Love is an 3n1gm4 code

This evening there will be a nice seminar in Cagliari organized by the association Collettivo Redshift (of which I am honored to be a member) in collaboration with ARC association and LGBT CERN association.

Love is an 3n1gm4 code

The LGBT* subset of the scientific community.
From Alan Turing to nowadays queer scientists.

As you might guess from the title, the starting point for the discussion is Alan Turing and in particular his troubled life due to persecutions towards his sexuality... up to the final tragic suicide.
If this is the result of the situation in the scientific community 60 years ago, what is the situation now? Is it true that the scientific environment is more open-minded and friendly?
For those who are in Cagliari here are some more infos:
Facebook event
Queeresima Event

for those who cannot be there: what is your personal experience? 
Tell us what you think in the comments to this post! 


Note: the seminar will be mostly in Italian, but instant translation in English will be available.
* For the few who don't know, LGBT stands for Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender and is intended for all the possible nuances of gender and sexual identity.

Physics Today: Teaching GR to undergraduates

Whereas in 1919 Arthur Eddington was allegedly at a loss to name a third person who understood general relativity, presently its knowledge and use are widespread. We have come a long way in a century.

From here. A quite detailed analysis of different approaches to the teaching of GR.

D'Inverno's book is not listed in the recommendations of the Physics Today article. 

Unfortunately, this book is often underestimated. 

It's basic and all, but i found it brief, clear and to the point. I mean, you'll find a quick answer to most of your doubts in this book.

Paper of the Day: A relativistic model for Strange Quark Star

Il paper del giorno della sezione General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) di ArXiv, comparso in data 30 Maggio 2012, va a: A relativistic model for Strange Quark Star. Gli autori di questo articolo propongono un modello relativistico delle cosiddette “strange quark stars”, nell’ambito del modello a quark denominato “MIT Bag model”. Essi discutono varie caratteristiche fisiche del modello e mostrano che il modello soddisfa tutte le condizioni di regolarità. Ciò che gli autori si propongono di fare è di interpretare infatti le relazioni Massa-Raggio di alcune stelle di neutroni che non sono compatibili con gli usuali modelli standard per le “normali” stelle di neutroni. Nel caso in questione i candidati sono 4U 1820-30, Her X-1, SAX J 1808.4-3658(SS1) e SAX J 1808.4-3658(SS2). Essi trovano che per la “strange star” 4U 1820-30 il valore stimato della costante del Bag è molto vicino ai valori accettati. 

NuSTAR press conference at Nasa today.

Today, at 10am Pacific Time, 1pm Eastern time, or 7 pm Italian time, the official press conference about NuSTAR, the next NASA Small Explorer mission, will be held. See all information here.
The launch is scheduled for June 13. 
An older post on NuSTAR in this blog, instead, can be found here.