It is #BlackInPhysics week, and be sure to check out the various special activities at https://blackinphysics.org. It is a joy to see the faces and stories popping up on twitter under #BlackInPhysicsRollCall as physicists around the world introduce themselves. Join in! Share! Use it when people in your department tell … Click to continue reading this post
Yesterday’s kitchen science experiment was this morning’s breakfast! In explaining to my young son about microorganisms that we live with (in our bodies, and as tools of transformation we deploy in various applications like cuisine) I suddenly remembered trying to make yogurt when I was myself very young (although not … Click to continue reading this post
My colleague Jack Feinberg is a USC treasure! He’s been building and shipping home physics lab kits to our students. There’s an article about it here. –cvj
Because of a certain movie from earlier this Summer (which I have not yet got around to mentioning here on the blog), I’ve been doing a lot of interviews recently, so sorry in advance for my face showing up in all your media. And I know many will sneer because … Click to continue reading this post
This year’s big annual flagship conference in String theory, Strings 2020, ended two days ago. It was a massive success, and it was held entirely online. There were more than 2000 registered participants from all around the world, with sessions where a large portion of that number were engaged simultaneously! This conference’s attendance more usually ranges at around 300 – 400, as far as I remember, so this was a spectacular change. The success was made possible by -most importantly- the willingness of many people to take part and engage with each other to a degree that was foreign to most participants, combined with smart and tireless effort by the team of organizers in Cape Town, where the conference was originally going to be held physically. There were excellent talks (selected by the programme committee) and many illuminating discussions.
Due to the pandemic, the conference was originally going to be cancelled (or at least postponed to much later in the year), but organizer Jeff Murugan announced at relatively short notice that they were instead going to attempt to do it online on the original dates, and it is wonderful that so many people around the world engaged, instead of just shrinking away into the Covid-19 gloom.
The other major component of the success is what I want to discuss here. It was the use, sometimes in concert, of tools such as Zoom […] Click to continue reading this post
Here’s a nice piece on US Presidents, science, and our current situation, by Ted Widmer for the Guardian. Happy 4th gf July! –cvj
Replenishing critical supplies of cinnamon-raisin bread for the household, a couple of days ago. Not a bad result, given that it is so long since I’ve made this kind of loaf. The recipe turned out a little raisin-poor for my tastes, and it was a little dry (possibly my fault), … Click to continue reading this post
My big task this afternoon was not baking but making a hexahexaflexagon! I can’t tell you why right now, but as far as I know it has nothing to do with my recent paper on JT gravity in case you were trying to see a connection.
What’s that now? You want more physics teases? Ok. That dotted line is a (known) JT gravity Schwarzian spectral density. That red line? It’s the fully quantum corrected result! To all orders in topology and beyond. See my paper that appeared today on the arXiv.
(For experts: The red line is made up of about 2000 points for each of which I know the energy, and the full wave function for an associated problem. Using those I can compute lots of things, to good accuracy. One example is the full non-perturbative spectral form factor, that I showed last post.)
Ok here goes. Been bursting to tell you this for many weeks. Ever wondered what the fully non-perturbative spectral form factor for a JT gravity model looks like? For real? Not in some special limit or simplified model? Here you go.
Paper out on Monday! (I plan on doing a post or two about what this all means.)
Can’t resist some Friday wind-down deep-dive physics humour…
To end the week, a remarkable coincidence. This morning, I was listening to one of Wynton Marsalis’ greatest recordings, his 1983 album with the Haydn trumpet concerto in E flat major. Just found it on by accident on the radio, and found myself wondering what he’s up to these days … Click to continue reading this post
This Wednesday (10th June), in support of #BlackLivesMatter and the demonstrations taking part worldwide, there will be a day of action in various parts of academia to simply stop doing “business as usual” while the horrors of what is routinely done to black people at all levels of society continue.
What people choose to do on that day is up to them, but there are suggestions as a number of websites. I encourage you to go there and read what they have to say, and make up your own mind. A good start is the ShutDownStem site, and search under #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM and #Strike4BlackLives on social media for chatter, activity, and more resources. The Particles For Justice group, led by people in or close to my field, have also joined in to lead and encourage, and their site is here, again with lots of suggestions for types of action to get involved in.
Frankly, having seen and heard […] Click to continue reading this post
(Clickable montage of some recent posts on my instagram account that might interest you. See also the twitter and Facebook accounts. Links in sidebar.)
The desire to have glitch-free online teaching and business meetings at home has driven me to do some infrastructure improvements I should have done years ago: extending the Ethernet backbone of the home network. Connecting the jacks (ethernet connectors) is a tad fiddly (but trivial), but the results are worthwhile! … Click to continue reading this post
