New Blogs and Other Stuff

Here’s a few new blogs I’ve run across recently:

  • The FQXi organization now has a blog called FQXi Community.
  • Rantings of an Angry Physicist is not another Not Even Wrong, but an interesting blog so far devoted to explaining what is going on in Steve Carlip’s quantum gravity course.
  • The new open access journal PhysMathCentral has a blog. It’s “open access” in the sense that it promises to indefinitely provide free access to published articles. Funding comes from the authors of the articles, who have to come up with an “article processing charge” of around $1500. I’ll be curious to see if this funding model works out, but have my doubts. From what I remember, back in the 1970s, the fact that APS journals were charging authors a similar “Page Charge” fee was one of the reasons why many prominent theorists stopped publishing in the Physical Review and started publishing in commercial journals like Nuclear Physics B, thus entrenching commercial publishers like Elsevier. It’s unclear to me now how many authors will be willing to pay to publish when they can publish for free in other (often commercial) journals.

Robert Bryant, a great geometer in the Cartan-Chern tradition, now at Duke, has accepted the post of next director of MSRI at Berkeley. Robert was here at Columbia recently as a visiting professor, and I think he’s a wonderful choice for leading MSRI.

The Geometry, Topology and Physics Seminar at UCSB has some material from talks there on-line. Last month there was a quite interesting talk by Sergei Gukov on gauge theory and “arithmetic topology”, meaning some analogies between 3-manifold topology and number theory.

For the past few days in Brussels there has been a Solvay workshop on “Gauge Theories, Strings and Geometry” . Talks are available here.

From the Fermilab Steering Group trying to develop a strategic roadmap, there’s a presentation about possibilities for higher energy colliders than the LHC or ILC. Ideas discussed include a doubling of the LHC energy using new 17 Tesla magnets, and a huge proton-proton collider called the VLHC to be built deep underground, in the Chicago area.

Next month in Paris there will be a Smolin/Damour debate about string theory, see Dispute chez les physiciens.

For an interesting article I just ran across about Geoffrey Chew and S-matrix theory during the 1960s, see here.

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19 Responses to New Blogs and Other Stuff

  1. Thomas Larsson says:

    Re Geoffrey Chew, the latest issue of Cern Courier has an article about another favorite of yours.

  2. wolfgang says:

    anon.

    thanks for the translation, but when it says “theory of the cords of quantum gravity”, do you think the original was strings or loops 8-?

  3. Peter Woit says:

    In French “theorie des cordes” is used to denote string theory, although “corde” is a word used to mean something more like a rope than a string. I’ve never understood why the translation isn’t “ficelle” which would be more accurate.

    The French do have in their language the concept of “un string”, but it means something a bit different, leading to snickering if one translates the term that way…

  4. theoreticalminimum says:

    The French do have in their language the concept of “un string”, but it means something a bit different, leading to snickering if one translates the term that way…

    Oh, come on Peter! I thought you would show us some of that French audace, and translate that term away (not that it needs translation for informed readers of this blog). I even found out that, may I say well-endowed, members of the so-called “string mafia” have made it to the Tour de France! I mean, could any unification program get that much sexy?! ;-P

    The debate between Smolin and Damour would, I believe, be worth listening to. It would be of a kind different from the ones that took place before, e.g. Smolin/Duff. Damour is one of the leading experts in general relativity and, though having written a few papers in string cosmology, is not, I would be inclined to say, a full-fledged string theorist. So, at least in that respect, it would be interesting enough to look forward to knowing to what extent Damour agrees and disagrees with Smolin.

  5. John Baez says:

    Speaking of string-loop debates, Hermann Nicolai is helping run a conference in Bad Honnef called “Quantum Gravity: Perspectives and Challenges”, during April 14th-16th, 2008. It’s supposed to be a kind of reprise of the 2003 workshop on “Loops vs. Strings” at the Albert Einstein Institute. It looks like I’ll be going — maybe in my new role as someone who has serious doubts about both approaches.

    I’m not exactly relishing the prospect, but I think it’ll be good to have people there who aren’t committed to either approach, but know a little about both. Solving physics problems by gladiatorial combat between “teams” doesn’t seem very productive.

  6. Markk says:

    “Solving physics problems by gladiatorial combat between “teams” doesn’t seem very productive.”

    Yes but from reading history it does seem to be productive at defining specific problems which can be attacked. Or at least agreeing on areas where those problems lie.

  7. Harry says:

    Concerning “cordes” and “ficelles”, “ficelles” is in french associated with a few quite negatively connoted expressions : “celui qui tire les ficelles” = the one who is hidden and makes this others act, “les ficelles d’un art” = the hidden processes of an art. An old meaning (XVIIIth) is also “crafty” (i. e. “il est très ficelle” = he’s very crafty).

    I guess that’s the reason why “cordes” (which sounds solid and thick) has been chosen.

  8. Christine says:

    For what is worth, in portuguese the translation of “string theory” is “teoria de cordas”, following the french term.

  9. Alejandro says:

    Same in Spanish (“cuerdas” rather than “hilos”). Perhaps the often-used analogy to vibrating strings in musical instruments can explain it? “Cuerda” normally (i.e. without context) would mean “rope” in Spanish, but string instruments are called “instrumentos de cuerdas”. I gather the same happens in French.

  10. Aaron Bergman says:

    FWIW, Lee Smolin and Erik Verlinde will be appearing on a two person panel at the end of the month.

  11. Who says:

    Actually the October 2003 conference at the Albert Einstein Institute that Hermann Nicolai, Abhay Ashtekar and others put together was called
    “Strings meets Loops”

    and the emphasis, by all I could tell from outside, was on productive exchange. There was a fifty-fifty balance of talks. Nicolai gave the opener and Ashtekar gave the concluding talk.

    Seemed like a good idea. I’m glad that something along those lines is scheduled for 2008. Long overdue. Just want to correct a slight oversight int what John Baez said: the conference was not called “Strings VERSUS Loops”, or Loops vs Strings, or anything versus. AFAIK the organizers’ idea was a friendly meeting of equals.
    ==quote==
    Speaking of string-loop debates, Hermann Nicolai is helping run a conference in Bad Honnef called “Quantum Gravity: Perspectives and Challenges”, during April 14th-16th, 2008. It’s supposed to be a kind of reprise of the 2003 workshop on “Loops vs. Strings” at the Albert Einstein Institute. It looks like I’ll be going — maybe in my new role as someone who has serious doubts about both approaches.
    ==endquote==

  12. Who says:

    Typo: the conference was called STRINGS MEET LOOPS
    http://www.aei.mpg.de/english/contemporaryIssues/seminarsEvents/pastEvents/index.html#2003
    I learned about it from John Baez, who posted the schedule sometime around the first week of October 2003, IIRC, but i can’t find it in TWF.

  13. Viri says:

    Regarding theoreticalminimum’s language reference links 🙂 I must say that in Portuguese String Theory is translated as “Teoria das cordas” “corda” being strong as opposed to “fio”.

    Now the really funny part is that the pictures he linked where of “tangas” (the underwear) and that is a synonym of bullshit and has a derogatory meaning in many other contexts, usually when someone is trying to fool someone else.

    I too think the musical instrument analogy explains these translations to romance languages.

  14. Michael says:

    Peter,

    Sorry to go off subject. But I was wondering if you knew of any colloquium/seminar type events held regularly in the New York City area over the summer. Or if you knew about any upcoming lectures of interest in areas such as cosmology or particle theory. I’m having some trouble finding out about things that go on off the academic calendar. Thanks!

    -Michael

  15. Peter Woit says:

    Michael,

    Sorry, but I don’t know of any colloquium/seminar activities in the area this summer. People pretty much only schedule those during term time, assuming too many people are away and it is hard to get together an audience during the summer. In the New York area there are two summer programs I know of:

    http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/itp/conf/simonswork5/
    at Stony Brook, and

    http://www.admin.ias.edu/pitp/

    at the IAS. The IAS program you probably need to have applied for to attend the lectures.

  16. Chris W. says:

    The conference that Aaron pointed to (re Smolin and Verlinde) also includes this intriguing talk:

    Jürg Fröhlich (ETH Zürich) — “Atomism and quantization”

    I wonder what exactly that will be about.

  17. Travis says:

    Regarding Open Access, while Open Access options are currently limited to “author pays” there is an initiative in Europe called SCOAP3 that would shift the payment for Open Access to the funding agency level. Few, if any, proponents of Open Access in HEP think that authors would choose to pay if the money could go elsewhere. But by earmarking, or simply paying as a consortia, funding agencies can engineer this shift.

    This is important for physicists to think about, as one essential reason for moving this direction is the preservation of the peer review process against the cancellation of overpriced journals by underfunded libraries who no longer have much reason to spend money on HEP journals (why pay for articles already on arXiv?).

    Salvatore Mele gave a colloquium at SLAC recently about this topic, see:

    http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/colloquium/details.asp?EventID=204

    for more information, including links to the SCOAP3 documents.

  18. Peter Woit says:

    Thanks Travis!

    I was just as Oxford, where the editorial board of the Elsevier journal Topology all recently resigned, leaving to found another journal. The latest issue of Topology came in while I was there, a real collector’s item. The page that normally lists the editors is blank. No one knows if Elsevier will try and keep the journal going…

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