So the conference here at the Newton Institute in Cambridge is simply marvellous. I’m so glad I came, and so happy that I was invited to attend and make a contribution to it by giving a talk and having discussions. It’s a rather splendid combination of experimentalists, phenomenologists, and various hardcore theorists of various sorts, and there are ideas just flying around and bouncing off the walls. The title is “Exploring QCD: Deconfinement, Extreme Environments and Holography”, (it’s organized by Nick Evans, Simon Hands, and Mike Teper) and the focus is very much the fascinating nuclear physics of heavy ion collisions at the RHIC experiment at Brookhaven, and the experiments to come on heavy ion collisions at the LHC at CERN. The latter is an aspect of the physics to be done at the LHC that you don’t hear about much because it is sidestepped in favour of discussions about the Higgs, origin of mass, supersymmetry, theories of everything – such as strings, microscopic black holes, extra dimensions and all that other good stuff. (See earlier discussions here, here and here.)
Well, the great thing is that there’s been plenty of discussion of black holes, extra dimensions, strings, and so forth at the conference because of a great deal of promise of its relevance to nuclear physics. It’s been right alongside the discussion of experimental results, and other theoretical approaches such as work on computer simulations of aspects of QCD (“lattice QCD”) and studies involving other techniques. There’s very much a spirit of open-minded exchange among all the various parties […] Click to continue reading this post →
How come there’s no song with this as the title? Sung by someone with a gravelly voice…. (Sorry, semi-obscure ’80’s music reference.)
