News (2015/02/07)

Hey everyone! I've got lots of news to share in this post, so let's get to it!

Regarding the blog, first of all, as you may have noticed, I've tweaked the layout of the blog! The biggest change is to the font (okay, technically the typeface, but everyone refers to it as the font so that's what I'm going to do) -- I've changed from using Helvetica to Computer Modern as my default font. I decided after my last entry that I wanted to use a serif font for the main body text just to increase the legibility for the longer posts (and sharpen things up a bit). Given I've been using MathJax to render LaTeX for all the equations, I decided after some experimentation that Computer Modern, which is the default font for LaTeX, would vastly improve the integration of equations into the text and unify the posts a bit, which I think it does excellently. Unfortunately the fonts are hosted on an external mirror, so you may notice a slight delay when loading pages (especially longer posts) but since there's a delay anyway when rendering equations, I don't think it's much of an issue, but please let me know if you disagree!

Otherwise, the only real other changes are regarding font size (which I've increased) and I've also been toying with the idea of changing post heading/sub-heading style, but we'll see how that goes using the new font. I'm pretty happy with the overall look of the blog (I spent long enough designing it!) so not much else it set to change in the near future.

There are more changes coming in terms of content as well. For quite a while now (since late September 2014) I've had an idea for a new series on the blog named 'Papers, Please', where I feature guest posts written by friends and colleagues who explain research that they have completed and had published in peer-reviewed journals for a lay audience. Not only does it give them a bit of exposure (and communication practice) it will also hopefully bring readers a more intimate picture of scientific research compared to the sort of 'big ticket' announcements you get from the news and press releases.

My usual posts normally take weeks to write at least, not only due to the time needed to write but also to research, fact-check and edit, a process which is especially difficult for posts about topics I'm not expert in myself! In addition to these posts, I have decided to also start writing much shorter posts where, instead of trying to explain a big topic in detail for an inexperienced audience, I'll be writing about topics that will be geared towards readers who are more experienced in physics or mathematics but may not have come across, for example, a certain interesting equation or operation. Hopefully this will allow me to cover more topics (and clear my ever-increasing back-log of post ideas) and give my readers a little more to read a little more often.

In terms of physics news, the Planck/BICEP2 collaboration results are officially in and the news isn't good for BICEP2's claimed discovery of primordial gravitational waves, a saga I've mentioned in previous News posts on a number of occasions (because I find it very interesting!). As it turns out, the majority (perhaps even all) of the detected B-modes were due to galactic dust. As Sean Carroll points out though, there's still lots of work to be done in this area by both theorists and observational astronomers, so in that sense there is a silver lining to that cloud!

Also, since I occasionally do recommendations on the blog, I thought I'd plug reddit, specifically the discussion subreddits Ask Physics, Ask Science and Ask Science Discussion which I occasionally contribute responses to, as well as aggregation subreddits Particle Physics, Physics, Physics .gifs, Quantum, Science and Space. The aggregation subreddits can be a bit hit and miss (if you see something that's look a bit suspect, check the comments!) but the discussion subreddits are excellent if you have a question about physics, conceptual or calculational, that you've always wanted to ask.

Before I sign off I just want to say that the next post will be the conclusion of the 'Fourier Fun' series, and I hope to have it completed shortly. I also hope you enjoy the improvements and additions I'm making to the blog, and I look forward to having them all fully implemented soon!