Tag: physics

Deep Impact

claims that strangelets traversing earth might cause earthquakes. has a bit of a cold fusion feel to it

The visitor hit the top of the atmosphere over Antarctica. It cut through the rock below with equal ease. In less than 20 seconds, it had crossed the South Atlantic, deep beneath the ocean floor. 15 seconds later, it left Earth’s crust somewhere between Sri Lanka and Thailand. It lanced up through the afternoon sky and headed back out to the stars. The whole visit lasted less than 1 minute, and nobody saw a thing.

Road to reality

i got to hear sir roger penrose talk about his new book the road to reality. (review)
penrose has this knack of dropping mind bombs with a couple short sentences (that is, if you know some physics). he spent some time (both in the book and the lecture) to comment on some of the theories du jour, from quantum gravity to superstrings.
i especially liked his objection to how thermalization is used to make the case for inflation. arguing with the 2nd law of thermodynamics, there is a 10^10^123 likelihood for the initial state of the universe (basically, it requires very very low entropy while singularities have very high entropy). yet inflation has happened, so what gives? surprisingly, this kind of reasoning hasn’t been used for inflationary cosmology…
i am sure there were lots of other references like that, but my physics were not nearly strong enough to understand what he talked about 🙂

Non-leaky abstractions in physics

i talked to prof. eberhard hilf yesterday. hilf is a retired professor of theoretical physics who is now working on the problems around long-term storage of electronic scientific data. we talked about the change in semantics as science moves forward, and the need to not only port content from old storage media to new ones, but also the need to transcribe the content itself to make it accessible to scientists of another age.
hilf demonstrated how equations as jotted down by einstein in 1905 would be almost incomprehensible to modern scientists today. over the years, verbose notations have been replaced by increasingly more succinct ones, new symbols have been introduced. i immediately had to think of leaky abstractions. hilf was adamant that physics was not prone to those problems because it is grounded in solid math.
good for them physicists, and too bad computer science cannot claim the same currently.

Physics in public policy

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University will present Murray Gell-Mann, recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics, for 2 lectures, December 2 and 10. The evening lectures will be held at the Boston University School of Management, 595 Commonwealth Avenue. The companion lectures, titled Regularities and Randomness in the Past and the Future, will address how an understanding of phenomena known to the world of physics – both persistent, unchanging events and random, incidental ones – can inform our development of long-lasting, broadly applicable public policies.

always interesting to hear about the theoretical underpinnings for augurs. i will of course be there.

Elegance

tuned into the elegant universe by chance. great, great show, not just for finally hearing the smartest man alive speak.

Although he is definitely a physicist (as his list of publications clearly shows) his command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians, and his ability to interpret physical ideas in mathematical form is quite unique. Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by his brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems.