{"id":8949,"date":"2016-11-22T20:22:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T01:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8949"},"modified":"2016-11-23T09:40:56","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T14:40:56","slug":"various-links-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8949","title":{"rendered":"Various Links"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few pre-Thanksgiving items:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>International Journal of Modern Physics A has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/toc\/ijmpa\/31\/30\">new issue<\/a> with &#8220;Featured Topic&#8221; part I of a discussion of the proposed Chinese supercollider project.  The high profile contributions are from C. N. Yang, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1142\/S0217751X16300532\">China should not build a supercollider at this time<\/a>, and a response from David Gross: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1142\/S0217751X16300544\">Why China should build the Great Collider<\/a>.  Both I think do a good job of making the case for and against the project, with the central question that of the high cost.  If this was a $1 billion project there would be no question it would get done, and if it was a $100 billion project it could never happen.  The problem is that the order of magnitude is $10 billion.\n<p>There are some other contributions to the debate, including sensible pro-collider pieces by Yifang Wang and Weimin Wu.  There&#8217;s also a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldscientific.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1142\/S0217751X16300568\">bizarre piece by Henry Tye<\/a>, making an ad hominem argument against Yang, based on the fact that in 1980 Yang was skeptical about the future of high energy physics.  I&#8217;m afraid that this doesn&#8217;t work very well as an argument against Yang, whose prediction of no post-1980 breakthroughs looks unfortunately prescient these days.<\/li>\n<li>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/21\/technology\/microsoft-spends-big-to-build-quantum-computer.html\">New York Times<\/a>, one possibly imminent non-HEP breakthrough is a Microsoft quantum computer.  Their project grew out of one they funded led by topologist Mike Freedman.<\/li>\n<li>Last weekend there was a <a href=\"https:\/\/burkeinstitute.caltech.edu\/workshops\/JHS75\">celebration at Caltech<\/a> of John Schwarz&#8217;s 75th birthday.  No slides or video of talks it seems.  I&#8217;ve wondered what Susskind&#8217;s take on supersymmetry is these days, so curious what might have been in his talk entitled &#8220;Supersymmetry and the Limits of What We Know&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Howard Burton was the founding director of Perimeter, helping to get it off the ground and turn it into the success it has become (Sabine Hossenfelder <a href=\"http:\/\/backreaction.blogspot.com\/2016\/11\/away-note.html\">here<\/a> notes that the term of the current director Neil Turok is up and wonders who is next).  In recent years Burton has been running something he calls <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ideasroadshow.com\/home\/guest\">Ideas Roadshow<\/a>, and now has a new blog called <a href=\"https:\/\/ideasroadshowblog.com\/\">In Search of Refinement<\/a>.  He writes about a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3OsE8NETbNQ\">recent event with Roger Penrose<\/a>, discussing his new book, and has kind things to say about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8759\">my review of the book<\/a>.  Ideas Roadshow now has accumulated a significant number of interesting interviews, worth your while if you&#8217;re looking for high-quality but not free internet content to support.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  One more.  Yet more private funding for US scientific research.  The New York Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/22\/science\/flatiron-institute-james-simons-foundation.html\">reports on the Simons Foundation Flatiron Institute<\/a>, a planned $80 million\/year, 200 employee research institute.  The focus will be on computational work, and doing better science by freeing scientists from having to apply for grants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few pre-Thanksgiving items: International Journal of Modern Physics A has a new issue with &#8220;Featured Topic&#8221; part I of a discussion of the proposed Chinese supercollider project. The high profile contributions are from C. N. Yang, China should not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8949\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8949"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8956,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8949\/revisions\/8956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}