2005-09-15

Willman I tidal features, non-bug, Farhi

Beth showed beautiful plots today of Willman 1's tidal features. She, Blanton, and I discussed issues relating to making isopleths of the angular density of stars (it requires smoothing). Of course, there appears to be substructure in the outer parts of the system, but is that substructure (a) real, and, if so, (b) physically signficant?

Sheldon, unintentionally, managed to convince me for a whole hour that I had a serious (and publicly humiliating) bug in my SDSS astrometry (or at least routines that use and display it). Fortunately, there was no bug!

Ed Farhi gave a nice colloquium on quantum computing. His group has had some significant success in demonstrating the theoretical power of quantum computing. I still don't fully understand what aspects of the power come from superposition, and what aspects come from the fact that it is analog rather than digital.

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful plots? I come here to read half-baked research on galaxy formation and development, not hear your subjective aesthetic judgments.

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