Polyakovfest

Last weekend Princeton held a Special Symposium in honor of Alexander Polyakov’s 60th birthday. Witten talked about his recent work on Langlands duality. He’ll also be speaking about this next week at Rutgers and December 1 and 2 up in Boston.

I hear from someone who attended the symposium that Gross gave a talk with title officially still TBA, but for which he said he’d use the title “Strings and Instantons”, since that is what all of Polyakov’s titles are. His theme was irresponsibility and he recalled around 1990 having dissuaded Polyakov from going to Santa Barbara and spending his time on the beach, getting him to come to Princeton instead. Of course Gross himself then soon left Princeton for Santa Barbara. Gross also said that, unlike his usual practice, he would end his talk on time since he didn’t have much to say due to being busy with the events of the past year.

On a completely unrelated topic, Fermilab recently held a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the discovery of the top quark, and the talks are on-line. Also on-line at Fermilab are some on-going lectures by Chris Quigg on The Electroweak Theory and Higgs Physics.

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8 Responses to Polyakovfest

  1. Quantum_Ranger says:

    Any chance that Atiyah will be present at Gross talk?

    It sound like Gross is expecting some tricky questioning, thus the reason given for the lack of available ‘Time’ at the upcoming talk, tells me Gross is aware of how interuptions of speaker’s can be grossly mis-interpreted.

  2. Thomas Larsson says:

    Belavin’s talk is probably about hep-th/0510214. Pokrovsky’s article about Polyakov’s contributions to condensed matter in the same e-print explains why I consider Polyakov to be one of the greatest physicists alive (Einstein, Dirac and Feynman are all dead).

    Jackiw’s talk is probably about hep-th/0511065. This is what I’m currently reading.

  3. Amazon.com says:

    A book about this blog finally appeared here.

  4. Chris Oakley says:

    Re: the above, I found a list of treatments for autism:

    Nutritional Therapies
    Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment
    Fibroblast Growth Factor 2
    Live Cell and Stem Cell Therapy
    Anti-fungal Treatment
    Antibiotic Therapy
    Naltrexone (NTX) Treatment
    Intensive Educational Therapies
    Detoxification for Heavy Metals
    Craniosacral Therapy

    Would any of these work on String Theorists, I wonder? One could could start the experiments on Landscapers (the useless ones, that is – not the ones who re-design your garden).

  5. does string theory have any laws or postulates?

  6. While Chris Quigg is based on hep-ph/0204104, its companion paper 0404228 is a must.

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  8. Juan R. says:

    Chris Oakley,

    A 10^120 volts electro-shock therapy?

    Perhaps one could then observe supersimmetric strings…

    I sincerely doubt that works with Landscapers. At least we would search them between the multiple universes first.

    Dr. Ranger McCoy

    Of course!!

    God is a string theorist. If God is not one then he is not so smart.

    String theorists are smartest people of this universe. Landscape corolary: and of the rest of infinite others.

    String theory explains more than everything

    If anyone is against string theory, then kill her/him (academically, of course).

    String theory is not defined, therefore you can define string theory as you want

    Remember if you are a string theorist, you are smart. Corolary: this also apply if your contribution to science was zero

    Any rival theory, if good, is part of string theory if not, then it is another example of how smart you are

    Publish papers claiming contrary things. For example, in a paper string theory is unitary in other it is not and in other paper it is a mixture of two last ones. Then string theory always win. Corolary: you are more smart still

    Energy spectra is bounded due to dualities. But ‘smart spectra’ is unbounded. You can always become more smart still

    Rival people is so ‘stupid’ that when they say a thing they are not saying it, then you can claim that they are saying a different thing they really said. Corolary: if they claim that you are an ignorant, then that mean that they are saying that you are smart. Remember (1/R) => R

    If string theory is incompatible with Standard model, the problem is with Standard Model. It is ugly

    If string theory is incompatible with experiments, the problem is with the experiment. It was incorrect, or done to a very low energy. Corollary: by each time that energy level to observe effects is sited to more higgher level, smart level is also

    If string theory is incompatible with scientific model model, the problem is with scientific model. It is so ‘old’ and string theory so new and revolutionary…

    If string theory is incompatible with string theory, then there is not problem

    If string theory is unelegant, then change the definition of elegant

    If string theory is nonscientific, then change the definition of scientific

    Name ‘theory’ to any thing that you can think or imagine even if you cannot write anything about it. Example: M-theory. Corollary: in private sure to young impresionable students that M-theory does not exist by the motive of being more smart when you write it by the first time

    Public is…

    If you are wrong, do not worry, wait to next duality

    Maintain the name string theory by marketing purposes

    This list is time-dependant, author-dependant, and context depdendant

    Juan R.

    Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

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