All posts by Andrea Ferrantelli

Theoretical physicist and musician. Quantum Prana, the Dark Matter Guitar.
Music, philosophy

The Tyger – a song of Experience

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A dark, atmospheric tune with a horror vibe, where I whisper in the darkness. My little homage to William Blake (1757-1827). To appear in the Apskaft Present: Volume 5 compilation. https://apskaft.bandcamp.com/track/the-tyger

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Quantum Prana: vocals, guitar, fretless bass, drum programming, lyrics adaptation
Second Order Effects: keyboards
Produced by Quantum Prana
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Lyrics adapted from the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake (1794):

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night

When the stars / threw down their spears
And water’d heaven / with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made / the Lamb / make thee?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

Tyger Tyger, burning bright

When the stars / threw down their spears
And water’d heaven / with their tears
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

 

cosmology, Music, particle physics, Physics, Science, supergravity, Theoretical physics

A new track, “Funky Matters”. An excursion into particle physics #nerdmetal

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“Funky Matters” (a play with words) is a song/essay about the discoveries as well as the uncertainties of Particle Physics. Funk and jazz structures and rhythms develop on a metal arrangement, with clean singing and choruses to sing along with (lyrics below).
#nerdmetal

Quantum Prana: Vocals, guitar, bass; lyrics, production
Second Order Effects: Keyboards
Klas Granqvist: Drums
Special thanks to Elisa Mucciarelli and Tatu Hiltunen.

———————————————————————————
FUNKY MATTERS
Ancient Greeks figurin’ it all,
Democritos, the atoms, reduction to the call
Fundamental particles, grains of cosmology
Dividing life, by analogy, with our reality

Galilei’s method of induction
(Was) grounded on eye observation
Solitons / got noted / while ridin’ a horse
Newton and Huygens were fighting
Over new tools for understanding
How funky matters / make up the world
Aether was then invented
For light propagation
However the experiments, couldn’t confirm the equation

Einstein eventually, found the solution
Special relativity killed the funky matter
And gave us / Star Trek

Will string theory save us all?
Will we see the curvaton?
Quantum gravity for all!

—————–
CHORUS
Funky matters to all
Come on and join us / at / the / shopping mall
Warping space and time
Enter the quantum loop, and join the ride
—————-

We’re all cool funky matters
Dancing on warping dimensions
We all live under a Calabi-Yau
Supergravity takes the ball
Superpartner of the graviton
Radiative corrections
Are looping in the action
A new bunch of particles was then invented
But nobody has seen them in the Universe
Dark matter remains very dark
Though supersymmetry protects the Higgs

We all need a superpartner!
Will we see the dilaton?
Quantum gravity for all!
—————–
CHORUS 2
Funky matters to all
Come join us / at / the / shopping mall
We’re all cool funky matters
Hunting and searching / the grand unification
—————–
CHORUS 3
We’re all cool funky matters
Particle or wave, (it) doesn’t really matter
Warping space and time
Quantum gravity for all!

Music

A new track, You (edit 2019) on my Soundcloud

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So here is my final arrangement (at least until I find a producer) of You, an Odalisque song everybody loved.

I wish to thank my collaborators Elisa Mucciarelli and Second Order Effects for their excellent work. Special thanks go to Tatu Hiltunen and Jussi Lindström for their earlier contribution.
https://soundcloud.com/quantumprana/you-demo-2019

You can listen to the track in my Media page as well.

Energy, Engineering, geothermal energy, heat transfer, Physics, Science

Presentation at the Trondheim conference now available for download

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A short and coincise presentation I gave in Trondheim (Norway) on 7.11.19, which summarizes the parametric study reported in the conference paper (see the link below).

https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/352/1/012011

Here is the presentation:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337111301_Parametric_study_for_the_long_term_energetic_performance_of_geothermal_energy_piles

 

Energy, Engineering, heat transfer, Physics, Science

Conference paper on geothermal energy now published

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Here you can download the pdf (open access):

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/352/1/012011

I will give the talk next week at the 1st Nordic nZEB+ conference in Trondheim, Norway!

Abstract:
Geothermal energy constitutes an important renewable resource that will become increasingly prominent in future constructions. A common method of extraction and usage consists of installing, inside the foundation piles of buildings, U-shaped heat exchangers called ”energy piles”.

In this paper such installations are addressed by means of a full parametric study, performed for a hall-type commercial building in a cold climate. By computing the transient heat transfer between energy piles and ground for a period of 20 years, guidelines for a preliminary sizing of the geothermal system as a whole are provided. These are valid for this specific building and climate, for a clay-type soil and without assuming thermal storage.
A highly nonlinear behaviour of the expected yield in relation to pile separation and evaporator extraction power is observed. Furthermore, 15m-long piles are found to be more efficient than those with double length, a smaller extraction power seems to be more favourable and differences in the pile diameter have little impact for heat transfer. A geothermal system sizing guide, which is useful for a preliminary quantitative test prior to any installation, is introduced. Even though our specific results are valid only for a commercial hall-type building in Finland, our procedure is qualitatively general and can be utilized for any given building type and climate zone.

Nuclear medicine

For a change…paper published in nuclear medicine

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This Summer I started a collaboration with the University of Messina (Italy), on a totally different subject from my physics-related research: nuclear medicine and oncology! Here is the first paper in our series (open access):

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40336-019-00342-3

Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) constitute a diverse group of cancers characterized by heterogeneous biological hallmarks and variable behaviour, from slow-growing and indolent tumours to aggressive and rapidly fatal cancers. Somatostatin analogues (SSAs) provide the first line of their systemic treatment. In this paper we propose a scheduling optimization when SSAs are combined with peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT).

Energy, Engineering, heat transfer, Science

Two conference papers now published

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The two conference papers on #energy efficiency in buildings I presented last May at the conference CLIMA 2019, #Bucharest are now published, with open access:

Experimental study of radiator, underfloor, ceiling and air heater systems heat emission performance in TUT nZEB test facility

Annual performance analysis of heat emission in radiator and underfloor heating systems in the European reference room.

Uncategorized

New plans for prog rock

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Time for an update: I will continue my prog rock project by myself, since everybody else has left (no personal reasons, we’re all still good friends). I have a lot of new material that I shall record in the next weeks; furthermore, some demo recordings with the guys will appear soon on my Soundcloud page.

I am now en force on bass with my friends Echoes From A Great Distance, which means I will finally hit the stage again next Autumn, after a 2 years hiatus.

I am also starting a pop collaboration, where I’ll introduce some progressive and psychedelic elements into a more traditional songwriting. It’s going to be very catchy, stay tuned!

Engineering, heat transfer, Materials science, Soft matter, wood

New paper explaining the crack patterns on the surface of heated wood

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Our new paper on heated wood seems to confirm our model for a phenomenon that remained unexplained for a few decades.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/fam.2722?af=R

Abstract:

When a flat sample of medium density fibreboard (MDF) is exposed to radiant heat in an inert atmosphere, primary crack patterns suddenly start to appear over the entire surface before pyrolysis and any charring occurs. Contrary to common belief that crack formation is due to drying and shrinkage, it was demonstrated for square samples that this results from thermomechanical instability. In the present paper, new experimental data are presented for circular samples of the same MDF material. The sample was exposed to radiant heating at 20 or 50 kW/m2, and completely different crack patterns with independent eigenmodes were observed at the two heat fluxes. We show that the two patterns can be reproduced with a full 3‐D thermomechanical surface instability model of a hot layer adhered to an elastic colder foundation in an axisymmetric domain. Analytical and numerical solutions of a simplified 2‐D formulation of the same problem provide excellent qualitative agreement between observed and calculated patterns. Previous data for square samples, together with the results reported in the present paper for circular samples, confirm the validity of the model for qualitative predictions and indicate that further refinements can be made to improve its quantitative predictive capability.