Tag: cosmology
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Cosmic variance
Or, everyone in the world is French M. Luc Arnaud farmed a small plot somewhere in the south of France. Exactly when and exactly where M. Arnaud’s farm was is now no longer remembered, but we can be sure that he had a few cows, a few pigs, a few chickens and one rather moth-eaten…
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Measuring line-of-sight shear with Einstein rings
Today I released a paper written in collaboration with Pierre Fleury, Julien Larena and Matteo Martinelli on how we can measure line-of-sight shear from Einstein rings. But what is line-of-sight shear, and why are we interested in measuring it in the first place? To answer these questions, let’s review the phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing.…
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Why I have a website (and why you should too)
Academics can often be rather squeamish about self-promotion. I myself am not a fan of writing endless cover letters and research statements where I have to act as the sole and assiduously devoted marketer and salesperson for the brand that is Natalie B. Hogg: CosmologistTM. But the squeamishness, and the attendant procrastination that can turn…
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The howling Universe
Before I moved from IFT to IPhT, I filmed a video all about what standard sirens are and why they’re useful for cosmology. The video is now on Youtube, in English with Spanish subtitles. Take a look!
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Implicit none
The first programming language I ever learned was Fortran. And before you ask, no, I’m not seventy years old. It just so happened that during my undergraduate degree, I took two courses on numerical methods for physics which were taught in Fortran, and for good reason: Fortran is still one of the best languages to…
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My first N months as a postdoc (where 0 < N < 12)
How long have I been a postdoc? It’s a little difficult to quantify. I finished my PhD thesis in December 2020, and submitted it in January 2021. I passed my viva in February 2021. I spent a few months climbing the walls waiting for my Spanish visa, and trying to do research at the same…
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The road (back) to Madrid
On Friday last week I signed my contract and started my job as a postdoctoral researcher at the IFT in Madrid. It feels extremely good to type that. I have also been waiting a very long time to write this post. I was offered this job on the 12th of April 2020 — when the…
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Using a Jupyter notebook to make presentation slides
TL;DR: Open a blank Jupyter notebook. Add a cell and convert it to Markdown (either esc + m) or by using the drop down menu at the top of the notebook. Add your text, equation or image to the cell (images can be added via the edit menu, though some HTML tags may be needed…
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Running, paper revisions, talk writing
I started this morning in unusually energetic fashion, by going for a run before starting work. It was a bit chilly but the sky was clear blue and the sun was shining. The birds were singing and the blackthorn blossom has topped the newly green trees and hedges with a creamy white glaze. The daffodils…
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Philosophy and cosmology
I’ve decided it’s time to improve the consistency of my writing and practice makes perfect, as they say. So, starting from today, I’m going to a write a blog post every day for thirty days (excluding weekends and holidays). By my calculation, this means the last post in the thirty day sequence will come on…
Natalie B. Hogg 