Jay Albert's Homepage

Air Force Research Lab / VSBX 29 Randolph Rd Hanscom AFB, MA 01731-3010 jay.albert@hanscom.af.mil http://www2.bc.edu/~albertjb/homepage.html http://users.rcn.com/albertjm/homepage.html (still up as of 4/28/08, with older photos, though I cancelled this account 2 years ago) http://mysite.verizon.net/jay.albert/homepage.html I do research on the Earth's magnetosphere, also known as space weather. Some more buzz words: solar wind, Van Allen radiation belts, aurora borealis. For a serious explanation, there are some good web pages at Boston University, NASA, Rice University, and the University of Michigan. Also, take a look at spaceweather.com or this YouTube video.

Here's my publication list, but you might be more interested in my travel photos.

In August 2007 I went to a radiation belt workshop in Rarotonga, capital of the Cook Islands. Several people's pictures are here.

In July 2006 I went to the COSPAR and WPGM meetings in Beijing. 2005 was a busy year -- in March I went to a workshop on radiation belt electrons in Hermanus, South Africa, and in October I gave an invited talk at the 2005 URSI "Grand Assembly" in New Delhi. There's also an old collection of well-I-think-they're-funny clippings, and a photo essay on living in Davis Square in Somerville MA.

In April 2008 I moved offices, which forced me to confront my out-of-control collection of bulletin board clippings. I scanned a bunch (maybe a quarter of them) and put them here, where at least they aren't in anyone's way. Plus, I now have more thumbtacks than I know what to do with.

"According to Tolstoy all our knowledge is necessarily empirical -- there is no other -- but it will never conduct us to true understanding, but only to an accumulation of arbitrarily abstracted bits and pieces of information; yet that seems to him (as much as to any metaphysician of the Idealist school which he despised) worthless beside, and unintelligible save in so far as it derives from and points to, this inexpressible but very palpable kind of superior understanding which alone is worth pursuing."
--Isaiah Berlin, in The Hedgehog and the Fox

"They [theoretical physicists] are a lot of fun, but you can't take them too seriously."
-- James Van Allen, in Physics Today, December 2004

"The Sun's rays travel perpendicular to the ionosphere, so although there is a lot of particle activity from the Sun, it is mostly absorbed and bent in to the shape of the Van Halen radiation belt. It's a good system, and produces some really beautiful natural artwork." [And some really questionable music.]
-- from a slashdot post

"Regardless of how cherished a given theory may be, if it clashes with the hard facts of experience, a serious theorist must be prepared to revise it, or even abandon it for a new theory that matches up better with experience."
-- Renzo Gracie and John Danaher, Mastering Jujitsu, p. 52