Travelin' Man

In a couple of hours I'm headed back to California for a quick visit to Caltech, where I'll be giving the High Energy Physics seminar tomorrow afternoon and then heading back on the red-eye in time to teach on Tuesday. This is a fun talk to deliver since, unlike the usual seminars I am invited to give, the audience here will be a mixed group of experimentalists and theorists. My seminar is titled "Connecting Cosmology and Fundamental Physics" and I'll be talking about a selection of topics. Some, like baryogenesis, I've already made an attempt to explain here at Orange Quark. Others, like dark energy and inflation , I've yet to discuss, but intend to get into before too long. The focus of the talk is the challenges to particle physics posed by cosmological issues and the fascinating possible solutions that theorists are contemplating

The other nice part of my trip is that, before my flight tomorrow evening, I'm having dinner with Marc Kamionkowski and his group. Marc's a smart and talented cosmologist and it'll be both fun and educational to discuss cosmology with him and his students and postdocs.

Barring delays and cancellations I should be spending this afternoon in glorious sunshine (last time I said that it rained for four straight days in San Francisco, but I'm an optimistic guy) sipping a glass of wine and working on my talk. Otherwise, surely there must be a few square meters of O'Hare that I haven't explored twenty times already.