life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

So the earthquake did not appear to reach Belfast, though apparently Donegal had one earlier. elerrina_amanya has been using the laptop to do a project for uni, so have not been around much the last few days. I've been reading a book on history/philosophy of quantum physics instead, and when I did get on the internet tonight it was to check up on which was which of Bohr and Born (according to wikipedia, he was the grandfather of Olivia Newton-John) and Bohm (so inconsiderate of them all to have names beginning with B).

Have no icons of quantum mechanics, it being unobservable and all that, so going with the Orion Nebula.

There is a total lunar eclipse tonight and, happily, the sky is clear. No sign of a shadow yet, it's meant to reach totality at 2045. Apparently it won't be a dark red because there haven't been any volcanic eruptions recently, so not much dust in the upper atmosphere.

Conversation while waslking from Quantum analysis class with Dave:
Him: So, if there's a finite possibility of atoms quantum tunnelling through a barrier, does that mean that the chair is tunnelling into my skin?
Me: Yeah, but it would take millions of years for any noticable effect to take place.
Him: Well, Quantum lectures feel like millions of years. So at the end of a long class, are you more chair than human?
Me: *laughter* He's more chair now than man, twisted and evil.

This of course led to a series of 'No, I am your chair', 'Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your chair!' and 'Use the chair, Luke!' comments.

Whee for Star Wars making physics fun! (It can also be used to illustrate the theory of special relativity. So, if Luke and Yoda had a light clock on Dagobah, and Han and Leia are travelling at an appreciable fraction of c relative to them, and have an identical clock...)

I'm back at uni. Need to revise. Am going to fail Optics. I have to stop writing fanfic!! And reading it. The lights went out in our Nuclear and Radiation lecture this morning. The lecturer returned out assignments by the light of a cigarette lighter. funny if he'd set them on fire! He looks like a grown-up harry without the eyes. Weird.
Our Astonomy lectures this morning were on the Big Bang. Find first three seconds of universe unconvincing somehow. Cosmological constant Hubble expansion ptooiiieee grargh....