Traveling: Israel and Istanbul

I just returned from the 30th Jerusalem Winter School in Theoretical Physics. It was an intensive school focusing on modern cosmology and galaxy formation with lectures from experts in the field. You can watch the lectures on online here and you can find the slides of the lectures here. In addition to just attending lectures in a boring conference room I of course got out and saw some sights in Israel like the old city of Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and Masada. Since I was in the region I also struck out to Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is a place I have always wanted to see for the history, culture, and people. It was a long and winding trip and to sum it all up here are a few pictures. 

 The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. 

Candles being lit in a church.

The ubiquitous surveillance camera and the old city at sunset.

View of a gate with of Jerusalem city walls in background.

Views of Jerusalem city walls through a gate.

An old column outside Mary's tomb.

The Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.  Galata tower at night.

The Nusretiye Mosque near the Istanbul Modern Art Museum.

A crescent moon over what I think is the Nuruosmaniye Mosque. The crescent moon is one the symbols of Turkey.

Alexander the Great as depicted on Alexander's Sarcophagus which is actually not his Sarcophagus but probably that of some governor of Sidon.

The Basilica Cistern is a 6th century Byzantine construction near the Hagia Sofia that held water for the city. It is quite eerie.

It is a long tradition to respect and live with animals in Istanbul. Beautiful cats and dogs wander throughout Istanbul. They are wild and may go where they want, but they are offered food and shelter so often stay near areas that are kind to them. It is kind of wonderful.

A shot from inside the Hagia Sofia taken during sunset.

A picture of yours truly inside the Hagia Sofia.

ATLAS Mural

ATALAS commissioned an impressive mural of their detector that has just been completed. Artist Josef Kristofoletti created the massive mural of the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector on the outside wall of loop point 01. The mural was commissioned by the ATALAS experiment after Kristofoletti first painted a similar, though much smaller, mural on the side of the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Kristofoletti found inspiration for the art by merging his enjoyment of classic Italian Renaissance murals and his life long fascination with science. He says that the humongous size of ATALAS and the tiny particles it finds make the Large Hadron Collider fascinating, like an unprecedented modern cathedral of science. The event depicted in the mural shows an actual event recorded by ATALAS of a Z boson decay into two muons.

There are more concept pictures here or finished pictures from CERN here.

Perceiving Itself

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself.

Quote from Alan Watts. Art by Viktor Timofeev.