Summertime, and the living's easy (or at least easier)

Well, I have survived exams. Sorry about the long break since the last post, but I was a bit (or rather a lot) distracted by trying to finish up everything to end the year. I actually didn't quite manage; I have a few assignments I still need to do, as well as a 3 credit project, so I've got some work to do over the summer. Luckily, as I've said before, the Swedish are very relaxed about deadlines, so I just need to finish this stuff up "before September" because my teacher/supervisor is leaving Uppsala that month.

The project I'm doing is actually part of the initial Introduction to the Physics Master Programme course that every master student does in the first semester. I'm using it to build up a bit of a foundational knowledge base that should help me for my thesis. I'm not totally sure where I'm going to do my thesis yet (it's very easy to go abroad for a thesis from UU, you just need to sort out the details yourself), but I'm hoping to get a project relating to the AdS/CFT correspondence. So far I only have experience on one side of the duality which is also what my little project will be about (large-N gauge theories), but I'll get some exposure to the string theory side next semester from the string theory courses, which I'm planning on taking.

A nice summer shot of Ångström.

The same, yet different

I had kind of a strange experience yesterday. I was biking to class, which is a pretty routine thing for me, and all of a sudden I got the feeling of being lost. Now if you know me you'll know that I'm terrible with directions, but come on. I've been living at my new place for about 3 weeks now and I bike to Ångström pretty much every day. I should know where I'm going. And yet, somehow, I just didn't recognize the street properly. I wasn't lost, of course, and once I got over my brief confusion I continued on my way to class. It wasn't until I saw a cloud of dust blowing around in the Ångström parking lot that I realized what was different: the streets were dry.

I know this may not sound like much of a revelation, but this was the first time I had seen my path to school without it being damp or snowy. It's been sunny and warm the past few days, so I'm going to go ahead and get my hopes up that this is a sign of winter ending. That, and the fact that even if I have class until 17.00 these days it's still light outside when I get home, which is a novelty after the darkness!

But enough about the weather. The class I was cycling to yesterday (and today) was the last component in my Quantum Field Theory course: a crash course on the Higgs boson! I had actually done something similar to this before, but that was before I had the tools to really appreciate what exactly I was doing.