70% extra work - 5% extra quality (#phdlife)

I've heard this saying about science: you work 70% extra to rise the quality of your work by 5%. 

Yesterday I went through my analysis again, to be absolutely certain that I know exactly what kind of parameters and numbers and stuff that I put into it, and I've reproduced two figures. So it's not just about producing results and figures, but also about reproducing. Not like a big leap forward, but I really feel that yesterday was a good example of those "70% extra work", just to rise the quality of my work with more or less nothing.

At least; don't accuse us scientists for being lazy and not walking that extra mile...;)

beautiful library last spring <3

Today I'll hopefully reproduce two more figures, and continue writing on my article. It's library day today, like every Wednesday - meaning I'm spending the day at the library with some of my fantastic colleagues, since they're awesome, and the library is a great place to work when I need absolute silence and concentration mode <3

Hello

hello from your empty draft

at least put in some fancy graphs

and tell them, "I'm sorry, it's gonna be late"

Just found this text at PHD Comics - sort of like the story of my life these days...:P My empty drafts are my second article, my third article, and my actual thesis. (OMG!)

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Anders left a couple of hours ago, and I'm still at home, waiting for my mother to come. We're going for a little "winter holidays" lunch. Will be nice <3 I'm postponing most of today's work 'til this afternoon/evening - one of the great things about having a job like mine is the flexibility!

Stupid

I feel so incredibly stupid. I don’t understand how I’m ever going to be able to finish this, and I’m almost 100% certain I have fooled somebody real good, since they’re actually paying me for doing such a shitty job, where I don’t understand anything of what I’m doing…

Finishing a phd is really like being on the worst emotional rollercoaster - where one day you feel like you’re actually accomplishing something just because you finally managed to make a figure, and the next day you realise that even if you have that figure, how will this ever turn into an article that a real scientific paper will publish.

It’s not particularly fun.

PS: Tomorrow Anders is going away for a week, and even though I do enjoy my own company, I know I’ll miss him so much. Especially now - he really is my biggest supporter, and I hate that he won’t be here.

Friday FACTS: Black holes

Happy Friday!

I'm at Anders (not my Anders, but my good friend) and Charlotte's fantastic cabin at Nordseter (Sjusjøen). We just had a nice dinner, we're drinking wine, talking, and there's a fire in the fireplace <3 I'm about to put away my laptop for the weekend, but before I do that, what could fit better now than ten facts about black holes? Close to nothing :D Here goes:

1. Black holes are called “black” because they swallow all light, and no light (or anything) can ever escape it
2. Black holes are made when stars die and collapse (*sad*)
3. Black holes are super super super dense, and NOTHING have a higher density than a black hole
4. It's not really like what people think of as a hole, but maybe more like what we would normally think of as a sphere. But then again, it has the "traplike" properties of a hole (since you can fall into is, as if it was a hole in the ground), so you can probably think about it as a three dimensional hole ;)
5. A black hole with the size of a sugar cube weighs the same as the entire earth: 1000000000000000000000000kg (24 zeros!) - 1 septillion kilos :D
6. We know nothing about what happens inside black holes
7. If a black hole came into our solar system it would swallow the earth. This is extremely unlikely, but it’s still more likely than for example winning the lottery ten times in a row (but less likely than being struck by lightening)
8. Black holes have a horizon (or really an "event horizon", which is the boarder of the black hole) where time stands still (at least it looks like it’s standing still if we are looking at a person who is falling into it) this horizon is the point of no return, where it's absolutely impossible to escape falling into the hole. It's really just like as a a clock runs a bit slower closer to sea level than up on a space station, a clock run really slow near black holes, and this all have to do with gravity 
9. If you fall into a black hole you would be stretched (to death) like spaghetti, since whatever part of your body that reaches the horizon first will feel soooo much more gravity (since the hole is so dense and heavy) than the rest of the body that's outside the horizon
10. When black holes collide, they make gravitational waves - which were discovered last Thursday!

By the way: today I managed to finally make this figure I was talking about yesterday, so then I'm one step closer to a new article. Next week I want to finish the rest of the figures to the article, and then I'm suddenly quite close to finishing the thing.

PS. This week I just have to give you a sort of fact number 11: we don't believe that inside black holes you find book shelves. (Hint: "Interstellar")

Failure

Today I've tried making a figure. So far I haven't completely succeeded.

I managed to make the dotted lines pink, though - I guess that's one small step towards success, but it doesn't help when part two of the figure (which you don't see here) looks like I don't even know...

ATHENAS!

I løpet av den tiden som har gått siden Fukushimaulykken, og jeg begynte å blogge i september 2011, har det blitt en god del foredrag. Dette trives jeg bare bedre og bedre med, og det som begynte med noen små foredrag om thorium og kjernekraft (ikke at jeg på noen måte syns det er kjedelig eller dumt å snakke om thorium, kjernekraft og egen forskning - jeg snakker fremdeles veldig gjerne om dette!) har gradvis utviklet seg til mer og mer spennende oppdrag. Blant annet har jeg fått holde tre TEDx-foredrag, jeg har fått snakke for arbeidsgiverforeningen Spekters Arbeidslivskonferanse (Kan man være en kompetent borger uten realfag?), diverse videregående skoler har invitert meg for å snakke om kjernefysikk og forskning og sånn, og i høst fikk jeg holde hovedtalen under åpningen av Universitetet i Stavanger. 

I september i fjor ba også Kathrine Aspaas meg om å snakke om Rosa forskning da hun lanserte den siste boken sin, Rosa er den nye pønken (noe jeg syns var fryktelig stas), og etter dette foredraget ble jeg kontaktet av Athenas, som lurte på om jeg kunne tenke meg å samarbeide med dem om foredrag. 

Athenas er Norges største formidler av foredrag, og jeg takke selvsagt ja til dette. Jeg er veldig stolt over å få være på listen sammen med alle de andre utrolig dyktige foredragsholderne de samarbeider med!

Les mer HER.

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På Høyskolen i Sør-Trøndelag

"Historien om en rosanerd"; på "Jenter for realfag"

"Om kjernefysikk og forskning og sånn"; på Røyken VGS

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TEDx-foredraget kan sees ved å trykke på bildet over

Foredraget for NFF kan sees HER (bildet over er kun en screen shot)

Foredraget for Cappelen Damm kan sees HER (bildet over er kun en screen shot)

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Til slutt noen hyggelige kommentarer jeg har fått etter foredrag jeg har holdt :D

"Var på foredraget ditt nå i dag, SÅ inspirerende! Var så godt å høre på deg - selv valgte jeg også å begynne på danselinjen på vgs, men sluttet og måtte gå et år om igjen. Det var et tungt valg, så det var så fint å høre på noen andre som har gjort det samme. Nå går jeg realfag og jeg stortrives :) igjen; takk for et veldig godt og inspirerende foredrag!" 

"Hei! så foredraget ditt på ONS på onsdag og ville bare si det var utrolig interessant og inspirerende!" 

"Var på "jenter for realfag" på torsdag, og ble så utrolig imponert over ditt foredrag! Du virket så engasjert i det du holdt på med, og jeg ser så utrolig masse  opp til deg. Hadde fulgt med på bloggen din og lest om deg i a-magasinet en stund før foredraget, og jeg gledet meg til å høre hva du hadde å si, det var utrolig morsomt å høre om historien din, og hvordan man aldri må gi opp. Håper jeg en dag kan jobbe med deg og diskutere thorium og uran med deg, heheh :)"

Looking at plots, looking at code, again. Phd life as normal.

Good evening hearts <3

Today I've spent most of the day on going through the program code that sorts all of my experimental data for the millionth time. I had to check some numbers and plots in three different versions of the program that should give exactly the same results. This morning they didn't, but after going through them, first alone, then with Supervisor Sunniva, they finally gave what seems to be the same result! That means I can correct some things that I now know were wrong, and then I'm certain that everything that goes into my article is correct ;)

And I learned more about how the program works, so even though I hate spending time on these "silly" things, I guess it's still good. But it's kind of boring, though; not everything about science is SUPER FUN :P

These are the plots that first made me wonder if there was something wrong in one of the sorting programs/codes. See they're not the same? The upper one is shifted somewhat down on the y-axis. After I finished playing a code detective today, both plots look identical :D

I'm also trying to read up on the molten salt reactor, which is not my field of expertise, so if anyone can tell me how it's not a problem if you loose the flow in such a reactor I would be really happy! I know that in such an emergency the temperature in the fuel would rise, and then all of it would go into the emergency dump tanks, but I don't really understand why this is always presented as some sort of "quick fix"...

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Tomorrow is "writing day", and I'll spend it at the library, with my article. Yes, it's the same as always. The plan is to work on the introduction/motivation part of the paper, and then some on one of the sub parts of the results. I also want to make a figure that shows energy of the particles together with energy from gamma-radiation from the experiment ("particle-gamma coincidences"), if there's time *hoping*. 

Guess I have to start the day by blocking Facebook with the SelfControl app - I tried it today and it seems promising ;)