New building in Hannover

The Institut of Physical Chemistry in Hannover, with whom who keep a lasting collaboration through Prof. Jens-Uwe Grabow, celebrated the dedication of their renovated building last June 11th. The ceremony was chaired by the President of the Leibniz-University of Hannover and included several invited guests. The Nobel laureate Sir Harry Kroto gave a brief presentation, since he designed a new wall drawing for the Institute, inspired in the diffraction pattern of a quasicrystal. Alberto was at the ceremony as part of a short visit to Hannover.

In the picture below Prof. Kroto addresses the ceremony.

Int’l Year of Light

UN & UNESCO have promoted 2015 as the International Year of Light, IYL 2015. This global initiative will highlight “the importance of light and optical technologies for people’s lives, futures, and development of society”. A committee of the Spanish Optical Society (SEDOPTICA) will organize different activities around the year from the web “Año de la luz 2015“.

Digital Einstein

NYT informs that papers, notes and correspondence of Albert Einstein are now freely available on the “Digital Einstein” web page. The web is part of the Einstein Papers Project, which has published 13 paper volumes edited by Diana Kormos-Buchwald. The web includes a useful English translation. As a side note Einstein got a rank of 0.5 in Lev Landau’s list, a logarithmic scale of physicists productivity (Newton was ranked 0, while Bohr, Heisemberg, Schrödinger and Dirac got 1). A translated excerpt from “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” (1905) is shown below.

Spallation Neutron Source

The new European neutron spallation source will go to Lund (Sweden). Bilbao compited for this facility without success. The Swedish funding for this project is equivalent to ca. 50 km of high-speed train, but unthinkable in Spain. According to ESFRI boss Prof. John Womersley “it would have been better for Spain to build scientific facilities instead of airports and auditoriums…”. A new report from the Spanish Consortium of Scientific Societies (COSCE) recently expressed that the new 2015 national budget for Science “mantains the budget cuts and does not promote R+D“.

In the movie below coffe making is observed using a neutron source.

GAIA Live Session

Students and Faculty attended a live session to show the launch of the GAIA mission. The details of the mission were explained by Abel Calle, Chairman of the Physics Section, and Cesar García, a Spanish colleague from the ESA. GAIA will produce a star map of our galaxy, reaching well inside the galaxy bulge.

ISON comet

Nice example of gravitation: The ISON comet reached perihelion last November 28. The coronagraph on board satelite SOHO produced an impressive movie (below) of the comet turning around the sun, soon before it mostly desintegrated.