In Finn’s Town

I’m in East Lansing, Michigan, on our annual fall trip to hang out with Finn during whatever free time he has. Which is tricky, because he has no free time; he’s extra busy prepping for two presentations he’s making later this month at two physics conferences.

I have been able to meet him for lunch each day (even busy people eat, right?) and he’s been telling me a bit about what’s involved in preparing these presentations, which is a lot more complicated than I had imagined. The research he’s presenting about is fascinating, and his talking about it is even more so when Tracy asks him questions. Turns out that Tracy speaks some of Finn’s language, and they can have a whole conversation that’s entirely foreign to me.

When I asked them about it over our hummus and babaganoush yesterday, they were hard pressed to say what that language is—what could live in both the worlds of physics and economics? I suggested: statistics, they countered with: plain ol’ math, which is a bigger puzzle, because neither of them has taken a bunch of graduate math classes. Tracy explained that this kind of math is more like tools you learn to use as you need them. In other words, they are speaking a form of science.

Maybe this is a superpower these two brains have. Since we’ve started on the road I’ve watched as Tracy literally learns to solve nearly all the puzzles of nomad life, things that range from mixups with our complex insurance to the kayak racks falling off. Something goes wrong, Tracy learns about it and fixes it. In my world, for the most part, if something goes wrong, I find someone to fix it for me.

As long as I’ve known Finn, he’s been strongly curious about the unknown, and maybe that’s evolving to solving the unknown. And, maybe, this is why some scientists are so highly sought-after in a variety of fields, not just science. When they’re faced with a mystery, they’re good at figuring out which tool might solve it, and if they don’t have that tool handy, they make it handy. Fascinating.

(A shout-out here to Finn’s dad, who also has a clever and mysterious mind. He’s fluent in the language of family.)

For a peek at the science mind, here’s the title and description of the presentation Finn is working on now.

Three-flavor oscillations and beyond the Standard Model physics with IceCube DeepCore
IceCube DeepCore is a subarray of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory that gives the detector sensitivity to GeV-scale atmospheric neutrinos by virtue of the closer spacing of its digital optical modules. With ten years of observation of GeV neutrinos over a range of long baselines, IceCube has placed competitive constraints on the atmospheric oscillation parameters sin2(θ23) and Δm232 and on the sterile mixing matrix elements |Uτ4|2 and |Uμ4|2. Several additional analyses are underway that leverage DeepCore's atmospheric neutrino data. These include measurement of ντ appearance and several analyses that use the effect of Earth's matter on neutrino oscillation, including measurement of the neutrino mass ordering, validation of the broad features of the preliminary reference Earth model (PREM), and measurements constraining additional physics beyond the Standard Model.

And here are a few previous posts about spending time with Finn, the “Come Along for a Hike” one being a basic description of his work.

Health and Exercise

What else have we been up to when we’re not asking Finn questions about neutrinos? Nomad-health-appointment trickery, for one.

I get a yearly mammo here, but this time as soon as I was released from the scanning device and told, “We’re all done,” I realized I’d made a mistake. The scans would not be read on site while I sat in the little changing closet in my thin robe; they’d be sent off-site to a radiologist, and if more were needed (more are always needed with me), I’d have to make another appointment. Which I can’t do, seeing as how we’re skedaddling in a few days.

I explained this to the technician, and she must’ve flagged my scans for immediate interpretation because I got an “all clear” note within the hour. Hurrah! Something medical related to me worked!

And the next day I enjoyed an encore rejoice. The morning of a dentist appointment, I realized I’m supposed to take antibiotics ahead of the appointment to lessen the chance of infection in my knee. (The jaw bone’s connected to the knee bone, apparently.) I explained again that I couldn’t take the meds and reschedule once they were in my system, so I was given a double-dose of amoxicillin to take that afternoon. I was so relieved that this too would turn out fine that I forgot I have a mild allergy to penicillin. You can bet I was checking my skin for a rash and making sure I was breathing fine and clear the whole 24 hours after that double dose!

All’s well on that front, too. Whew.

And, I’ve been riding my bike for longer stretches. One morning, when the dew was still thick and the sun was up just enough, I came across an entire field of spider webs. Magical.

See them all behind Tracy (he’s looking at sandhill cranes). Question is: are there normally this many webs out each morning, and it’s just that conditions are so that we can’t see them?

I don’t have a scientific mind, so I’m not going to find out.