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Some Unusual Recipes

by

on April 18, 2008

in Los Angeles, black holes, science and string theory

. 1 Comment

Well, I’ve been quiet here because I got rather swamped with lots of things over the last few days. The biggest thing was yesterday. I gave a colloquium at Caltech entitled “Cooking with Quarks and Gluons: Recipes from the String Theory Kitchen”*. The abstract is given below**. It is mostly based on what I wrote about last Summer.

With all the other things I had to do (including writing and giving two fun two hour lectures on cosmology in my undergraduate GR class) I still decided that it was time to totally rethink how I tell this exciting physics story, and how I present it. This meant designing and building many new slides. Each slide can take a long time to prepare, so this took two solid days of hiding away while designing and building them, only breaking for the other stuff.

Well, it was fun in the end, and today I am exhausted. I decided that you should not miss out entirely on the treats, so I made a little movie of the first parts of the talk to Continue reading ‘Some Unusual Recipes’

Southern California Strings Seminar

by

on April 8, 2008

in Los Angeles, research, science and string theory

. 0 Comments

Takuya Okuda talking about Wilson Loops at the most recent SCSS, UCLA, Dec. 2007. Click to enlarge.

The next regional string meeting is a two-day one at Caltech, this Friday and Saturday, organized by Joseph Marsano. It’s going to be full of interesting talks and conversations, as usual. Please encourage your graduate students to come, especially, since special effort is made to make sure that each talk begins with a pedagogical portion to help non-experts in that subfield navigate and see the motivation.

The speakers are:
Continue reading ‘Southern California Strings Seminar’

Bigger than the FCC

by

on March 27, 2008

in Los Angeles, black holes, science and string theory

. 6 Comments

We’ve been studying rotating black holes in my class this week, which has been fun. We get to apply the techniques we’ve been honing in the context of the Schwarzschild solution (link to recent posts below) to a bit more complicated solution, the Kerr solution, which includes rotation. Some equations follow, although you needn’t be put off by them. Most of this will make sense without really understanding them much. Just so you can see the shape of the things we scribble, I’ll show you the equation that captures this curved spacetime geometry, with no real explanation (sorry):

Here $\Delta\equiv r^2-2Mr+a^2$ and $\rho^2\equiv r^2+a^2\cos^2\theta\ .$ The parameter $a$ is the ratio of the solution’s spin or angular momentum $J$ to its total mass $M$ , measured in appropriate units. It’s a very important solution to get to grips with, since it’s not just fantasy physics, but highly relevant for astrophysics since black holes that are “out there” are unlikely to be non-rotating, and in fact, one can expect them to be rotating at quite a clip in many cases. A good many black holes - including some of the Continue reading ‘Bigger than the FCC’

Beyond Einstein: Fixing Singularities in Spacetime

by

on March 3, 2008

in black holes, cosmology, mathematics, science, string theory and work

. 21 Comments

Not long ago David Morrison (UCSB) came to the mathematics department here at USC to give a colloquium.

This was a treat for me for many reasons. Here are three:

It’s always good to see Dave. He’s one of the people I’ve known in the field was since my very first postdoc when I was learning to survive in the big bad world on my own after graduate school. I mostly could not understand a word he or anyone there else said in those days (IAS Princeton, right in the belly of the Continue reading ‘Beyond Einstein: Fixing Singularities in Spacetime’

Nick Halmagyi: Why I do Science

by

on February 19, 2008

in music, personal, science and string theory

. 4 Comments

I’m pleased to introduce a guest blogger today. It’s Nick Halmagyi, who you might have seen comment here from time to time. Nick is a postdoctoral researcher in Theoretical Physics, currently at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago. Before that, he was a graduate student in our High Energy Physics group at USC, which is where I met him. Nick wrote his reflections below for Seed, and he reproduces a version of it (with permission - see details below*) here. I hope you enjoy it.

-cvj

___________________________________________________________________________________

Theoretical physics is a tough subject. Just one example of how hard things can get is when you ramp up the energy density of a system, the physics used to describe the system itself starts to change. At first it may be a small tweak in the parameters that appear in the equations (the electric charge for example), but then there can be large, abrupt transitions.

The biggest system we study is the universe, and immediately after the big bang all of its energy occupied a tiny region of space. Back then, the energy density was enormous, and as the universe grew over time it underwent several transitions before it became what we now observe.

I’m a theoretical physicist, in part, because I relish the challenge of studying the entire Continue reading ‘Nick Halmagyi: Why I do Science’

Southern California Strings Seminar

by

on December 5, 2007

in Los Angeles, research, science and string theory

. 1 Comment

The next regional string meeting is a one-day one at UCLA, organized by Michael Gutperle and Per Kraus. It’s going to be full of interesting talks and conversations, as usual. Please encourage your graduate students to come, especially, since special effort is made to make sure that each talk begins with a pedagogical portion to help non-experts in that subfield navigate and see the motivation. (Photo: Michael Gutperle talking at the first SCSS at USC, Sept. 2005; click for larger view.)

The speakers are:
Continue reading ‘Southern California Strings Seminar’

My Work Here is Done

by

on November 9, 2007

in personal, science, string theory, travel and work

. 1 Comment

Yep. All done. Sitting in great cafe with a cup of camomile, listening to one of my favourite Mingus albums on the cafe’s overhead speakers, feeling that it all went well. (The latter - Mingus in a great cafe late at night? - is not really the Kentucky I remember.) I seem to have gone three for three. Class, seminar, colloquium. No disasters, besides skimping on the sleep a bit here and there and writing some of the material at the last minute. Good.

So I gave the seminar at noon*, talking about much the same material I did in my Santa Barbara talk I mentioned before here. We then went to lunch at a Korean place nearby that was rather good. I ordered the bi bim bap (as I often do at Korean places) and to my disappointment, it did not come in the super high temperature Continue reading ‘My Work Here is Done’

Talk Talk

by

on October 16, 2007

in academia, research, science and string theory

. 6 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

dbranes Two Thursdays ago I went up to Santa Barbara to give a seminar. I had a great time, and it reminded me why it can be so much fun to go somewhere and visit for even a short time and do that. I got to catch up with several old friends, including Santa Barbara itself, where I lived for a number of years in the 90’s when I was a postdoc. I spent time chatting with the various people there before (at lunch) and after (individually) the seminar, learning about some of the research they’re doing, and also talking about other matters physics-wise and gossip-wise. I wish I’d had more time to talk since I did not get to talk to everyone I wanted to talk to, and not at as much length as I would have liked. (This was partly due to the fact that I spent the morning in my hotel room writing some of the slides for my talk. - I had a presentation the day before to focus on, along with a departmental visitor to host, and the day before I was also occupied. Don’t ask about any earlier than that - I never prepare new material that much in advance. Not because I don’t want to, but it just never happens… if I have more than a day or two, I will find that there’s other stuff I have to do.)

Anyway, a good time was had by all (I think). I can even post a picture of some of us at dinner in the evening after the talk. (Will update later with that, since it was downloaded to computer that’s not here.) We went to an old haunt of mine in downtown Santa Barbara - Roy’s. I’m pleased and surprised that it is still there and going strong, since it is the sort of highly individual restaurant that - since it is also reasonably priced - you’d expect to vanish from such a high value spot in town.

What was I talking about? Well, with three students (Tameem Albash, Veselin Filev, and Arnab Kundu), I’ve been involved in some fun work on some of the physics concerning Continue reading ‘Talk Talk’

Whither String Theory? - Too Soon To Tell

by

on September 17, 2007

in research, science, science in the media and string theory

. 160 Comments

stringscape image from physics world Gosh, a thoughtfully-written general level (more or less) article on some of the general outcomes of string theory research! It’s written by Matthew Chalmers, and is in the Sept. ‘07 edition of Physics World*. The article can be read online here, and downloadable pdf is here. The graphic on the right came with the article. I don’t fully understand what it is, but the title, like that of the article, is “stringscape”… Look, let’s not over-think this cvj - it’s a pretty decoration.

I’ve done a quick read of it (should re-read more carefully later on - it will no doubt have some emphases with which I disagree somewhat**) and I’d say it is very much worth reading. While not a perfect summary (what is?), compared to a lot that’s been out there, you’ll find it rather more informed, less sensational, (refreshingly unpoisoned by various prejudices, such as the presentations of Smolin and Woit - see numerous earlier discussions in the “More Scenes from the Storm in a Teacup” series of posts, and others), and unafraid to go to some length to unpack the issues somewhat carefully.

Very importantly, it contains numerous quotes from various respected researchers in Continue reading ‘Whither String Theory? - Too Soon To Tell’

The 9/11 Flip

by

on September 11, 2007

in science and string theory

. 12 Comments

Ok, so here goes. A bit of physics linked to this all so significant date. There’s this term that people in string theory were using a lot in the middle to late 90’s, called the “9/11 flip”. I think maybe the Verlinde brothers, Erik and Hermann, possibly in conjunction with Robbert Dijkgraaf, made the term popular but I am not sure about that and I welcome a correction. [Update, since there is some confusion: I’m talking about the term here, not the technique itself, which is older.]

(On right (click for larger) is a snapshot of one of the figures from their influential 1997 “Matrix String Theory” paper. You can see the use the term there, and it is in the paper’s text too, and soon everyone was using it in seminars and other papers to follow.)

The flip became particularly useful when people were discovering the wonders of “M-theory”, which is the catch-all term for whatever is the parent theory of string theory, something we are still trying to formulate. There are a number of narrower uses of the term, however - some more justified than others. For a while, everyone was thinking about the five ten-dimensional supersymmetric string theories (”type IIA”, “type IIB”, “type I”, and two types of “heterotic” theory) which, prior to the middle of 1995 (actually as early as late 1994 or early 1995) all seemed like totally distinct theories, and in the post middle-1995 era (after Witten’s remarkable talk at strings 1995 here at USC: paper here) were recognized to be all part of the same theory. The universe (at least the continually expanding string theory one) changed radically overnight.

(One of my preferred ways of presenting the puzzle that is M-theory, and how the ten dimensional string theories fit in the puzzle. This is a slide from one of my general talks on the subject.)

The 9/11 flip is really simple, although when a setting is complicated enough, it can Continue reading ‘The 9/11 Flip’

Lookin’ For Some Hot Stuff

by

on September 1, 2007

in black holes, books, music, research, science and string theory

. 8 Comments

___________________________________________________________________________________
Hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
hot, hot, hot
hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
hot, hot, hot

- from “Hot Stuff”, by Donna Summer (1979). I refer to not only the physics but the c. 100 ^oF temperatures we’ve been having here every day recently.
___________________________________________________________________________________

On my way back from the conference, I spotted this book (below left) last Saturday in Foyles (the booksellers) in London¹. It is a collection of reprints of a lot of the papers forming the foundations of the physics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) idea, going back the early to mid 1970s with such papers as Collins and Perry (Gosh, I had no idea Malcolm was one of the early workers on this idea. He’s much more thought of as associated with black holes, gravity, strings and so forth, ideas which - ironically - have recently turned out to be relevant to the discussions of the physics too. See my recent post, and there are also various popular articles to be found²).

Putting aside the usual ridiculous price that ~~Springer~~ Elsevier charges for books, I found myself in two minds about this book, in view of the surprises being uncovered about the properties of this remarkable state of matter at the RHIC experiment. Is this collection of early papers a useful working tool, or is it now just of historical interest, since many of the basic expectations about the properties of the plasma seem now to be incorrect?

Well, after a bit of thought, I decided that the latter view would be way too hasty. First and foremost, on a general level, even if some of the computations in some papers were done in the “wrong” light (it’s a strongly coupled liquid that flows, not a weakly coupled gas of quarks and gluons), much of their content will still be useful in many ways - good and correct calculations last for all time, it is the sense of the words decorating them that may crumble over time. More specifically, one can worry about whether there were assumptions (and approximations based on those) that went into Continue reading ‘Lookin’ For Some Hot Stuff’

News From The Front, VI: Simultaneity

by

on July 30, 2007

in black holes, personal, science, string theory and work

. 7 Comments

I stopped the previous post rather abruptly (I had to do another task and then run some errands) without getting to tell you a little twist at the end of the story. Here it is.

Having chipped away at the thoughts that Strominger’s talk stirred in my head for several days last week, scribbling equations to check that all I was thinking was on the right track (and chatting a couple of times with Nick Halmagyi down the hall), I decided that it was all fitting together so nicely that the framework and my extensions of it just had to be true. There was that feeling that it was too nice to be wrong, and it passed all the obvious checks I could think of. There were two independent consistency checks everything had to pass (using my way of formulating things) and they gave exactly the right results as required by the general setup, with no room for maneuver.

When that happens so nicely, usually at that point in thinking about a physics problem, a thought occurs to me. If I’m playing with a good idea and everything is working so well, then there’s at least 200 other people in the field who probably are also playing with it, and 199 of them have way more time than I do to think it through and write it up before I can. One should not really worry about these things in an ideal world, but I’d be lying to you if I said it did not come up as a concern from time to time. I’ve a history of having my thunder stolen out from under me several times in the field (and not always accidentally), so I’m a bit gun shy.

Anyway, I started writing a draft of the paper on Thursday the way I usually do: I write Continue reading ‘News From The Front, VI: Simultaneity’

News From The Front, V: Microscopic Weekend Diversions

by

on July 30, 2007

in black holes, personal, science, string theory and work

. 5 Comments

I’ve been spending the day so far as an administrator, and not a researcher, since I have to present the results of two committees’ deliberations at one of the big annual organizational meetings tomorrow here at the Aspen Center for Physics. So I’ve been gathering and arranging data in a presentable form. Enough. I will take a break and blog a tiny bit before turning to a truly riveting task - reviewing an introductory physics textbook for a publisher… (Sigh…it is not so easy to escape these things, even out of semester time.)

I had big plans to do a hike each day on the weekend, but physics intervened. I should explain a bit more. Earlier last week I eventually got around to following Nick’s suggestion from an earlier post to take a look at Andy Strominger’s Strings 2007 talk entitled “Search for the Holographic Dual of N Heterotic Strings”. It was the usual nice Strominger talk, where he motivates the physics very well, and presents interesting and clear thoughts on the problem in hand. I shall try to say a bit more about what it is about later on, but the general gist of it is that it is to do with understanding certain types of four dimensional black hole in string theory. As you may know, one of the extraordinarily successful results in string theory in the last decade (and slightly more) has been that we can understand one of the most central results of semi-classical quantum gravity -that they have an entropy and behave like thermodynamical objects (the work of Bekenstein and of Hawking from the early 70s)- in precise terms in the full theory of quantum gravity that string theory appears to present us with. This started with the work of Strominger and Vafa in 1996, that showed how to describe a large class of black holes as essentially made of extended objects called D-branes (about which I’ve spoken at length earlier¹).

Just to fill in the gaps roughly: Hawking’s result that black holes can radiate as thermodynamical objects comes from taking Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and combining it with Quantum Mechanics in a partial way. He could not really do much better since there was no proper quantum theory of gravity at the time, but even in Continue reading ‘News From The Front, V: Microscopic Weekend Diversions’

Strings 2007: Share the Memories

by

on July 17, 2007

in science, string theory and work

. 6 Comments

A big chunk of yesterday (recall, I’m visiting at the Aspen Center for Physics) was spent chatting with old friends in the field I have not seen in a while, including going for a walk or two in the local surrounds with colleagues, discussing some of the physics issues of the day.

One of the things that comes up a lot with everyone I spoke to (and met at lunch, and in corridors and so forth) was Strings 2007, the big annual meeting that was held in Madrid last month (blog post here). It comes up in the form of people asking each other things like: “were you at Strings?”, “what did you think of Strings?”, “what were your favourite talks?”, “is there any interesting gossip about…?” (where the latter is not necessarily directly about physics).

So it occurred to me that some of those conversations and responses might be useful to workers in the field. Of course, you can just sit and work your way through the entire collection of online talks, a good thing to do. But it’s interesting to hear from others what talks they liked, and why, just as we do (and maybe have done) over tea and coffee in lounges all over the world after someone returns from a meeting. Often, this is where we hear of some excellent work by the less famous speakers (or even by someone who did not talk at all), etc.

So I’ll kick off. Although I was not there, and have yet to start a serious assault on Continue reading ‘Strings 2007: Share the Memories’

Blogging Strings 2007

by

on June 25, 2007

in research, science, string theory and work

. 1 Comment

I’ve just noticed that Jacques Distler will be blogging from Strings 2007 (his first post is here). Excellent! I hope that others will be too. If you learn of anyone else who will be blogging from the conference (either physics content or other aspects of the event), do let me know (either in comments or by email) and I’ll update this post with pointers. If you have anything interesting to share from it*, but don’t blog, consider sending it along too!

-cvj

(*You know, anything from supplementary physics discussion to incriminating photos from those notorious string theory after-parties that plague the conference circuit…)

Strings 2007

by

on June 25, 2007

in research, science, string theory and work

. 7 Comments

The main annual conference in my main field of interest starts today. Strings 2007 is in Madrid, and runs all week. The website is here (while there, have a play with the front page image of the Goya painting - quite entertaining - snapshot right). They promise to update the schedule/speakers page with scans of slides, and video, so you’ll be able to keep track of some of the new developments online. There’s no system for doing this live, or asking questions remotely, so if you want to quiz Ed Witten about his new 83-page monster paper on three dimensional gravity that came out yesterday (just in time for the conference!), or feel the buzz of event-anticipation whenever Witten talks about a huge new sets of results, you’ll still have to show up in person.

Why am I not there? Well, it would be nice, but there are lots of reasons I’m not going Continue reading ‘Strings 2007′

Mathematics and Strings

by

on June 25, 2007

in mathematics, research, science and string theory

. 4 Comments

Not long after I told you about the TASI school and the excellent online lecture resource they were rapidly building, I heard* about a school in Utah that might be of interest, especially if you’re interested in the fruitful interface between mathematics and string theory. The title: “Derived Categories”, and it ran for two weeks with lectures on mathematical aspects and stringy aspects. The main reason I’m telling you Continue reading ‘Mathematics and Strings’

Testing String Theory

by

on June 19, 2007

in humour and string theory

. 5 Comments

You’ll be pleased to know that some of our best people are on it:

Continue reading ‘Testing String Theory’

Nuts and Bolts

by

on June 17, 2007

in Los Angeles, personal, science, string theory and work

. 16 Comments

notebook working Yes, part of my job is to sit and think about how the universe works. People hear this, and they wonder exactly what that entails. Well, it entails a lot of things - sometimes there’s the grand thoughts and the thought experiments and the like that you hear of from documentaries and books about Einstein and other famous scientists - but more often that not it is grungy nuts and bolts.

Take yesterday for example. After a week of working on various calculations and chipping away at improving my understanding of how to approach a certain problem, I decided to take Saturday and be outdoors a bit more…see what it was like outside. You know…. Have an actual Saturday Saturday. (I did not end up being booked to do that TV shoot, by the way, so I had a nice clear day ahead of me.)

What actually transpired was this:

Continue reading ‘Nuts and Bolts’

TASI@Home

by

on June 4, 2007

in cosmology, science, string theory and work

. 14 Comments

This year’s month-long Theoretical Advanced Study Institute -TASI- looks especially good, from my point of view, with a great combination of topics and lecturers. As usual, it is held in Boulder, Colorado. It’s all about current ideas and experiments and observations in particle physics and cosmology. Three USC students are there and I’ve heard from them that things have been great so far.

raphael bousso at TASI Well, the great news is that the TASI people are making the lectures available online a fairly short time after their delivery. The link is here. So even though not there, you can schedule some time to take these lecture courses if you like. I glanced for a while at Raphael Bousso’s first lecture in the series “Cosmology and the Landscape”, and it was clear and very well presented. (This is not entirely surprising - Raph is always an excellent lecturer.)

Continue reading ‘TASI@Home’

That Ain’t Workin’

by

on June 1, 2007

in fun, humour, string theory and work

. 1 Comment

Remember the Tune “Money for Nothing”, by Dire Straits? It was a big hit in the 80s. (Remember those?) Well, Warren of the new blog A Strange Universe* wrote a rather brilliant physics version of it, to be sung to the same tune. The “stringer” is the object of the ridicule of the song’s character. The original post is here, where he’ll tell you his thoughts on the song. I can’t resist (I hope he forgives me) posting the entire thing here, rather than an extract, which would break up its impact. (Original song’s lyrics are here, by the way, for comparison.)

So here it is:
Continue reading ‘That Ain’t Workin’’

Masterclass, II

by

on June 1, 2007

in science, science in the media and string theory

. Closed

Don’t forget to catch the latest installment of Joe Polchinski’s rather thorough deconstruction of the nonsense, obfuscation, selective memory, and other confusions that constitute the bulk of Lee Smolin’s attack on string theory.

All the points I’ve had the energy to raise have been made here on Asymptotia Continue reading ‘Masterclass, II’

Quark Soup Al Dente

by

on April 11, 2007

in Los Angeles, research, science and string theory

. 13 Comments

Here’s Rob Myers in action, giving Monday’s excellent departmental colloquium, entitled “Quark Soup Al Dente: Applied String Theory”:

robert c myers quark soup al dente

Here was his abstract:

In recent years, experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have discovered an exotic new state of matter known as the quark-gluon plasma. Simple theoretical considerations suggested that this plasma would behave like an ideal gas, however, the experiments show that it actually behaves very much like an ideal liquid. Thus the standard theoretical tools, such as perturbation theory and lattice gauge theory, are poorly suited to understand this new phase. However, recent progress in superstring theory has provided us with a theoretical laboratory for studying very similar systems of strongly interacting hot non-abelian plasmas. This surprising new perspective extracts the fluid properties of the plasma from physical processes in a black hole spacetime. At present, this approach seems to provide some of the best tools which theoretical physicists have to understand the heavy ion collisions at RHIC.

For a very good blog post on this issue, see Bee and Stefan’s post at Backreaction.

It was really excellent to see Rob and spend some time with him at dinner afterwards and at lunch the next day with my students. We got to chat over a nice Tapas-style meal and catch up a bit on what each other has been up to (both in and out of physics - Rob is one of my most long standing friends and collaborators in the field), and he even gave us a seminar on Tuesday before leaving.

Now, here’s a physics question for you:
Continue reading ‘Quark Soup Al Dente’

Questions and Answers about Theories of Everything

by

on March 23, 2007

in science, science and society, science in the media and string theory

. 51 Comments

Sometimes the journalists and editors get it right. In fact, they get it right a lot of the time, but you hear more about the complaints (sometimes from me, sometimes elsewhere) about them getting it wrong, when it comes to things like science coverage especially. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the set of questions and answers that are in a new article on MSNBC that a number of people pointed out to me yesterday and today. It starts out as an article about Brian Greene’s science outreach efforts (books, and tv and movie appearances, including a new one), with some discussion of how this is regarded by his colleagues, the value it has had in raising public awareness of physics (and fundamental science in general, I would argue), and so forth. All that is interesting, but not nearly as interesting to me right now as the later parts of the article which is simply a question and answer session. (Picture above right is from a fun joke I carried out last year that you can read here - be sure to read the comments too.)

Alan Boyle, the science editor, asks Brian a series of very thoughtful questions, and Brian gives some very thoughtful answers. The topics include research in string theory (of course), hopes and possibilities for experimental and observational results (such as from the LHC and Planck) that can inform and ultimately test the ideas coming from string theory and open up new vistas in fundamental physics, research on issues such as the landscape, the idea of multiple universes, research on better developing our understanding of string theory (to the point where we can, it is hoped, extract firm predictions from it), and many other things. (I wrote an introduction to aspects of the landscape issue here - see also the comments - and talked a bit about a Tom Siegfried article on the discussion amongst researchers here.)

It is nice to see an honest, non-inflammatory and non-hyped conversation about the issues, and read Brian’s personal take on some of these matters. The bottom line is, Continue reading ‘Questions and Answers about Theories of Everything’

Teacup Mashup

by

on March 13, 2007

in fun, humour and string theory

. 6 Comments

… and now, thanks to the Talented Ms Bee (a genius DJ/MC in the making if there ever was one), you can carry around on your ipod an audio pastiche of some of the choicest (sometimes unfortunate!) phrases said during the “storm in a teacup”:

The excellent mp3 file is: Continue reading ‘Teacup Mashup’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VII

by

on March 13, 2007

in science, science in the media and string theory

. 174 Comments

You can catch up on some of the earlier Scenes by looking at the posts listed at the end of this one. Through the course of doing those posts I’ve tried hard to summarize my views on the debate about the views of Smolin and Woit - especially hard to emphasize how the central point of their debate that is worth some actual discussion actually has nothing to do string theory at all. Basically, the whole business of singling out string theory as some sort of great evil is rather silly. If the debate is about anything (and it largely isn’t) it is about the process of doing scientific research (in any field), and the structure of academic careers in general. For the former matter, Smolin and Woit seem to have become frustrated with the standard channels through which detailed scientific debates are carried out and resolved, resorting to writing popular level books that put their rather distorted views on the issues into the public domain in a manner that serves only to muddle. On the latter, there is a constant claim that string theory and its proponents are somehow brainwashing and/or frogmarching young people into working on that area to the exclusion of all else. The authors seem oblivious to some simple facts to the contrary there: (1) that you simply can’t do that to genuinely smart, creative young people; (2) that even students who have string theorists as their Ph.D or postdoc advisors often work on non-string theory research topics (3) that they’re doing an excellent job of either driving young people away from working on some of their favourite alternatives - or from pursuing theoretical physics altogether - by failing to clearly explain their merits and by using the press to help turn this into a distorted spectacle.

I’ve summarized a lot of what I think in the latter part of this post.

There are two major problems with how live debates take place in the public sphere. One is that the average person listening to the debate cannot know whether much of what Smolin and Woit claim as facts are right or wrong (or anyone on the other side of the debate, for that matter). When someone disputes a claim that Smolin makes, he Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VII’

New Directions in Real Estate?

by

on February 23, 2007

in fun, humour, science and string theory

. 18 Comments

keats real estate image On NPR’s finance programme Marketplace yesterday, there was a somewhat unusual piece. It seems that conceptual artist Jonathan Keats is making some money by selling the extra dimensional rights to various properties in San Francisco! (You can see him at the Modernism Gallery there¹).

Since there’s no known way to build on or otherwise occupy this new extra dimensional property (let me explain a bit further in an enormous footnote²), the prices are awfully reasonable. Here’s a transcript of a transaction that I found on their website. Reporter Nathaneal Johnson is observing a sale to punters Oscar Villalon and Mary Ladd:

Continue reading ‘New Directions in Real Estate?’

Not Improbable

by

on January 27, 2007

in academia, mathematics, science, string theory and work

. 13 Comments

On Wednesday night, accompanied by Tameem, a student of mine, I wandered across campus to attend the “Mathematics in Music” event. I blogged about it earlier. I don’t really want to talk about the event itself in this post. It was a nice enough recital of three pieces. I don’t know why, but the promised “mathematics” was disappointingly virtually non-existent. I’m not exaggerating, I’m afraid.

Keep in mind that it may simply just be my misunderstanding of the intent of the event, but there’s simply next to nothing to report in the way of what was said about mathematical aspects of music. There were plenty of opportunities, but (almost) none were taken. I got out my notebook and pen, all excited at what the presenters might say at various points… and the mathematics never showed up. There were a few extremely elementary remarks about tonal ratios in chords, about scales, keys, and time, and that was it, more or less. This was a bit of a shame, since I suspect that Elaine Chew could have talked at length and with some authority on the matter (given the projects she’s involved in - see e.g. here), but mathematics was almost completely missing in the event - despite the title. I imagine there were what seemed like good reasons for this. I was not party to decisions made behind the scenes, so cannot comment further.

More interestingly on that front was what took place in the minutes leading up to the delayed start of the event. First, although it was a free event, they pointed us to the box office where an attendant printed us two tickets from the computer so that we can show them to someone at the door who wasn’t really looking anyway. Fine. We got into the recital hall, but rather than sitting at the obvious available seats, I suggested that we move to the other side of the room where one can get a better view of the piano keyboard. I’m less than happy when I can’t see what a musician is doing, you see, so I always try to sit with the pianist’s view of the piano. So we did that, and found two seats. While we chatted and looked around us at the growing assembly, I spotted a friend and colleague of mine, the composer Veronika Krausas. She was in the company of someone who she introduced as Brian Head, who is a composer, performer (guitar) and music theorist (a “triple threat”, Veronika joked), also in USC’s Thornton school of music. They were looking for seats and there was one on either side of the two we were sitting in, and so they joined us and we chatted some more.

When the event start was about ten or fifteen minutes late -they were trying to get the reassuringly large crown all seated, they announced- Veronika idly looked at her ticket, pointed out that they were numbered, and wondered if we should have been Continue reading ‘Not Improbable’

In A Cafe Near You?

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on January 21, 2007

in humour, science, science and society and string theory

. 7 Comments

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks and forgot. From the New Yorker two weeks ago (I can’t decipher the artist’s name [Update: Lee Lorenz, I think.]):

I’m pleased to see this for lots of reasons. It reminds me that it was in the New Yorker Continue reading ‘In A Cafe Near You?’

All Hands on Deck

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on January 8, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, science, string theory and work

. 8 Comments

Well, it’s the middle of the Bleak Midwinter, and the first day of classes of the new semester. Mine start tomorrow. It is time to get myself back into the classroom-teaching frame of mind -although to be honest I don’t think the break was long enough for me to have got sufficiently far removed from it: 85% of the research tasks that I wanted to do during the break remain undone.

Anyway, I must sit and contemplate what I am going to talk about in the graduate course entitled “Selected Topics in Particle Physics”. It’s my lunch break, so I thought I’d chat to you for a bit.

Rumour has it that everyone is expecting some sort of string theory course, reasonably complementary to the one that my colleague Nick Warner taught here two years ago. I’ve no interest in just teaching the standard string theory topics - a good and motivated graduate student can just look them up in a book if motivated enough (if they can’t they’re in the wrong business) - and so I’d like to throw in some material that is not packaged together in the standard way, and give them an education that emphasizes powerful ideas and techniques that are relevant to more than just standard string theory research, but theoretical physics in general.

You see, this is one of the wonderful things about the topic that you don’t hear about much when people say things (and write books for a general audience) about how much it is supposedly taking over smart young minds and leading them astray: It is a fantastic framework for training good physicists for whatever new and useful ideas and physics will come along in the future, whether it is string theory or some other topic. The point is that string theory has developed in so many different ways, and Continue reading ‘All Hands on Deck’

Masterclass

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on December 6, 2006

in science, science in the media and string theory

. 30 Comments

You’ve possibly been following my efforts over here to discuss and explain the several weaknesses in Smolin’s and Woit’s arguments and positions, and why the current “string debate” is all an overblown (and media-fueled) fake controversy. (See for example the series of posts entitled “More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup”, the last three especially, (links: I, II, III, IV, V, VI); use the search engine for other instances.)

I’ve no idea what the effect of these discussions has been. Woit recently said “my views havenâ€™t changed at all”, and so has covered his ears and dug his heels in, while Smolin has written some sort of response on his website. I don’t hold out much hope for them, but I do hope that readers of these discussions can see that there’s been a fair amount of wool pulled over their eyes, to say the least.

What to do? What more to say? Whatever more I say, I cannot say it all any better than Joe Polchinski, a true master from whom we’ve all learned so much physics. Read his review in a guest post over on Cosmic Variance!

-cvj

Shocked Reaction

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on November 29, 2006

in science, science in the media and string theory

. 2 Comments

For a refreshingly straightforward point of view from a young person in the field who just wants to get on with doing some good physics with what seems like a promising approach, read Jonathan Shock’s description of his recent attendance of meetings (including the one to which I earlier referred) on heavy ion collisions and related physics. (See also an interesting comment by Xin-Nian Wang on the comment thread of my earlier post.) Jonathan gives some useful links to presentations on some of the attempts to model some of the new physics using string theory models.

The title? Oh, yes, he gets beaten up a bit by those around him for working on strings. Continue reading ‘Shocked Reaction’

Southern California Strings Seminar

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on November 29, 2006

in science and string theory

. 2 Comments

On Friday and Saturday of this week (December 1st and 2nd), the next Southern California Strings Seminar will be happening! Itâ€™s a regional meeting for people doing research in string theory and related topics, and as Iâ€™ve said before, Iâ€™d especially like to see more young people come out and take part. We make a special effort to ask the speakers to spend a little time at the beginning of their talk setting the scene (speaking about motivations, what has gone before, etc) so that the series can be of great value to people who are trying to learn whatâ€™s going on in a particular topic at research level (this can be students, postdocs, or faculty, in fact).

If youâ€™re doing this kind of physics research anywhere in the Southern California region, and want to take part, please come. See the website for details, and try to let Continue reading ‘Southern California Strings Seminar’

Nuclear Guy Goes Nuclear

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on November 23, 2006

in science, science in the media and string theory

. 8 Comments

Following on from her earlier post (with Stefan) on the research effort to understand Brookhaven’s RHIC physics with string theory, Bee reports some things she heard about a nuclear physics conference in Shanghai (Quark Matter ‘06). Apparently Larry McLerran -who is at Brookhaven- did a 20 minute anti-string (and anti-Brian Greene) rant. You can see some slides, etc, over there.

(Note for the non-expert:- RHIC means “Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider”. Picture on right (click for larger): Tracks from collision of two beams of gold nuclei -the heavy ions- recorded by the STAR detector at the RHIC experiment. More here. In a sense, a new form of matter is formed in these conditions - the issue is how to understand its properties.)

This sort of thing is rather funny, so far (apparently Brian Greene was given a “Pinocchio award” in the talk?! ). Let’s hope it does not turn into something serious.

In moving forward:

Continue reading ‘Nuclear Guy Goes Nuclear’

More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VI

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on November 10, 2006

in science, science education, science in the media and string theory

. 333 Comments

A quick update:

There was a second installment of the discussion led by George Johnson about press coverage of string theory. He went back to look to see what exactly some of those early articles said… How much coverage was there to start with? When did it start? When did it begin get out of hand? Did it get out of hand? Is this all just part of a standard bubble that happens for any field that the press decides to cover, a sort of manufactured (my word not his) boom and bust cycle? All issues that were touched upon in the discussion. Note also that the discussion broadens out considerably -as it should, (finally!)- to talk about the broader issue of coverage of topics in physics and science in general. The positive and negative effects of press coverage on attracting the next generation of students was also discussed. The discussion (this aspect in particular) was especially interesting because of the remarks by a number of senior people in the audience who were able to talk about their experiences over the years having seen the cycles recruitment of students in their own departments. Worth a listen/look at the archive here.
Lee Smolin has written a “Dear Friends” letter in response to some of the things that have been pointed out about his book, and about other points he’s made publicly in various discussions*. He’s given over some time to write quite a bit, which in general is a good thing to have done. You can find it here.

I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinion about Smolin’s remarks (I’ve not had time to read it in detail yet), and start a discussion here. Maybe ask him some followup questions here, for example. To help with context and build a more complete picture, do read some of the earlier comments and discussions involving him -and questions put directly to him- on the threads that share the name of this post. (e.g., Here and here.) Put those alongside the discussion with Peter Woit and of the central thesis of Woit’s book too. They are inseparable.

My set of opinions on the issue is the same as it was before. Even though I’ve said it all so many times here, since blogs seem to have no memory, I will summarize a bit:

Continue reading ‘More Scenes From the Storm in a Teacup, VI’

Spooky Strings

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on October 31, 2006

in fun and string theory

. 8 Comments

Strings are just everywhere. Have you noticed? Spooky isn’t it?

Spotted this two weeks ago one foggy morning outside my hotel window in Cambridge, and saved it for today to share with you (click for larger):

Have a spooky stringy Halloween!

-cvj

String Theory Goes A Little Bit Country?

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on October 31, 2006

in humour and