#Demil loops

[webionaire]

LOOPING, PFEIFFER HAS RECENTLY CLAIMED, is “fundamental to the structure of the digital.”5 Within electronic media, audio and visual alike, data turns in circles. Loops are ubiquitous and, as such, tend to pass unnoticed in our everyday experience. Yet Pfeiffer insistently calls them out for attention. The two-channel piece that lends the MoCA show its title, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, 2000, is emblematic in this regard. It is structured around a speech delivered by Cecil B. DeMille introducing his 1956 biblical epic, The Ten Commandments. On one monitor, the producer makes his way to the proscenium through a parted curtain and then immediately disappears, over and over. On the other, he repeatedly approaches the microphone stand installed for him there, cutting out and restarting before he is able to utter a word. This figure is rendered at once comedically and agonizingly ineffectual: Falling in and out of the loop, he appears as though perpetually descending into a pictorial abyss.

[buckevantommy]

starting strong with the real life edna mode! 🤩

..oh, ok. so it's a fanfic. 😅

note: sexism is everywhere at the start.

george costanza's dad?! 😲

we got a clever conwoman on the scene! life hack: pick up an empty or near-empty glass and wait for an inebriated group to stumble and knock it out of your hand and offer to buy you a replacement. then order a bourbon on the rocks. with a beer chaser. 🫡

and she's the Queen of Hollywood?! 🎞️

first look at the cockpit.

are these futuristic tarmac shuttles still around? they're kinda cool.

the ensemble of passengers is gonna be fun i can tell. this woman is an actress who flew with Cecil B. DeMille in 1917. "On the way home we did loop-de-loops so that I could see the moon upside-down."

OH! that's Gloria Swanson playing a fictionalised version of herself! and this was her final film role. 🎞️

also: why do i have a sudden urge to rewatch.. what was it called.. oh! Airplane (1980) 😂 It's a film version of a crack fanfic.

they're saying 'neat' a lot. like 'fine' or 'cool'? is it a 70s slang version of genz's 'bet'?

the phonecall ends with a promise, but flight attendant nancy hung up before she could hear her (jerk) boyfriend say "i love you" btw. 👀

they're waiting on the runway for an ambulance to arrive. m

pretty plane seats! 💜💗

there's a secret doggo on board! 👀

the jinxing begins: "You're a nervous flyer? I've flown thousands of miles under very difficult circumstances and I can assure you there's nothing to worry about." 🙃

..that doesn't look oh&s friendly. 🤨

it's the exorcist girl!

i really like this young flight attendant, she doesn't take any shit.

also: linda blair legit saying: "It's so exciting! The people are so interesting!" and the flight attendant being like: "Okay ma'am you gotta turn your seat around for takeout. but you little girl? just lay there and hold onto your guitar, you'll be fine." 🫠

do you.. do you wanna man the controls with me as we ascend into the skies?.. 🕹️

3 pilots on the sauce heading up in a small aircraft during bad weather. i see where this is going.. 🥃🛩️ oh, just the one guy in the plane - he was drinking coffee not booze but was noted to not look good. i feel like i'm overexplaining things. 😅

ah, the 70s. 💨

HE CALLS HIM PAPA 😅 but also: "Once again skill and daring have overcome fear and anxiety." 👀

..the guitar made a weird twang and the mom like: huh?

there's a party in the cockpit and sexism abounds. 😐☕

did they seriously have in-flight movies in the 70s??

the nun is HELEN REDDY Y'ALL! 🤩 and she sings Best Friend 🎸🎶

Gloria Swanson mentions two Hollywood friends: Carole Lombard and Grace Moore - who both tragically died in plane crashes. 🙃

starting to get the 'airport' in the title: we keep coming back to the ground. i really love seeing different parts of an airport in the 70s btw. they shot on location at Salt Lake City International so we're getting to see real planes and vehicles and settings. 🛬

this guy is flying home for a big meeting. he stops to phone his wife - who tries to warn him off continuing to fly through bad weather, but he insists. 🫢they're so in love (and they get to say it!) 😩🫶

..they both seem to sense the impending doom btw. 👀

i think we should all watch Airport 1975 before 8x02 airs. good thing someone uploaded it in HD to dailymotion:

[the-mirror-sunflower-owo]

Could you draw these 3 (sorry, forget their names :( )

With this?:

Idk, I just imagined them and Eiw in the middle xd

AAAAAH, sorry that it took so long @juanipeaches-21 ahsfhjds

It is such s perfect idea! Haha

Thanks for the ask! x3

Also, no worries about the names!

Its Kohell, Demil and Reget

(btw a little note: the twins should be waaaaaay shorter than Kohell, I was just too lazy to edit it xd)

[gypsyastronaut]

[lokisgame]

Worth 1000

inspired by MSRafterDark 

She knew he knew that he was pushing the line, the whole night she let herself just be game, for anything that came to his brilliant mind. It felt like, letting him love her, was the best gift she could give herself. She felt positively pampered, first with his hands, then lips than his generous laugh as they let themselves just be. She’d cherish the memory of this rainy September evening, but now Mulder wanted something in return, he wanted a tangible proof. She taught him well indeed.

“C’mon Scully, just one,” he smiled holding up the camera.

She pulled the sheet up, by sheer reflex, and saw that hint of a pout, like he felt a drop of cold water from a bucket marked ‘no’. But was she really so opposed to the idea? Not really, no.

She gave him a sly grin and poised herself, one arm over her head, other modestly covering the edge of sheet. “Okay, I’m ready for my close-up, mr. DeMille.”

Mulder grinned and camera spit out the picture. He shook the paper, giddy to see it, and when he did, she lowered the sheet, slowly revealing more naked skin. Bare breasts, nipples hardened, she felt as if she was stripping for him again, inviting his gaze to admire. His hand stilled and his eyes went wide, so she gave him another encouraging, sexy smile. The camera whizzed again, and she saw his cock twitch back to life. Oh the heady felling, infinite loop of shared desire.

She pushed the sheet farther down, then let go, taking her hand back, leaving him to go on. Mulder licked his lips, slowly pushing it down to her hips, and she stretched her arms above her head, flexing the muscles of her tones stomach. He couldn’t resist ghosting fingers over her skin, the scar left by the wound that almost did them both in, her delicate ribs and the underside of her breast. She never stopped him, never gave a sign he went to far with his liberties. He met her eyes and she winked at him, permission enough to take the third snapshot.

She made herself a little more comfortable, the tension getting to her hot and swelling center. Mulder was getting distracted, probably couldn’t believe his luck, stunned into silence. She brought him back by shifting her legs and kicking the sheet farther down, a hint of pubic hair caught his eye. He was sitting crosslegged beside her and she saw him standing tall and proud, as if saluting her beauty, so she wriggled her hips letting the sheet slip, and he got it. Slow palm down her hip and thigh, and she was naked in front of him, God and the polaroid camera.

He was ready to give the game up, committing the last image to his photographic memory, the paper unworthy of such a sacred image. His hand was climbing back, fingers teasing the inside of her thigh, finally reaching her curls, but finding the gateway shut.

She wanted him to do it, she wanted this moment preserved. Mulder remembered the camera and gestured with it, she smiled and gave him the smallest nod.

She could see him swallow. She could see him twitch. She saw the drop of cum on the tip and his hands shaking.

The shutter clicked, the paper blushed, and his eager lips were on her, making her laugh as she let him in.

[nerdladydraws]

Four Designs, Three Chalkboards, Two Languages, One Verse, and One Strange Crush

Four Designs, Three Chalkboards, Two Languages, One Verse, and One Strange Crush

I have a confession to make.

I love Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments. All three hours and forty minutes of it. And not just because of nostalgia because my family used to watch it every year. Not just because Charlton Heston is so epic, it’s comical, but then loops back to epic again. Not just because that parting of the waters scene and the tornado of fire still impresses me… but…

[ulrichgebert]

Der zweite Airport ist, dem Gesetz der Serie folgend, noch dramatischer, damit aber irgendwie auch etwas unwahrscheinlicher geworden. Ein Zusammenstoß in der Luft metzelt sämtliche Kapitäne dahin bzw. setzt sie außer Gefecht, so daß die tapfere Stewardess Karen Black das Flugzeug lenken muß. Weil sie eine Frau ist, kann sie das natürlich nicht (so war das 1975!) und braucht Hilfe von einem echten Helden in Gestalt von Charlton Heston. Man erkennt ihn fast nicht im Anzug. Die Anzüge verdienen allerdings ein großes Lob. Außerdem: eine singende Nonne (immer schön), die bewährt trinkfeste Myrna Loy, das todkranke Mädchen, das dringend eine neue Niere braucht, sowie –das ist eigentlich das Bemerkenswerteste– Gloria Swanson, die der Einfachkeit halber eine legendäre Filmschauspielerin namens Gloria Swanson spielt. Sie flog schon 1917 Loopings mit Mr. DeMille.

(x)

[wikipress01]

Tiny fossil skull found in Utah yields big changes in paleontology

An illustration exhibits the small mammal, Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch, as it might have appeared because it lived in what’s now Utah 130 million years in the past.(Photo: Submitted)

The 130-million-year-old skull of a tiny mammal, found amid a set of dinosaur bones after a St. George paleontologist got here throughout a cache of fossils greater than a decade in the past, may reshape the best way scientists take into consideration the breakup of Earth’s historical super-continent, Pangea, and about the best way mammals unfold internationally.

The skull, found almost full, represents a brand new species, dubbed Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch; the latter half interprets to “Yellow Cat” in the ancestral language of the Ute tribe. And whereas it was found in an uncovered rock formation on Bureau of Land Management land northeast of Arches National Park, it has some unlikely kinfolk — a subgroup of creatures often known as Hanodontidae, which had beforehand solely been found in areas of North Africa.

CT scanning of a 130-million-year-old fossil allowed scientists to find out the mind construction of a brand new species of mammal that’s reshaping the best way scientists take into consideration Earth’s historical super-continent Pangea and the best way mammals and their kinfolk dispersed themselves among the many continents. (Photo: Utah Geological Survey)

In a paper revealed this month in the scientific journal Nature, lead creator Adam Huttenlocker, a paleontologist and assistant professor on the University of Southern California, suggests the invention implies that Pangea broke up into smaller continents about 15 million years later than beforehand thought. And that might reshape the best way scientists take into consideration the early migrations of mammals and their shut kinfolk between Asia, Europe, North America and the southern continents.

“For a long time, we thought early mammals from the Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago) were anatomically similar and not ecologically diverse,” Huttenlocker mentioned in a written assertion. “This finding by our team and others reinforce that, even before the rise of modern mammals, ancient relatives of mammals were exploring specialty niches: insectivores, herbivores, carnivores, swimmers, gliders. Basically, they were occupying a variety of niches that we see them occupy today.”

Introducing a brand new species

Paleontologists working with the Utah Geological Survey pose with two excavated blocks found in japanese Utah which have to date yielded fossils from 5 totally different animals. (Photo: Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm)

The skull, now on show on the Natural History Museum of Utah, was found amid a cache of dinosaur fossils uncovered by paleontologists with the Utah Geological Survey.

Its make-up, mixed with current information of its kinfolk, signifies Cifelliodon would have been about six inches lengthy and weighed about 2.four kilos, coated with fur and with a shallow snout and downturned face. It would have suckled its younger like fashionable mammalia, however laid eggs just like the platypus and echidna.

Its broad molars counsel a weight loss program of leafy vegetation, and a reconstruction of its mind utilizing CT scans of the skull counsel it had giant olfactory bulbs and would have had a wonderful sense of scent. This additionally means it was seemingly nocturnal.

It is the primary mammal skull found in Utah’s Cretaceous-period rocks, and comes from a bunch of primitive mammal kinfolk often known as the Haramiyida, which had beforehand not been found in both the Cretaceous or North America.

It is notably youthful than associated Jurassic-era mammals found in Eurasia and North Africa.

The fossil, with its European ties, provides an essential level of collaboration with newly found European dinosaur teams from the identical sorts of rock, indicating they have been left at a time when the Atlantic Ocean had not totally opened.

A loaded discovery

Laboratory work is completed on a block pulled from a dig web site in japanese Utah that yielded the fossils of dinosaurs and a small mammal. (Photo: Utah Geological Survey)

The fossil represents the most recent science to return out of Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation, an Emery County geologic surprise offering troves of recent info to paleontology.

It was found virtually by chance inside a lab whereas scientists have been working to extract the dinosaur bones that surrounded it.

The assortment, taken from a web site found by Andrew Milner, the paleontologist and curator on the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in St. George, has to date yielded fossils from 5 creatures, together with three dinosaurs and a crocodilian that’s nonetheless being researched.

Milner mentioned he initially noticed dinosaur bones on the web site when he was first there in 2004, however when he returned later they have been gone, apparently eliminated illegally.

Luckily, he had confirmed the location to James Kirkland, the state paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey.

“(Kirkland) came back with a couple of geologists to talk about the formations there, just the geology, and he happened to be standing on that exact site and found bones weathering out all over the place,” Milner mentioned.

Two giant blocks of rock have been taken to a laboratory, the place fossils from two giant iguanodontian dinosaurs have been studied. Beneath the foot of one among them was the Cifelliodon skull.

Kirkland mentioned the location has yielded essential discoveries already, however may seemingly produce extra as work continues on the opposite fossils.

“The same geology that gave us Arches National Park gave us this basin that totally surrounds Arches, that loops all the way around it, and that gives us all these dinosaurs,” he mentioned.

“We’ve been finding dinosaur on top of dinosaur,” he added.

Follow David DeMille on Twitter, @SpectrumDeMille.

Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch

The identify of the brand new mammalian species means “Cifelli’s tooth of the Yellow Cat,” honoring Oklahoma paleontologist Richard Cifelli for his contributions to the Cretaceous mammal analysis in Utah and the American West, and utilizing the Ute tribal phrases for yellow, “wahkar,” and for cat, “moosuch.”

Read or Share this story: https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2018/05/29/tiny-fossil-skull-found-utah-yields-big-changes-paleontology/653798002/

Source hyperlink

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[levysoft]

Forse nessuno conosce l'elettrone come il fisico Gerald Gabrielse. Una volta ne ha tenuto uno intrappolato per dieci mesi per misurare la dimensione del suo magnete interno. Quando scomparve, lo cercò per due giorni prima di accettare che se ne era andato. Dopo un po' di tempo, dice,"ti appassioni alle tue particelle".

E Gabrielse ha avuto molto tempo per appassionarsi all'elettrone. Da più di 30 anni, ha messo al lavoro sofisticate trappole elettromagnetiche e laser per rivelare i segreti della particella, sperando di trovare i primi indizi di ciò che va oltre il modello standard della fisica delle particelle, la teoria fondazionale del campo, consolidata ma incompleta.

Eppure, per molti di quegli anni, sembrava che il suo lavoro fosse oscurato da quello negli impianti ad alta energia come il Large Hadron Collider (LHC), l'acceleratore di particelle da 5 miliardi di dollari e con una circonferenza di 27 chilometri situato nei pressi di Ginevra. "C' è stato un tempo in cui non erano molte le persone che facevano questo tipo di cose, e mi chiedevo se la mia fosse la scelta giusta", dice.

Dai margini della fisica, Gabrielse inizia ora improvvisamente ad avvicinarsi alle luci della ribalta. La Northwestern University a Evanston, Illinois, sta per aprire un primo istituto di ricerca dedicato alla fisica delle particelle su piccola scala, e lui ne sarà il direttore-fondatore.

La mossa segnala un cambiamento nella ricerca di una nuova fisica. I ricercatori hanno sognato di trovare particelle subatomiche che potessero aiutarli a risolvere alcuni dei problemi fisici più spinosi rimasti. Ma sei anni di dati di LHC non sono riusciti a produrre una rilevazione definitiva di qualcosa di inaspettato.

Sempre più fisici si muovono nella direzione di Gabrielse, con allestimenti modesti che possono trovare posto in normali laboratori universitari. Invece di metodi basati sulla forza bruta, come la collisione di particelle, questi sperimentatori delle basse energie usano tecniche di precisione per cercare deviazioni straordinariamente sottili in alcuni dei parametri fondamentali della natura. La minima discrepanza potrebbe indicare la strada per il futuro del settore.

Persino ricercatori legati a lungo alla fisica delle alte energie stanno cominciando a interessarsi agli esperimenti a basse energie per cercare di guardare oltre il modello standard. Se emergessero degli indizi, potrebbero indicare la strada per spiegare i misteri della materia oscura e dell'energia oscura, che insieme costituiscono circa il 95 per cento dell'universo. "Questa è una sorta di spostamento tellurico di come pensiamo di fare fisica", dice Savas Dimopoulos, fisico teorico alla Stanford University in California.

Sfera schiacciata

Per certi versi, questi esperimenti su piccola scala sono un ritorno alla fisica delle particelle di un tempo.

Gabrielse si è ispirato in particolare a un esperimento del 1956 del fisico Chien-Shiung Wu. In un laboratorio di quello che ora è il National Institute of Standards and Technology degli Stati Uniti a Gaithersburg, in Maryland, Wu trovò un modello spaziale asimmetrico di come gli atomi radioattivi di cobalto-60 emettono elettroni. Quel risultato, insieme al lavoro teorico, confermò che due particelle scoperte quasi un decennio prima erano in realtà una stessa cosa. E contribuì anche a consolidare la foducia nel fiorente quadro teorico per le particelle fondamentali dell'universo e per la maggior parte delle sue forze fondamentali, che presto si sarebbe evoluto nel modello standard.

Ma la fisica si stava già muovendo verso macchinari sperimentali più grandi e più costosi. Sostenuti dal prestigio e dal fiume di denaro ottenuti nel dopoguerra, e dalla previsione che nelle collisioni ad alta energia sarebbero emerse nuove particelle, i fisici continuarono a proporre acceleratori di particelle sempre più potenti e costosi. E li ottennero: a Stanford, al Fermilab vicino a Batavia, in Illinois, al CERN vicino a Ginevra e altrove. Quark, muoni, neutrini e infine il bosone di Higgs sono stati scoperti così. Il modello standard era completo.

Eppure, come descrizione dell'universo, il modello standard è incompleto. Non spiega, per esempio, perché l'antimateria e la materia non siano state create in parti uguali all'inizio dell'universo. In tal caso, si sarebbero annientate a vicenda, lasciando un vuoto senza nulla.

Il modello standard non dice niente neppure sulla materia oscura che sembra legare le galassie tra loro, o sull'energia oscura che sta allontanando l'universo a un ritmo accelerato. "Mi piace definire il modello standard il grande trionfo e la grande frustrazione della fisica moderna", dice Gabrielse. Da un lato, dice, permette ai fisici di prevedere alcune quantità "con una precisione inconcepibile". Dall'altro, abbiamo un buco che possiamo guidare attraverso l'universo".

Il lavoro di Gabrielse, che cattura e ispeziona particelle a bassissime energie, lo ha portato in una struttura più piccola del CERN per cercare le differenze tra materia e antimateria. Lui e i suoi colleghi hanno ottenuto la misura più precisa di una grandezza fisica: la "dimensione" del magnete interno dell'elettrone, o spin.

Ma nell'ultimo decennio uno dei suoi principali obiettivi è stato determinare la forma dell'elettrone.

Anche se di solito è visto come un semplice punto dotato di carica negativa, l'elettrone potrebbe celare delle complessità. Se venissero violate alcune simmetrie della natura - regole che dicono che l'universo si comporta allo stesso modo anche in caso di vari capovolgimenti - la carica dell'elettrone non avrebbe una distribuzione perfettamente sferica. Le particelle virtuali che fanno costantemente capolino dentro e fuori l'esistenza distorcerebbero la distribuzione complessiva della carica, schiacciandone leggermente la forma e conferendole quello che i fisici chiamano momento di dipolo elettrico, o EDM. (si veda l'infografica di Nature)

Il modello standard predice un piccolo schiacciamento, così piccolo - dice Gabrielse - che "di fatto non c'è alcuna speranza che venga misurato nel corso della mia vita". Ma alcune teorie postulano particelle non ancora rilevate che potrebbero rendere l'EDM dell'elettrone circa un miliardo di volte più grande.

Molte di queste teorie rientrano in una classe chiamata supersimmetria, un'estensione del modello standard che potrebbe spiegare perché la massa del bosone di Higgs è più piccola del previsto, e potrebbero unificare le forze elettromagnetica, debole e forte nel primo universo. Potrebbero anche rivelare la natura della materia oscura.

I tentativi di misurare l'EDM dell'elettrone risalgono a più di quattro decenni fa. I fisici hanno approfittato del fatto che un elettrone con un EDM può ruotare, o subire una precessione attorno a un campo elettrico, tracciando un loop. Più forte è il campo elettrico, più veloce e facilmente rilevabile è la precessione.

Ma le complicazioni abbondano. I fisici sperimentali non possono lavorare con elettroni solitari perché un forte campo elettrico li indurrebbe a schizzare via. Fortunatamente, atomi e molecole bloccano efficacemente gli elettroni sul posto - e possono produrre campi elettrici interni più forti del più forte campo prodotto in laboratorio. Poiché gli atomi e le molecole assorbono la luce a frequenze specifiche, i ricercatori possono usare i laser per intrappolarli e raffreddarli, e spingere i loro elettroni interni in diverse configurazioni.

A metà degli anni 2000, varie generazioni di esperimenti basati su queste tecniche avevano tracciato il limite superiore delle dimensioni dell'EDM dell'elettrone, ma non al livello che avrebbe rivelato l'influenza delle particelle previste dalla supersimmetria o da altre estensioni del modello standard.

Uno di questi esperimenti era stato condotto presso la Yale University a New Haven, in Connecticut, dal fisico David DeMille e dai suoi colleghi, usando ioni di tallio. Ma DeMille stava esaurendo le idee per ottenere una maggiore precisione nel suo esperimento, che richiedeva una disposizione sempre più bizantina di laser, camere a vuoto e criogenia accuratissimamente calibrati.

Una svolta arrivò nel 2008, quando due teorici del JILA, un istituto di ricerca a Boulder, in Colorado, riferirono che l'ossido di torio molecolare aveva un campo elettrico interno circa 1000 volte superiore a quello del tallio, che avrebbe reso molto più facile osservare un effetto di precessione nei suoi elettroni. Circa nello stesso periodo, Gabrielse - che allora era alla Harvard University - aveva concluso un lungo studio e aveva deciso di dedicarsi alla sfida del dipolo dell'elettrone. Parlò con John Doyle, anch'egli fisico alla Harvard University, che aveva inventato un nuovo modo per realizzare fasci mirati di molecole fredde e lente. Anche DeMille aveva contattato Doyle, e i tre decisero di unire le forze. Nel 2009, l'esperimento del terzetto, denominato Advanced Cold Molecule Electron EDM, o ACME, ricevette una sovvenzione di 6,2 milioni di dollari per 5 anni dalla National Science Foundation degli Stati Uniti.

Caccia alla precessione

Il gruppo ha così creato un laboratorio ad Harvard. Gabrielse ha lavorato per rendere più stabili e precisi i laser del team - otto in totale. Doyle si è concentrato sulla produzione di fasci di alta qualità di migliaia di molecole di ossido di torio. E DeMille ha progettato un sistema per allineare le molecole e proteggerle dalle interferenze esterne.

Nell'esperimento un campo elettrico creato in laboratorio orienta le molecole di ossido di torio. Una coppia di laser imposta quindi la direzione di rotazione di un elettrone all'interno di ogni molecola in modo che sia perpendicolare al campo elettrico interno della molecola, e un campo magnetico viene usato per produrre lo spin della particella. Se l'elettrone ha un EDM, questo si aggiungerà o sottrarrà leggermente a tale rotazione. Dopo circa un millisecondo, la luce laser polarizzata che rimbalza dalle molecole rivela fino a che punto gli elettroni sono stati nteressati dalla precessione. L'esperimento viene poi ripetuto con gli orientamenti delle molecole invertiti, e questo dovrebbe invertire la direzione di precessione dovuta a un EDM. Quanto maggioree è la differenza nell'angolo di precessione, tanto maggiore è l'EDM.

All' inizio del 2014, i ricercatori hanno riferito di non aver trovato prove di un EDM nella loro configurazione, che era sensibile a una differenza angolare di circa 100 miliardesimi di grado. Ciò ha spinto verso il basso il limite superiore dell'EDM elettronico di più di un fattore 10, a 8,7 × 10^-29 in unità di centimetri moltiplicati per la carica dell'elettrone. Se un elettrone avesse le dimensioni della Terra - e la Terra fosse una sfera perfetta - il limite corrisponderebbe allo spostamento da un polo all' altro di un frammento di materiale di circa 20 nanometri di spessore.

Il team di ACME ha sostenuto che il risultato ha grandi implicazioni per le teorie che vanno oltre il modello standard, escludendo molte ipotetiche particelle supersimmetrich in un range energetico sondato dall'LHC. Ma alcuni teorici sostengono che molte delle teorie rimaste - supersimmetriche e di altro tipo - prevedono un EDM elettronico più piccolo di quelli esclusi dal team ACME. Gabrielse trova sempre più artificiose le teorie superstiti. "I teorici sono bravi ", dice. "Ogni volta che escludiamo qualcosa, cercano comunque di farla franca".

ACME non è solo in questo sforzo. Dopo aver vinto nel 2001 il premio Nobel per aver creato una nuova fase della materia chiamata condensato di Bose-Einstein, il fisico del JILA Eric Cornell ha collaborato con Jun Ye, sempre del JILA, per cercare un EDM. Invece di manipolare le molecole mentre passano in un fascio, come fa ACME, Cornell e Ye hanno deciso di usare un campo elettrico rotante per intrappolare ioni molecolari con grandi campi interni, producendo precessioni elettroniche rivelabili più facilmente. DeMille definisce l'idea "brillante e tutt'altro che ovvia".

Cornell dovette fermarsi per un po' quando nel 2004 perse un braccio a causa di una fascite necrotizzante. Ma questo gli ha dato lo spunto per una battuta che ripete spesso: "La sua manica sinistra è vuota, così dice sempre: 'Se c'è qualcuno che si intende di asimmetria, sono io'", racconta il suo ex collega di laboratorio Chris Monroe.

Dopo un decennio di progettazione e affinamento di quello che Cornell definisce un "esperimento su due banconi" (perché occupa due banconi del suo laboratorio), lui e i suoi colleghi hanno finalmente pubblicato i primi risultati l'anno scorso, restringendo di un fattore 1,5 il limite di ACME del 2014. "Non mi sarei imbarcato nell'impresa se avessi capito quanto sarebbe stato difficile", dice ora Cornell.

Ora i ricercatori sono vicini a nuovi risultati su EDM. I fisici ACME hanno aumentato di un fattore 400 il numero di molecole che possono inviare nel loro apparato sperimentale. Si aspettano che questo e altri affinamenti migliorino la precisione dell'esperimento di un fattore dieci, permettendo loro di andare a caccia di effetti al di là della gamma di energia di LHC. Il team JILA si sta anche preparando a esperimenti destinati a superare la portata di LHC. E i ricercatori dell'Imperial College di Londra, che detenevano un precedente record di misurazione dell'EDM dell'elettrone, hanno in programma esperimenti con molecole di monofluoruro di itterbio raffreddate al laser; sperano che il loro test sia 1000 volte più preciso del primo test di ACME.

L'elettrone non è l'unico spiraglio della fisica a basse energie da cui guardare al mondo al di là del modello standard. Alcuni fisici sono alla ricerca di EDM nei neutroni o in atomi che, come l'elettrone, potrebbero rivelare una violazione di una delle simmetrie della natura. Altri stanno adattando una tecnologia completamente diversa per usarla in fisica fondamentale: gli orologi atomici. Le frequenze delle radiazioni assorbite ed emesse dagli atomi che compongono questi orologi dipendono solo da alcune costanti fondamentali della natura. Una leggera deviazione di queste frequenze potrebbe dare sostegno a teorie che cercano di spiegare perché la gravità è molto più debole delle altre forze dell'universo.

La capacità di testare questa idea è rimasta fuori portata fino ai primi anni 2000, quando i ricercatori hanno sviluppato orologi atomici che operano nella gamma ottica dello spettro elettromagnetico invece che in quella delle microonde. Le loro frequenze più alte hanno fatto sì che il tempo potesse essere campionato a una velocità molto più elevata, permettendo la creazione di orologi così precisi da perdere o guadagnare meno di un secondo in un arco di tempo pari all'età dell'universo.

Da allora i ricercatori hanno usato i dati di questi orologi per cercare cambiamenti nel rapporto tra le masse dell'elettrone e del protone e nella costante di struttura fine, un parametro fondamentale che regola l'intensità dell'interazione elettromagnetica. Altri, su proposta di Asimina Arvanitaki, fisica teorica al Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics a Waterloo, in Canada, stanno usando gli orologi per cercare sottili oscillazioni che potrebbero essere create da un ipotetico candidato a materia oscura chiamato assione, o da una particella correlata.

Finora, queste indagini non hanno prodotto alcuna nuova fisica. Ma mostrano che una generazione più giovane di fisici sta infondendo nuove idee nel campo, dice Dimopoulos, già supervisore della Arvanitaki per il suo dottorato. "Ci sono molte idee teoriche che sono state, in un certo senso, trascurate perché tutti si concentravano su LHC e gli acceleratori", dice.

Nessuno si aspetta che questi esperimenti da bancone sostituiscano gli acceleratori di particelle. Ma potrebbero guidare i fisici verso la giusta gamma di energie per uno studio più dettagliato. Attualmente la comunità dei fisici che lavorano con gli acceleratori sospetta che serva più energia di quella per cui è stato progettato l'LHC, ma non è chiaro quale energia sarebbe sufficiente. I risultati di esperimenti a basse energie potrebbero influenzare una decisione multimiliardaria su un prossimo grande acceleratore, e questo ha aumentato la pressione sui ricercatori che lavorano nella fisica "da tavolo". "Dobbiamo fare quasi tutto con una cura superiore a quella tipica degli esperimenti di fisica atomica standard", dice DeMille.

Gabrielse nutre grandi speranze nel prossimo esperimento del team e nel lavoro al suo centro alla Northwestern, che sarà inaugurato quest'anno. Ma non può fare promesse. "Stiamo cercando di prendere all'amo un pesce la cui forma, colore, velocità e bocca sono del tutto sconosciuti".

[gypsyastronaut]

[eliteweddingcoordination]

Mr. Demille, I’m Ready for My Glenn Close-Up: ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Opens on Broadway

Glenn Close at the press event for Andrew Lloyd Weber’s adaptation of Sunset Boulevard. Bruce Glikas

“So they were turning, after all—those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.”

–The late Joe Gillis narrating Norma Desmond’s mad staircase descent at the end of  Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard

Norma Desmond met the press the other day at her Palace (commonly known as The Palace at 47th and Seventh). Questions flying, cameras flashing—she loved it.

But then, what’s not to love? The cause for all this media commotion was her long-time-in-coming comeback—or rather, as she pointedly prefers, her “return—a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.”

Actually, regardless of how offensive it may be to poor Norma’s super-sensitive sensibilities, comeback is the correct word—especially when referring to Glenn Close, the Tony-winning Desmond and, arguably, the greatest Desmond of all, who will commence a 16-week reprise of her 1994 triumph Feb. 9 in case you missed it.

Close’s objection is with the word “reprise,” and she speaks right up: “This time, my whole approach was that I didn’t want to go back to anything I did before. I came to it just thinking I’m not recreating. I’m exploring, starting from scratch. I’m 22 years older now. I’ve had 22 years more of craft and life. It’s bound to be a different take.

“Also, it’s a story that invites revisiting. It’s one of the greatest stories ever to come out of Hollywood—and certainly one of the greatest roles ever written for a woman, either on stage or in film. Playing this character takes everything. As cathartic as the story itself is—for any actor or actress in it, it’s also cathartic and, ultimately, very satisfying just to feel that all your creative muscles are being flexed while you do it.”

Close is 69 now and holding herself to seven performances a week. “We found out you can’t do eight performances a week of this role without getting sick. Anyone who has ever played this role will tell you it’s physically, and vocally, challenging.”

Those who saw her make her West End debut last spring as Norma at London’s English National Opera say that age makes La Desmond less monstrous and more vulnerable. “To the astonishment of us all, Glenn was even better than before,” declares Christopher Hampton, who co-wrote the show’s book and lyrics with Don Black. “She nailed it. I’ve seldom been in a theater where people got so excited.”

Michael Xavier, Siobhan Dillon and Fred Johanson, who co-starred with Close in that production, are making their Broadway debuts repeating their performances here.

Hampton was the first person to see a musical in Sunset Boulevard. When the English National Opera passed on it, he gave the idea to Andrew Lloyd Webber—mostly as a way of politely passing on doing the book for The Phantom of the Opera.

Last month Phantom started its 30th year at the Majestic as Broadway’s longest running show—so, when Sunset Boulevard opens tomorrow at the Palace, with Cats and School of Rock also in town, Lloyd Webber will be the second composer ever to have four shows running simultaneously on the Main Stem. The first was Richard Rodgers, who, in the summer of ’53, had four of his shows with Hammerstein going full blast on Broadway (South Pacific, The King and I, Me and Juliet and Oklahoma!).

The British composer is a bit embarrassed, and more than a little humbled, by that statistic. “I met Richard Rodgers very, very early on in my career,” he says. “To think that I got anywhere near what The Great Man did is really astonishing for me.”

Unlike Rodgers, who needed a show to focus on to access his melodic storehouse, Lloyd Webber claims he compulsively composes every day. “Melody is what I really believe in. Right now, I have in my drawer of melodies probably 20 that I’m really pleased with. It’s a hopeless waste and strain because I can’t find a subject I want to do as a show, which is dreadful for me, but I can’t help it. I just think in melodies.”

A 40-piece orchestra, uncommonly large for Broadway, should help to hold that melodic line. “This is really the esteemed English National Opera’s staged concert version of the show,” Lloyd Webber underlines. “Because of that, it’s very much more about the material than the actual performance, so, therefore, now it’s all about the music and the story—without the encumbrance of huge scenery.”

John Napier’s multi-ton, Tony-winning gilded staircase, which dominated Norma’s gothic-Victorian-baroque mansion in the original Sunset Boulevard, is a brain-burner for anyone who has seen it. It sometimes ascended so a party scene could be played on stage under it, and, during the shaky L.A. tryout, its revelers would break into collective cold sweats from the after-shocks that followed a big California quake.

“That went on for months,” Close recalls. “The suspended stage always moved a bit when the earth was still, but, after that, even little shakes got the adrenalin going.”

She may be glad to see that magnificent monstrosity go, but it has been replaced by many more stairs for her to scale. “It’s more abstract and more deconstructed than Napier’s gorgeous, hyper-realistic set,” points out the show’s director, Lonny Price.

Glenn Close and Andrew Lloyd Weber at a press event for his Broadway adaptation of Sunset Boulevard. Bruce Glikas

“The original set and production encouraged a kind of grandiosity and, I think Glenn would even say, a kind of grotesquerie. Now, it’s a middle-aged woman fighting for her life and her career. She’s eccentric, for sure, and she’s been hurt a lot, and she’s going to lose her mind, but she’s not there yet. We watch her incrementally lose it.”

Just prior to presenting his star to the press, Lloyd Webber gave Close’s arm an affectionate squeeze and whispered to her like an excited schoolboy, “We’re all here because of you.” Which was true, he admits, “What happened was that we had the opportunity to do it at the English National Opera, and they asked Glenn. She had never done it—or anything on stage—in London, so I think she was keen to do it.”

It may be remembered that Lloyd Webber hired his stateside Evita, Patti LuPone, to world-premiere Norma in London, with the promise of her repeating the role on Broadway, but, when he saw Close do Norma at the American premiere in Los Angeles, he decided to give her the Broadway shot instead, resulting in an extremely acrimonious lawsuit that wound up paying for LuPone’s swimming pool. In this year’s Tony race, LuPone has the edge (via her Helena Rubinstein in War Paint) over Close, who, for all her from-the-ground-up work on Norma, isn’t eligible for seconds.

“Glenn,” Lloyd Webber still insists, “is the best Norma Desmond that I’ve ever seen.”

“Glenn,” Lloyd Webber still insists, “is the best Norma Desmond that I’ve ever seen.” That may or may not include the original madwoman of Sunset Boulevard—Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s 1950 film classic. A haughty beauty from Keystone Kops days, Swanson was not known to be much of an actress before—or after—Sunset Boulevard, but for this one film Wilder manipulated from her a great performance of a silent screen star whose career crashed and burned with the coming of sound.

It’s now hard to believe, but she was not the first, second or third choice for the role. Wilder’s first choice, Mae West, was insulted by the offer. His second—Pola Negri, a Polish actress who didn’t survive sound—still had an accent that would mangle Wilder witticisms. He even went to Pickfair to pitch the picture in person to No. 3, Mary Pickford, who reacted in such horror at the story he was telling he stopped. Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer were asked but wouldn’t budge out of retirement.

Swanson was the suggestion of George Cukor, who, ironically, would direct the one performance that would take the Academy Award away from not only Swanson’s Norma Desmond but also Bette Davis’ Margo Channing: Judy Holliday’s Billie Dawn.

A major plus about the Swanson casting was that she’d worked with director Erich von Stroheim, whom Wilder hired to play Norma’s first husband and lasting butler, Max von Mayerling. The film they did together for producer Joseph Kennedy, Queen Kelly, was never finished, but a clip of it flickers by in Norma’s home screening room.

The role of Joe Gillis, who draws very dubious double duty as Norma’s screenwriter and lover, also went through casting loop-de-loops. Montgomery Clift bolted two weeks before shooting was to begin because he thought the older woman-younger man relationship reflected on his real-life one with Libby Holman; Fred MacMurray disliked the gigolo aspects of the role; Marlon Brando was considered too much of an unknown to take a chance; MGM refused to loan out Gene Kelly, so Wilder had to settle for a Paramount contract player, William Holden, who came through big time.

Wilder and his longtime writing partner, Charles Brackett, almost came to blows over a montage showing what Norma goes through to look young for the cameras. They never made another movie together. It was their 13th collaboration, and it won them—and someone named D. M. Marshman Jr.—a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Marshman was a poker crony of Wilder’s whose chief contribution was dreaming up the two-decade age gap between Norma and Joe and turning him into “a kept man.”

Fearing a negative reaction to the movie’s damning depiction of the film industry, the script was kept top secret and titled A Can of Beans while in production. That fear turned out to be real: At the movie’s splashy Hollywood premiere, a livid Louis B. Mayer caught up with Wilder and accused him of biting the hand that fed him.

Wilder, never one to be at a loss for a witty retort, shot back a terse “Fuck you!”

Source

http://observer.com/2017/02/glenn-close-sunset-boulevard-broadway-andrew-lloyd-weber-interview/