It's another reasonably slow night at the APS. We're taking data comfortably and able to work on other things for about 30 minutes at a time.

I think our research, particularly our study of Au surfaces under different conditions, got a huge boost today. Gerhard Ertl just won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his surface science work, primarily on understanding electrochemistry and chemical adsorption on Platinum surfaces. As we've been comparing our work, favorably, as an additional system not previously known to exhibit these behaviors, it will help our cause that at least a few other people think this kind of thing is pretty important.

In fact, upon learning the news my thought process went something like this :

For a second I had the scheming thought of, "maybe I should rework our latest paper to cite Ertl. That would help it get published."

Next came a short pause of guilt as I try to be above things despite the occasional impulse.

However, within another second came the moment of clarity where I realized that I actually didn't need to feel bad about that as I wouldn't have to change anything. It turns out we're already citing his work, 4 times in fact.