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Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Reading about plutonium
That's basically what I've done today:
I've read...
...and commented...
...and Googled.
The occasion is me being a co-author on an article about (some of) the nuclear properties of plutonium-243. Now I "just" have to write down what I think about the article; what I like, what I don't like (if there's anything), and (maybe most importantly) what I don't understand 😛 
Typical #phdlife.
today's outfit - will make a post about it tomorrow <3 

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Publisert 8 kommentarer til Upset and annoyed

 

Today I was part of the "panel of scientists" on Abels Tårn - the radio show that airs on Friday mornings at NRK P2 (this particular show will not air until December; probably December 4th). This time was sort of a "special edition", where the audience were all high school students (and their teachers), and all the questions were from these students.
So far, so good: GREAT FUN! (For the first time, I was on the show together with Anders - that didn't make it any less fun <3 )
After the show, one teacher came up to me (at least I think tha's what she was), and told me she had two questions. 
Great, I thought...
But  they weren't questions, they were more like "questions":
The first one was if a Molten Salt Reactor will release less radioactivity during normal operation than today's reactors, and the second one I'm not sure if she ever asked; except she was asking me about all these Germans that had written stuff in German, and I said (several times - at first I was polite) that I don't speak German, so, no, I have not read these things (but I should, according to her). She was laughing in my face when I said that there are no radioactive releases during normal operation of reactors even today (and of course not in the future), and just told me I was wrong (and said that if I just read these German things I would know that I was wrong...). Still I didn't just leave (that would be rude), I tried to talk about radiation doses and limits - it wasn't very successful.

This teacher pretended to have questions, but was not interested in listening to what I said, and just went on and on and on about new German titles that I should (have) read. It was annoying and rude, and I'm still kind of upset, actually :/

all photos: Yngve Vogt

Maybe the worst part is that this teacher (if that's what she was) was stealing time from the students that had several questions for me, and that I would really have wanted to talk to - not to tell them so much about nuclear physics, but about science, and research, and all the amazing possibilities...
BTW: Thank you so much to the student who just wanted to tell me that she really enjoyed my TEDxOslo talk <3 The talk from LeRosey, last year, is HERE, and the one from Bergen, a couple of weeks ago will come very soon (stay tuned).
PS: It's TOTALLY OK to disagree with my view on nuclear power, but please don't pretend to ask me questions when you have no intensions of listening to what I say, and not respect me as a scientist. I try very hard not to pretend to be an "expert" on stuff taht I'm not working on, so don't pretend that I know nothing about my own f*****g field of science. Thank you <3 
PPS: Besides the behavior of this teacher, it was a great day, and I had a lot of fun being part of Abels Tårn today!

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til To know what you don't know…

As scientists I think we always really, really, REALLY want to understand whatever we're working on exactly how and why - but often on our way to the how and the why we step into different problems than the ones we were aiming at solving in the first place... I think we all can relate to saying "I don't know" can be difficult; making you feel like you've in some way failed, right? But maybe just as much as it being no fun feeling like a "failure", it can be very hard to see that knowing what you don't know can also be a result 🙂

Today we had a moment like this; realizing that what we don't understand, or don't know, is actually an important result in itself - and it is such a great feeling!

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(snaps from Instagram - @sunnivarose)
As earlier promised I'm trying to become better at girly outfit posting, so here's today's and yesterday's outfit: Same sweater - two styles! Yesterday (left picture) I styled it a little bit in the "preppy direction" - with a white shirt and a beige skirt, today more towards laid-back and comfy - with jeans and flats 🙂
Personally, I must admit I'm becoming more and more fond of the comfy style, and I really love my new, white (all white!) sneakers from Nelly, and the west from Gina Tricot. This west is seriously just perfect these days; on top of a sweater inside if it's a little chilly, or outside if it's suddenly not so chilly - or on top of a thin jacket if it's a tad bit colder outside.
Which look is your favourite?
<3<3<3

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Publisert 9 kommentarer til To program or not to program?
I did not at all get through my TO DO list today, and I hate it...:/ (I didn't even get to start at what I had planned on doing.)
I was supposed to read the two papers I'm co authoring, work on my TEDx talk (for Bergen in just a little more than a week - HELP!), get through some of the emails on my endless unanswered emails list, and try to log into the computer that I used for reactor simulations a couple of years ago, to try to get one of the input files that should be there (I'm pretty sure I don't remember the password anymore 🙁 ).
Instead I ended up spending more or less all of the day "programming" - a.k.a. feeling so incredibly stupid. I really want to learn, and be better, but it's hard...I guess maybe I feel the same way about programming that some people do about math.

Tomorrow I have to be better! Not because it in any way is wrong to spend time on trying to work on my programming skills, but because I have deadlines, and right now there is unfortunately no room for anything else than what HAS to be done... Why does everything take so much time, especially things you need to learn like almost from scratch?!? *frustration*  

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Last night we celebrated science and the Norwegian Research Council's Festaften at Oslo Concert Hall. Here are a couple of pictures taken by Yngve Vogt:
- flirting with the boyfriend - 

- discussing with the professor - 

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Fuerteventura
Happy Tuesday everyone! Guess where I'll be in exactly two weeks. I'll be on a plane, on my way to one week of vacation with Alexandra and Anders <3
I din't have a real vacation this summer, since Anders was one month in Asia, and I had to spend a lot of time preparing for the Berkeley trip in August, so I promised Alexandra that we should go on a trip when it had become fall; and that is NOW! We will finally have a week of sun, salt, and sea. We're going on a real just relax and do nothing else than sleep, swim, eat ice cream and maybe have a glass of wine or a beer-trip; to Las Playitas - a small village at the Fuerteventura Island (one of the Canary Islands). The big plan for the week is RELAX, RELAX and RELAX (and SUN) 😉
(the pictures are from the Apollo website)
BUT! Before I can take my to loves and go away, there are some to dos... 
The one, really big thing before we're leaving is of course the TEDx conference in Bergen (saturday October 3rd, if anyone are thinking about going 😉 ). The theme is The (im)possible reinvented, and I think I finally know what I want to talk about this time; I've thought it through, and looked at several possibilities, and yesterday I made the decision that I will actually talk about thorium. I was first thinking about a more general "science is awesome" kind of talk, but then, when I was out walking and thinking, on my way to the University yesterday morning, it just came together - this will (probably) be my most "technical" TEDx talk, so far (who knows if there will be more talks like this in the future...the big dream is of course to give a real TED talk!). So, then I just actually have to make the talk - which will be one of the things I will spend a lot of my time on from now on and until the 3rd.
In addition to the TEDx conference, I have these TALYS calculations I'm doing. I should finish them before I go. If I manage to do that I think it'll be soooo much easier to relax - knowing that I more or less have the material ready for two papers, that "only" have to be written, when I get back to Oslo again 😛 And if I have made most of the tables and most of the figure for my uranium paper, I'll be so relaxed, I will probably be flying...
So, list of TO DOs that have to be done before Sunniva can go on vacation:
  • TEDx - thorium and weapons and stuff (and maybe Titanic...;) )
  • TALYS - finish it all (!)
  • My paper - make the tables and the figures, and place them where they are (probably) supposed to be

In addition I'm co authoring two papers that I have to give my comments on. I will definitely be doing some reading today;) And some writing on my talk. And maybe some TALYS work.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Love song for nerds (*heart*)
So, Anders and I are watching The Big Bang Theory these days - we've just started season 7, and are kind of speeding through (we've both watches a lot of it before, but never from the beginning to the end, and not together). I know some physicists think the show is making fun (like, in a mean way) of us physicists, but I don't think it does - i just LOVE it <3

Anyway - this weekend we saw the episode where Howard has made a song for Bernadette: If I didn't have you (Bernadette's song), and it really is the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time! 

See/hear the song HERE (seriously, DO IT ;))
Here's the lyrics - what do you think?

If I didn’t have you, life would be blue,
I’d be Doctor Who without the Tardis,
A candle without a wick,
A Watson without a Crick.
I’d be one of my outfits without a Dick-ie.
I’d be cheese without the mac,
Jobs without the Wozniak.
I’d be solving exponential equations
That use bases not found on your calculator,
Making it much harder to crack.
I’d be an atom without a bond,
A dot without the com,
And I’d probably still live with my mom.

And he’d probably still live with his mom.

Ever since I met you,
You turned my world around.
You supported all my dreams and all my hopes.
You’re like Uranium 235 and I’m Uranium 238,
Almost inseparable isotopes.
I couldn’t have imagined
How good my life would get,
From the moment that I met you, Bernadette.
If I didn’t have you, life would be dreary.
I’d be string theory without any string.
I’d be binary code without a one, Cathode ray tube without an electron gun.
I’d be “Firefly”, “Buffy” and “Avengers” without Joss Whedon.
I’d speak a lot more Klingon:
Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam.

And he’d definitely still live with his mom.

Ever since I met you,
You turned my world around.
You’re my best friend and my lover.
We’re like changing electric and magnetic fields:
You can’t have one without the other.
I couldn’t have imagined
How good my life would get,
From the moment that I met you, Bernadette.
Oh, we couldn’t have imagined
How good our lives would get,
From the moment that we met you, Bernadette.

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#wants
Quiz (radiation course stuff), TALYS (the code I'm using for the analysis of my beloved uranium these days), and Nelly(.com) - that's basically my day today. 
Tomorrow I'm getting up really early, to get Alexandra to kindergarden, before the (way too) early lecture in computational physics... I'm not taking the course, but I'm trying my best to learn more C++ 😛 Then there will be more TALYS, writing on my next paper (yeay!), reading a paper I'm co-authoring, and hopefully no online shopping 😉
Here are some of things I actually ended up buying, by the way:
#buys
jakke // topp // sko

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Risks in perspective (#Selfie)

Today I've been busy all day - doing close to no actual research (#phdlife 😛 ).

A substantial part of this Monday was spent on radiation protection training (which, of course, is very important for us to be able to do the research we're doing - so it's not like the day was wasted...it just feels a little bit like I didn't do "anything"), and I just have to share this list where the risk of radiation exposure is sort of put in perspective. This list gives an estimate of basically how many days of your life you have to say bye to, when you do different things:

  • smoking 20 cigarettes a day: 2370 days (6.5 years)
  • being 20% overweight: 985 days (2.7 years)
  • alcohol consumption (US average): 1 year
  • mining and quarrying: 328 days
  • construction accidents: 227 days
  • car accidents: 207 days
  • home accidents: 74 days
  • receiving a dose of 10 milli Sievert per year, every year for 47 years: 51 days
  • natural hazards (earthquakes, floods): 7 days
The conclusion is that the risk of radiation (even quite "large" doses; 10 milli Sievert in one year is much more than I have EVER received working at the cyclotron laboratory in Oslo, or at any other nuclear lab) is smaller than most other activities you do in your life - just wanted to tell you <3



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My physicist office look of today was in the comfy style I've become so fond of lately; favourite jeans (HM), #Selfie top (HM), and white (or maybe more like grey now?) Converse.


Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Obsessing…

Monday!

Meaning another week with my plot... Obsessing about my plot. Trying to make it just perfect. Try different colours. Different styles. Obsess - science style.
On Friday I was actually thinking that this is it, that I was finished with this part of the data analysis; but then, today, I realised that other people have done similar things (analysed other uranium nuclei, for example), and that they have put five of those black pumps in the plot, instead of just four - so now I'm thinking about doing the same thing. 
As you can see I've added more colours to it now; there's another, lighter pink colour, a yellow-orange'ish colour, and the uranium-235 is bright green - since someone suggested that as a colour 🙂 Maybe you have suggestions for the black bumps? They don't have to be black...;)

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Right now I'm having a glass of wine with supervisor Jon - he's here for the week, and in addition to obsessing about this plot, I've shown him where I am in the entire analyse thing. We looked at a couple of other plots too today, and he said that there's definitely a cool paper in there...:D (Of course we don't know for sure yet, but I choose to be optimistic <3 ) If you follow me on Snapchat (I'm sunnivarose, of course), you've seen the plot that Jon was so excited about.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Data, data, and more data
Today I've spent time at the EXFOR database - hate it and sort of love it at the same time... 
So far it's the "worst" database I've visited, but so far it has also given me what I've needed *mixedfeelings*.
Then I've worked on my strength function plot, which is starting to look like something now. Tomorrow I hope to tweak it so that it will be ready for my next article 😀  #phdlife

Here are some details of today's plot:

//this may sound silly; but I was so proud of my self when I managed to make these labels (no, I do not love ROOT - yet) 😛

//shapes <3 
//this has to be fixed - the slope of the square points needs to be more in line with the two sets of triangles (task of tomorrow!)

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Everyday life at the University (black holes)
This morning I went to a lecture (computational physics) for the first time in 2.5 years, and after that (not in the course, but during a break) I learned a new fun fact: the black holes in the center of galaxies are not like "normal" black holes... 
I actually sort of thought that a black hole is a black hole - that they are just what you get when a really big star dies and collapses. But then I learned that the black holes in the center of all galxies - that we call "supermassive" black holes - are much bigger than the "normal" ones, and they can't be created by the collapsing of a star. Actually, we don't even know how they are created, we just know they're different...!
We do know they are huge, though; their masses are more than 1 million suns together; and the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy (which is called Sagittarius A) has a mass equal to about 4 million suns - that's a lot 😉
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