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Episode 536: Ryan Magee on Software Engineering in Physics Research
Ryan Magee, postdoctoral scholar research associate at LIGO Laboratory – Caltech, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about how software is used by scientists in physics research. The episode begins with a discussion of gravitational waves...
Ryan Magee, postdoctoral scholar research associate at Caltech’s LIGO Laboratory, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about how software is used by scientists in physics research. The episode begins with a discussion of gravitational waves and the scientific processes of detection and measurement. Magee explains how data science principles are applied to scientific research and discovery, highlighting comparisons and contrasts between data science and software engineering, in general. The conversation turns to specific practices and patterns, such as version control, unit testing, simulations, modularity, portability, redundancy, and failover. The show wraps up with a discussion of some specific tools used by software engineers and data scientists involved in fundamental research.
Show Notes
Related Links
- Science
- LIGO – LIGO Lab | Caltech | MIT
- Cal Tech – Home
- Multi-messenger astronomy – Multi-messenger astronomy
- Electromagnetic waves – Electromagnetic radiation
- Gravitational waves – Gravitational Waves
- Sources of gravitational waves – Sources and Types of Gravitational Waves
- Laser Interferometry – What is an Interferometer?
- Data
- Data Science vs Software Engineering – Data Science vs Software Engineering – Data Science Process Alliance
- Data Error Correction – Error detection and correction
- Data Noise vs Signal – Signal-to-noise ratio
- Data Quality – Data quality
- Security
- SSH Keys – What is an SSH Key? An Overview of SSH Keys
- X.509 Certificates – What Is an X.509 Certificate? – SSL.com
- Claude Shannon – Claude Shannon
- Information Theory – Claude Shannon
- Occam’s Razor – Occam’s razor
- Tools
- Open Science Grid – OSG
- Visual Studio Code – https://code.visualstudio.com/
- Scientific Linux –
From IEEE Computer Society
From SE Radio
- Episode 315: Jeroen Janssens on Tools for Data Science
- Episode 507: Kevin Hu on Data Observability
- Episode 456: Tomer Shiran on Data Lakes
- Episode 431: Ken Youens-Clark on Learning Python
- Episode 520: John Ousterhout on A Philosophy of Software Design
Transcript
Transcript brought to you by IEEE Software magazine.
This transcript was automatically generated. To suggest improvements in the text, please contact [email protected] and include the episode number and URL.
Jeff Doolittle 00:00:16 Welcome to Software Engineering Radio. I’m your host, Jeff Doolittle. I’m excited to invite Ryan McGee as our guest on the show today for a conversation about using software to explore the nature of reality. Ryan McGee is a post-doctoral scholar, research associate at LIGO Laboratory Caltech. He is interested in all things gravitational waves, but at the moment he is mostly working to facilitate multi-messenger astrophysics and probes of the dark universe. Before arriving at Caltech, he defended his PhD at Penn State. Ryan occasionally has free time outside of physics. On any given weekend, he can be found trying new food, running and hanging out with his deaf dog, Poppy. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Magee 00:00:56 Hey, thanks Jeff for having me.
Jeff Doolittle 00:00:58 So we’re here to talk about how we use software to explore the nature of reality, and I think just from your bio, it lifts up some questions in my mind. Can you explain to us a little bit of context of what problems you’re trying to solve with software, so that as we get more into the software side of things, listeners have context for what we mean when you say things like multi-messenger astrophysics or probes of the dark universe?
Ryan Magee 00:01:21 Yeah, sure thing. So, I work specifically on detecting gravitational waves, which were predicted around a hundred years ago by Einstein, but hadn’t been seen up until recently. There was some solid evidence that they might exist back in the seventies, I believe. But it wasn’t until 2015 that we were able to observe the impact of these signals directly. So, gravitational waves are really exciting right now in physics because they offer a new way to observe our universe. We’re so used to using various types of electromagnetic waves or light to take in what’s going on and infer the types of processes that are occurring out in the cosmos. But gravitational waves let us probe things in a new direction that are often complementary to the information that we might get from electromagnetic waves. So the first major thing that I work on, facilitating multi-messenger astronomy, really means that I’m interested in detecting gravitational waves at the same time as light or other types of astrophysical signals. The hope here is that when we detect things in both of these channels, we’re able to get more information than if we had just made the observation in one of the channels alone. So I’m very interested in making sure that we get more of those types of discoveries.
Jeff Doolittle 00:02:43 Interesting. Is it somewhat analogous maybe to how humans have multiple senses, and if all we had was our eyes we’d be limited in our ability to experience the world, but because we also have tactile senses and auditory senses that that gives us other ways in order to understand what’s happening around us?
Ryan Magee 00:02:57 Yeah, exactly. I think that’s a perfect analogy.
Jeff Doolittle 00:03:00 So gravitational waves, let’s maybe get a little more of a sense of of what that means. What is their source, what caused these, and then how do you measure them?
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