it's time to start correcting one of the problems i mentioned
in
this rambling. i do want to go back to grad school. i do
want my ph.d. -- this time, we'll do it right, though. it's my life.
it's the only one i'll actively remember living (provided i don't get
reagan's disease or the like). and throughout this life, from
the time i was very young, i have loved astronomy.
i talk to friends about plans, about what i really want to be doing,
and all of them mention how i light up when i say this. i live
for clear nights, if only for a glimpse of something so much bigger.
i never stop looking up on a clear night.
but all the romantic notions aside, the extremes that are available
only in other star systems and other galaxies fascinate me. i could
easily spend the rest of my life trying to understand how they work.
i've had a hankering for getting into the structure of neutron stars
since something that occured to me in an introductory astrophysics
class in college. essentially that, because the up-down-down quark
combinations are still confined to the volume of a neutron (as opposed
to in quark matter where they would form larger chromodynamically-neutral,
integer-charge structures), those neutrons would have to take up some
type of arrangement inside the neutron star. now, unless neutrons are
"squishy" under those conditions -- i have to study what the spatial
arrangements of quarks would be and what excitations, if they are present,
would do to the shape of the neutron -- let's start by saying they are
hard spheres. this is usually a pretty good first approximation in physics.
if they are, then under those extreme gravitational conditions, they
should be packed as closely together as possible. this implies an ordered
structure, as ordered structures allow for closer-packing than disorderd
ones. the highest packing fraction for hard spheres comes from placing
those spheres on a face centered cubic lattice.
the professor i had at the time didn't buy it, but i don't think he ever
thought of these structures from a condensed matter viewpoint, which
was my background at the time. i was at a colloquium about a year later
where one of the lecturers confirmed that, yes, this was how they were
thinking about neutron star structure now. this was back in 1992. i'd
love to really dig into what the thinking is now.
let me correct that -- i'd love to be responsible for and push what the
thinking is on these subjects at this point. so i have started corresponding
with the physics and astronomy department at ucla. although i need to get
back to grad school, i have no intention of leaving this area. i still have too
much to see, and i still find it unbelievably invigorating. unfortunately,
no one at ucla is tackling this particular problem. i could look around
at other local institutions, and most likely will. i think caltech would
be more than a long shot, though. i'll of course still look into it. and
i think doing something other than specifically examining neutron and quark
star structure for my dissertation would be fine, as long as it is related.
i want a good stepping stone to what i'd want to study in postdoc and as
a professor.
looking at my family's health and longevity record, and knowing my own habits,
i likely have another 55 to 60 years on this planet, barring any accidents.
i want to spend those years doing something massively *wink* fulfilling.
i'd even love to get an understanding of what happens structure-wise at
a quark-level scale when matter transforms from recognizable quarks, etc.
into a black hole. what happens at these energy densities? what are the
governing interactions? does it liberate some kind of characteristic
energy (neutrino, photon, whatever) that we can detect? can that energy
even escape, or does it end up trapped by the collapsing structure and
as part of the black hole?
see, this is what i want. this is what i want to do and what i want to
spend my life contemplating. it doesn't negate the rest of who i am, or
what i enjoy. it doesn't eradicate my ability to feel or to create or
to love. it is inherently a part of who i am, though, and it needs to be
nurtured. above all else, thinking about these things makes me happy,
and i know i have the ability and dedication to make a lifetime career
from doing so.
