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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

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Einstein’s letter
So, I'm spending a lot of time working on my talk for Saturday these days, and a lot of my preparation is about searching for different kinds of images that I can use in the talk. As I told you on Monday, the title of my talk is "Could nuclear weapons save the planet", and there will of course be some talking about the history of nuclear weapons.
While searching for one thing, clicking on one link, and then clicking on another link in the first link, I came across this letter that Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939, when they had just discovered that uranium could fission and release those huge amounts of energy. And they were starting to understand that this could be used for making a very powerful weapon.
I just had to share this with my beautiful readers. This is history!

 

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Anders I came home an hour ago, and we're going to eat some thai curry now. We'll probably watch Big Bang Theory ( <3 ), and after that we'll actually go to sleep - we've come into this mode where we go to bed really early, and get up equally early in the morning...and it feels great!
Tomorrow will be a day with more or less 100% focus on the TEDx talk; I've started on the manuscript, but I'm not even close to where I want to be. Hope it will be good in the end 😉

 

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til "Could nuclear weapons save the planet?"
I haven't got through all that I had hoped to today, but at least I have decided on the title for my TEDx talk in just 5 days: Could nuclear weapons save the planet? 
The talk isn't finished yet, but at least I think I'm on the right track... Do you like the title? (No, I won't say anything more about the talk than what's already in the title, but if you're in Bergen on Saturday, you can come to NHH and see the entire conference live). This is my third TEDx talk in two years, and I really really want it to be the best that I can do!
BTW: I think I have decided on which shoes to wear - also an important preparation before a talk 😉

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Publisert 4 kommentarer til Facts on Friday (we pretend Monday = Friday) – EXPERIMENTS!

Since I wrote about my feelings about programming on Thursday, I got some comments and questions about how and why; which can be totally ok, but also a little annoying if it's more like "why on earth are you so stupid you're trying to do anything in C++" (no one said exactly that, it's just an example of a not very constructive comment). Like my friend, Anders (not my boyfriend, but my friend who is a boy - haha), said: "With programming you can do everything! (Except for saying out load which language you are using without someone telling you it's wrong.)"
Telling me stuff like "you have to hate yourself for choosing C++" is not exactly helping me (or anyone really), right? I didn't wake up one day and say to my self "hey, I think I want to program C++ for no reason what so ever - just because I enjoy feeling stupid". I need C++. So it's a little bit like telling your kid who is doing his/her algebra homework "you must really enjoy feeling stupid since you're doing this algebra stuff - you should work on statistics instead".
I love getting constructive comments or critique, but some comments are just making me feel more stupid than before (like: not only am I not managing the programming stuff, I'm also an idiot for trying to learn what I am learning...).
So I thought, today I want to give you ten FACTS about experiments and data analysis here at the nuclear physics group in Oslo - which is the main reason why I need any knowledge of programming these days. This is probably the geekiest (and perhaps most "technical") facts post I've had so far...but sometimes you have to be a little geeky, right? 😉
  1. The material we want to study can be almost anything - for example uranium, gold, nickel, molybdenum, iron, dysprosium, thorium or plutonium (these are just some examples of what we have experimented with the last couple of years)
  2. We make a tiny foil - a target - from the material (almost the size of a small coin), and put this inside all of our detectors
  3. There are always at leas two types of detectors for the experiments: Sodium Iodide detectors (they measure gamma rays), and Silicon detectors (they measure particles)
  4. The Sodium Iodide detectors are called CACTUS (cause it really looks like a cactus) <3 
  5. Sometimes we use more detectors than the gamma detectors (CACTUS) and the particle detectors - for example fission detectors (we used that for my uranium experiment, since uranium-233 fissions like crazy 😛 )
  6. To study the nuclei in the material we bombard the target with tiny particles; protons, deuterons (a proton and a neutron), helium-3 (two protons and one neutron), or helium-4 (two protons and two neutrons - same as an alpha particle 😀 )
  7. When a particle hits a nucleus in our target material, the nucleus gets some extra energy (sort of like it gets heated); then a particle goes out (it can be the same that went in, or it can be another one), and the target nucleus cools again, by sending out gamma radiation
  8. The different detectors will detect the different kind of stuff that comes out from the reaction in the target: the gamma detectors detect the gammas, the particle detectors detect the particles (protons, deuterons, helium-3, or alphas), and the fission detectors detect fission - the detection of all these thing are what we talk about as our data
  9. Data from the experiments we are performing in Oslo (like my uranium experiment) is typically 10-100 Giga Bytes - so it's kind of a lot 
  10. To sort all of these data we need codes/programs that go through everything and checks if there for example was a particle and a gamma that came out of the target at the same time, or maybe it was a particle and a gamma and a fission product, and what were the energie
    s of all this; the particles and the gammas - on the lucky side I don't have write theses sorting codes from scratch, on the other side I have to try to understand someone else's code and logic, which is not always very easy (when I don't understand I'm always sure it's because I'm stupid :/ )
- CACTUS <3 -
The sorting codes, and everything else I'm working on is written in C++, and that's the reason why that's the language I'm working on.
Happy Monday to everyone!


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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 My PhD ("dumbed down")
A couple of days ago I came across what I thought was a hilarious post on a web site: PhD theses dumbed down... My favourites are these:
  • Nanoparticles are weird and I accidentally made a bomb and electrocuted myself.
  • Inpatients with schizophrenia are happier and socialize more in the context of a music listening group. It was obvious before we began the project and we learned nothing.
  • Little things stick together. Here's a slightly easier way to calculate their stickiness. 
  • This protein looks like it might contribute to asthma. Oh, turns out it probably doesn't. 
  • Two proteins touch each other in a specific place in the developing heart. No idea if it's important for anything. 
  • People sometimes think about animals as if they're people. People like those animals a little more than regular animals. Except when they don't. I can't believe they gave me a PhD.  
  • Sand washes away, don't build important stuff on it.

Some of my friends, who have either finished their Phd's, or are in the middle of it, like I am, got inspired by this, and made their own "dumbed down" versions:

Jonathan: "All models are wrong, but at least now we can confirm they are wrong much faster"

Veronica: "Can electrons surf on an electric wave? Yes"

Kyrre: "How many sparks do we see when we push ridiculously strong micro waves through thin vacuum tubes? (And how do they work?)"

My thesis is, as many of you know, about issues with the thorium fuel cycle. Another day I think I will write a blog post about my thesis/project (so, a little bit more than just a one liner, but less than the entire thing - would you like that?), but it will have to be after I've finished my next paper, because after that I will hopefully know  a little more about how everything will be.
As of today, this is the best way I can "dumb down" my entire project, but I guess if it was just another day (when the weather was nicer, maybe, and it wasn't fall, and I wasn't feeling not like the best version of my self)I would probably write something different - maybe more positive :). Here goes:

Thorium is a nice thing for a nuclear fuel, but you get the f****** uranium-232 from it, and it makes everything s***. Now we kind of know a little bit more about it. Which is just sort of true.

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Here's yesterday's outfit - as I said I'm trying to be better at posting my outfits, and yesterday I was actually really satisfied with what i ended up wearing (after trying on, for example three different skirts and a pear of jeans) 🙂 My problem these days is, well, I actually don't really know what it is, but it's just hard :/  It takes forever to put together a simple outfit like the one from yesterday. Luckily I got "awarded" when I got to the University, and I bumped in to Anders, and he was like "wow, you look really great today" <3<3<3 

I'm very happy with my new, pink coat, that I ordered from Nelly.

top: Zara // ear rings: Snö of Sweden // coat: Nelly // scarf: HM // hair: I grow it my self // boobs: I grew them my self // eye lashes: au naturel (well, that's not exactly true; I do wear mascara, of course 😉 ) // skirt: 5 years old, don't remember where I bought it anymore // shoes: Bianco // lips: lipgloss from L'Oréal - otherwise they're like nature made them


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.

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Publisert 1 kommentar til Fusion on a Friday
TGIF, since that means 10 more facts. This week I just have to tell you little bit about fusion - Fusion on a Friday 😉 Hope you enjoy it!
  1. Fusion is when two (light) nuclei merge (fuse) together to form a heavier nucleus - it's the opposite of fission. (Read more about fission HERE and HERE)
  2. When very light (atomic) nuclei, like for example hydrogen and hydrogen, or helium and helium, or hydrogen and helium, fuse, they produce energy 😀 😀
  3. The sun (and all other stars in the universe) get their energy from nuclei that are fusing (like hydrogen and hydrogen, or helium and helium, or hydrogen and helium - or other nuclei)
  4. The different elements in the periodic table (up to iron) are made from fusion in stars/suns (but the heavier ones, like gold, or thorium, or uranium, for example are made in the big explosions in space)
  5. If you check the mass of the nuclei you start out with, and the mass of the nucleus you get after the fusion (so, checking how much they weigh, that is), it weighs less after the fusion than before - this extra mass that suddenly is "gone" hasn't really disappeared, but it is released as energy <3 E=mc2 <3
  6. It would be really really cool if we could produce energy from fusion, like the sun is doing - but so far we can't do it...:/ (We manage to get nuclei to fuse, but we use more energy than what we get out.)
  7. Since nuclei is made out of protons and neutrons, they have a positive charge, and therefore they REALLY don't want to get so close to each other that they fuse - it's like trying to push the same pole of two extremely strong magnets together; it doesn't work (but it does work in the sun, since it's very hot and very high pressure, so there the nuclei just fuse all the time :D)
  8. I think it's really fascinating, and a little weird, that you get all this energy from two opposite reactions - either by fusing light nuclei, or splitting heavy ones... <3 nature <3
  9. If you managed to make a fusion power plant, you wouldn't have the problem with radioactive waste, that you get from a fission power plant (a normal nuclear power plant) - so that's very nice...
  10. ...however, fusion is hard :/ We don't manage to do it (without putting more energy in than we get out) yet; but who knows what will happen in the future...? 😉
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Yesterday was date night with my Handsome - we went to Champagneria at Mathallen (our favourite place these days, I think), snacked tapas and drank their delicious self imported Cava (nom nom nom) <3 
He just left for a cabin trip with a friend, and Alexandra and me already miss him...but we will have nice weekend together too, and it will be even better to see him again on Sunday <3<3<3
Happy weekend everyone!

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.