Tres físicos no hispanohablantes

Well, we are wrapping up here in Spain. Today Garrett gave a good talk on what he was doing, which I am sure he can fill you in on. After that Chema took us, along with his wife Elizabeth and approximately one year old daughter Dakota, to a restaurant across the bay in Pedrena. There, we feasted on Bonito (a type of tuna) and mussels. To get there we took a nice ferry across the bay from downtown Santander. While I was on the ferry Chema described some of the sites of Santander that we could see, the largest being the Royal Palace. This was a gift from the town of Santander to the Royal Family, and they would live there in the summer. The Palace was returned to the city more recently. Another magnificent building was the royal hotel; this is where the royal family stayed in the summer, before the palace was built. In addition there is a nice view of the Santander opera house.

This is the Royal Palace the summer home of the Royal family of Spain

We got to see our lunch being grilled right next to us. Bonito is like a white tuna.

Today was a good day, but I would like to speak even more about yesterday. We again took a siesta, going to the beach about 3:00 though we were then doomed to work very late into the night. It was a windy day with lots of waves, we even saw a few surfers. After we were on the beach, doing a few calculations, we decided to walk around the point of Santander, where the land juts into the ocean. The view was beautiful and the walk enjoyable, though we had a long way to go on the return leg. Here are a few pictures so that you can share in our amazment:

This a picture of a lighthouse that is sitting on a rock near the beach.

This view made me think we were on a tropical island

Here is a picture of the ocean. We would like to point out how blue the water is from the water crashing into the rocks.

This was a lighthouse that we saw on our journey. As well as some of the cliffs that gave us a great view.

An excellent view we were awarded with after our walk

We swear we are doing work

A lot has happened since we last posted: it’s been busy on the research front and we also didn’t have great access to internet over the weekend. But, the good part is that we’ve had lots of adventures so you get to see pretty pictures.

After getting lost on some of the steepest hilly streets in the city, on Friday night we ate with Chema and his wife and Stephon at this charming little tapas restaurant. Unfortunately none of us thought to bring a camera, so you’ll just have to take my word for the fact that this place was eye-candy. Along one wall where huge vats of the house-wine, above which was a nice wooden balcony where there was a piano player. The food was excellent and probably the most interesting we’ve had so far. We spent Saturday morning wandering around downtown Santander in the rain. Although we weren’t able to find everything we were looking for the architecture in the old quarter of downtown is substantially prettier than anything else we’ve seen.

This building was particularly pretty. I was surprised to find the rosy tint to the sky that my camera picked up.

At the end of one street there is a very large arch that is part of the Bank of Santander. We were a little surprised when we first saw it.

I think the best part about the old districts of European cities is the random little churches you find peaking out at the end of a random street.

We stocked up on bread thinking that the bakery would be closed on Sunday along with everything else. Oops! It turns out that it’s the only thing that doesn’t.
We were sad to discover that just a few days after we leave Santander the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be playing a free concert as a part of a festival here.

Sunday was a beach day. It was a little cool at first but after a while the sun really came out and made everything beautiful… well, except for the whole sunburn part. I am still shocked at how clear and warm the water is here given that we are on the bay of Biscay.

Most of the times we have seen it the water has been very calm, but one day the wind picked up a lot and a few surfers even showed up.

On the physics front Alex and I have continued to make progress with our understanding of the Ashtekar variables.  We haven’t done anything particularly new or exciting with them yet because we’re still aquatinting ourselves with the formalism.  One thing about theory work in gravitation is that there is a tremendous body of literature out there that takes a lot of work to even begin to understand the basics (true in all research really but it gets accentuated a bit in theory work because everyone has their own unique notation so the equations don’t even look the same from paper to paper).  But the basic idea behind the Ashtekar variables is that they provide a way of writing the theory of general relativity that draws some pretty neat connections between gravity and Yang-Mills field theories (basically fancy mathematical descriptions of the three non-gravitational forces: electromagnetic, weak, and strong).  The advantage of this is that if you are interested in writing down a quantized theory of gravity this formalism allows you to take advantage of the large body of clever mathematics and quantization schemes that come from work on Yang-Mills field theories.

Garrett in front of the IFCA. We have been alternating working here and in the library of the faculty of sciences.

To give you a better sense of our local environment I’ve included some more pictures of what we see every day. We’re not quite sure what’s being done to the sidewalks and curbing but we seem to be surrounded by construction on three sides. Walks in other parts of the city rapidly become more pleasant. Although Santander is hilly I find it to be a very enjoyable little city to walk around. However, our favorite walk is not very far: to the bakery that is in the bottom of our building!

This nifty solar clock resides outside the faculty of sciences at the University of Cantabria. We haven't figured out how to read it yet, but Chema tells us that it is accurate to within 1 min.
Every morning at 8:30 our friendly neighborhood alarm clock goes to work.	Of course, as Alex discovered the accuracy decreases a lot if it’s a cloudy day.	After last night’s cooking adventure Garrett remains skeptical of chorizo.
View from the living room of our apartment toward the University. There is a nice little park that we can go running in at the bottom of the hill .

As told through pictures and captions.

What better way to start the day, than with generic cereal and boxed milk…

..and some light, morning reading.

Our walk to work includes a trek down a nice (read: remarkably steep) hill, and a walk by a local skatepark.

The Universidad de Cantabria, where physics (magic?) happens.

The "glass box" in the library, where we set up shop for most of this week.

Shots of Alex…

…myself…

..and Martin at work!

…And I do too!

And, of course, dinner and relaxation followed. I’ll try to get pictures next time we go out to eat, but forgive me if I don’t want to be “that guy with the camera.”

Also next time, that physics post I promised to put up yesterday (oops, sorry).

Sardinero, one of Spain's famous beaches, just happens to be within walking distance of our apartment. We're not complaining.

To break the monotony of reading, calculating, and preparing presentations, we decided to take our first authentic siesta. Santander is known (amongst a few other things) for its beaches. Thus, it only seemed proper that we follow the local customs and get some afternoon sun. Our destination was Sardinero (see above, and below).

Now, I’ve visited a few sandy shores in my day, but I have to say, this one takes the cake. It’s split into the “primera playa” and the “segunda playa,” two sections that are essentially identical. They’re about one half to three quarters of a mile long, flat, and have extremely fine sand. The water is fairly clear, and fairly warm (not quite ‘Florida clear and warm,’ but definitely not ‘Cape Cod dark and freezing’). There are plenty of people around, but the area never feels too crowded. 

Of course, nothing great comes for free. If you take a siesta, don´t expect to be eating dinner before 10PM; your workday still has a long way to go. Herein lies the dilemma of the siesta. Is an afternoon in the sun worth a loss in evening free time? I´ll leave that question to you.

Oh, and to prove that we actually are working, more on Physics tomorrow.