy your LIGO cravings here's a LIGO dance:



Note how they form an L-shaped interferometer and the dancers act out the laser light (which is obviously what they intended). They try out a few different, and maybe slightly unconventional configurations though, but I think they throw in a Sagnac there too.

SciMon Diary: Day 11

Today the student became the master when I got to impart all my SciMon knowledge to a new trainee. Firstly I described the importance of waxing cars, sanding floors, and painting fences, and how they should practice that over and above all else - this bemused the trainee, who thought such things couldn't be applied to looking after a gravitational wave detector. They'll be thanking me when they enter the local SciMon tournament and those SciMons from the other detectors (I'm looking at you Livingston - the evil dojodetector) try dirty tricks to win.

SciMon Diary: Day 10

Like last Tuesday (and in fact every Tuesday) today has been a maintenance day at the detector, which means that we've not taken any science mode data and have been out of look for pretty much my entire shift. There's therefore not been much for me to look at detector-wise, so I've been busying myself with me regular work - this has mainly consisted of getting increasingly frustrated with the Frame Library (a set of software that creates, and reads, data in the format that we use for gravitational wave data). I have also attempted to make some inroads into writing my lecture for the SUPA course on gravitational waves (I've not got very far, but if you want a sneak preview of what it'll be like then I'll mainly be talking about stuff from this review article.)

I currently feel like I'm now coming down with a cold, which should make the next few days extra fun!

SciMon Diary: Day 9

Not really much to say today, but I don't want to leave a gap in the diary, so here's my summary of my shift: some science mode; some non-science mode; some seismic noise; no big earthquakes (at least none during my shift - a 6.2 magnitude one in Samoa hit us just after my shift ended.)

To add a bit of spice to this entry I'll let you know what I get up to afterwork! I get home, go the gym, make dinner, watch TV with a couple of beers, go to bed. Sounds exciting doesn't it! I sometimes mix it up with a trip to the supermarket, and today had the great fun of doing some washing. This has been my social life for the last two weeks. I don't know how I'll cope and interact with people when I get back to Glasgow - it'll be sensory overload.

SciMon Diary: Day 8 (week 2)

When I arrived at the detector we'd been in science mode for about 5 hours and that continued for another 7 hours of my shift - a nice 12 hours at a range of ~17 Mpc. I'd been hopeful that we'd stay in lock for the whole of my shift, which would have made things nice and easy, but unfortunately something happened. It did allow me to actually do something in trying to track down the source of the lock loss - it wasn't an obvious seismic event, and various accelerometers on on a variety of optical benches were inconclusive (I had a lot of help to show me what channels I should be looking to perform the diagnostics). By the end of my shift we had some clues, but still didn't know what the ultimate cause was, or whether the same thing had caused loss lock on other occasions. I had learned a fair bit more about the diagnostics software though, and the locations of a variety of optical benches.

Day off

I started my day with a nice 2 hour 45 minute drive from Richland to the White Salmon river (Google maps was quite accurate in it's allotted trip time). As I said previously I was off to raft the river with these guys. I arrived about an hour early (seeing as I wasn't completely sure how long the drive would take, so I left quite a bit of leeway), so went and had a look at the river and the Husum falls - there were a few kayakers paddling about. I was the first to arrive, but soon after a large group of guys who'd be rafting with us turned up, followed (a bit late) by another local couple. The group were a bunch of guys (mainly from Seattle) who were out on a bachelor weekend - they'd had a big night in Portland the night before, but seemed quite perky and up for it (well the groom-to-be was looking a bit pale, but he made it through ok). Our river guides for the day were Todd (one of the co-founders of the company) and Drew - they kitted us out and then drove us up to the get in.

At the get in (a private get in further up the river than the standard commercial get in, that allowed us to do a load more rapids) we had a introduction to whitewater rafting - how to sit in the boat; how to paddle; what to do if you fall in, etc. We then got split into two groups - it was the bachelor party in one boat with Todd, and the couple (Darrell and Amanda) and me in the other with Drew. Once in the river we did a bit of practicing paddling forward, paddling backwards, and turning, and then got going - the couple had both rafted the river before, so I was the only beginner in the boat. As we had fewer people in our boat we were a bit more nimble and manoeuvrable than the other guys. The top half of the river was a succession of class III rapids and we survived them all and I got the hang a paddling on a raft (which is unsurprisingly quite different that being in a kayak, it being a big open rubbery-ring thing rather than a plastic thing that you're enclosed in). About halfway down we reached a bit where there was a class V fall, which we walked around. After the fall there was the opportunity to rejoin the rafts either by jumping of a ~20 ft drop into the very cold (it being glacial melt water filtered through basalt) water, or walking down. Me and four others choose the jumping option.

After that there were a few more nice rapids, but the main event of the trip was the final Husum falls - about a 10 ft drop that's apparently one of the larger commercially rafted falls in the US. Before reaching it we practiced what to do when we went over the fall - drop onto the floor of the raft and grab onto the available lines. We ran the fall quite easily, but got quite a soaking at the bottom.

Rafting the White Salmon river

It was a fun trip. The guides were really good guys and the other rafters were very nice. But, I have to say, I'd have far preferred to kayak the river. In the raft you actually don't get to do much - you hardly need to paddle - and as it's so big you don't get the proper feeling going through waves and off drops (it kind of smoothes everything out). I do think it would be fantastic to run in a kayak though. I would recommend rafting, but probably you'll enjoy it more if you've not kayaked any class III or higher stuff before. I would also highly recommend doing a trip with Wet Planet Whitewater too.

My drive back was quite tiring and I actually now ache far more from sitting in a car for nearly six hours than from the paddling.

SciMon Diary: Day 7

So I've reached the halfway point in my scheduled shifts - 7 down and 7 more to go. Today was generally seismically quieter than previous days (maybe the workmen just don't work as hard on a Friday!) and there were no major earthquakes, so we were able to maintain lock for longer and get a better range. We managed to keep in science mode for about half of the shift.

At the start of each shift I have to talk to the outgoing SciMon, look at the electronic logbook (elog) that's kept, and then write an entry detailing the detectors' performance during the shift. We have a variety of figures of merit (FOMs) that are displayed in the control room, examples of which include: a running plot of the range; the detectors state vector (i.e. whether we're in science mode or not); the average power in various frequency bands; the time to which, at the current sensitivity, we could reach the Crab pulsar's spin-down limit; different frequency bands from seismometers located at various parts of the detector (i.e. the central station, or the ends of the two arms of the interferometer); and the glitchiness of the detector. At the end of each shift plots of these FOMs are automatically posted on the elog, and the entry we write basically describes what's shown in the plots, but giving details of things like why we lost lock (which may not be directly obvious from the FOMs), glitches that occurred, and events in the seismic channels. These notes can then either inform the people who work on the detector about potential glitches in the detector system (that they can hopefully fix), or be used if an interesting event is seen in an astrophysical analysis to check that there's no other more mundane reason for the event. Anyway that was a long winded way of me getting round to saying that the automatically generated elog FOM plots were not actually generated before my shift (the script that runs them had accidentally not been restarted following a change), so I had to try and generate my own FOMs to describe what had gone on. I didn't do quite as professional a job with my amateur effort as in the standard plots, but I at least displayed the science segments and range for the previous eight hours.

We again had a school group in the control room today, and again their first questions seemed to be about the two clocks - what is it with school kids and clocks? Have they never seen them before?

My shift ended with us increasing the laser power from the 8W of normal weekday running to the 14W normally used at night and weekends. More power means more sensitivity (see this nice tutorial on laser shot noise for why), but it can also make the detector harder to control and easier to knock out of lock, so that's why the higher power is generally only used when it's seismically quieter. With this higher power we were managing ranges of over 16Mpc. Hopefully that'll continue over the weekend and when I go back in on Sunday we'll have lots of nice data.

Now I just have to prepare myself for tomorrow's rafting trip. Here's a preview of what I'll be doing:

SciMon Diary: Day 6

There was a pleasant surprise this morning when I arrived at the detector. We were in lock, and the nasty noise I mentioned yesterday had gone (although there was still quite a lot of noise making the data below ~100Hz rather jumpy). This noise source caused there to be huge wings/sidebands on the 120Hz and 180Hz lines in the data (these lines are harmonics of the 60Hz line, which comes from the AC frequency of the US mains electricity). The noise seemed to have started when one of the optical benches (on which sits a variety of optics, like mirrors, beam splitters and such) was "landed" - it had previously been floated on a very thin layer of air. So, one of the things that was done yesterday was to re-float the bench. It looks like it was this that improved things, but it's not entirely conclusive (other things like slight realignments were performed). None of that happened during my shift, but it was nice to see the work payoff.

During the shift we were still troubled by the low frequency anthropogenic noise and we only stayed in lock for about half the shift, but that's better than yesterday (when there had been issues other than seismic noise keeping us from reacquiring lock).

We had some excitement in the control room when we were invaded by a large party of local school kids, but the seemed reasonably restrained and asked some questions about the various monitors in the control room (the group was split into two to visit the control room and both groups asked about the two big clocks we have, one of which shows the local time [PDT at the moment] and the other that shows UTC). While they were there I had some pieces of paper, with complicated looking maths on it, so hopefully I looked like a proper scientist to the students.

SciMon Diary: Day 5

Another poor day for the detector. We weren't having maintenance day today, but we were out of lock for the whole of my shift. It's those pesky workmen again making a lot of noise in the 1-3Hz seismic band. This is the frequency range that relatively local anthropogenic activity generally manifests itself in, so we have a monitor which shows this to check how it correlates with our being in lock, or our inspiral range. Earthquakes generally show up in the 0.03-0.1Hz band and can also knock us out of lock, so we also monitor this (there was a magnitude 6 earthquake today off Samoa, which showed up as a large spike in this band, but as we were out of lock anyway it didn't hurt us).

Seeing as it wasn't looking like we'd get any science data it was decided that we'd let people go and play with the detector in the afternoon. One of the hopes was that we'd be able to track down a source of noise that kept our range down for the last couple of weeks (we should be able to regularly see out to over 16-17 Mpc at night, but we've been maxing out at around 14 Mpc). Hopefully when I go in tomorrow I'll be pleasantly surprised to see that we had an increased range overnight, but it may well be a complicated problem without a quick fix.

Today I also sorted out what I'm going to do on my day off this Saturday - I'll be going white water rafting on the White Salmon river with Wet Planet Whitewater. This should give me my paddling fix and also give me something more exciting to write about on Sunday.