If research papers had a comment section it might look like this. This is how a lot of blog comments look like anyhow.
In the air waves there is a lot of discussion of the recent paper by Hartle and Srednicki about doing science in a very large universe. This has been discussed here and here. I’ve been waiting for my chance to write a rant on issues about typicality, but I will do as a typical blogger and just reshuffle other news around.
Oswaldo Zapata has a new essay on the music of the superspheres. Erm that should be music of the superstrings. I haven’t read it yet (I’m way way too busy right now), but I’m sure something interesting can be picked from it.
Jacques has started posting again and suggested some interesting music to listen to. I have recently stumbled on some great performances by Clapton.
Here is one.
Actually, I’ve considered going through all of the live versions of Layla available to compare them. There are some other great versions with Mark Knopfler and Phil Collins. You should go find them.
The Zapata essay is interesting and I’m amused to see a diagram I developed for Sci Am (of a violin) adduced as evidence. It makes me wonder how science will progress if younger scientists listen more to rock (or timba) than to classical music!
George
Hi George:
I think it already has happened. It’s just that rock and roll analogies seem less academic…
Re Hartle: A bacterium is small, a fruitfly is less small, a whale is less small still. At what scale does the organism become recurrent, like pi occuring inside pi to any number of desired decimal places? Ditto skiffs and and aircraft carriers, asteroids and VY Canis Majoris or HD 269810.
For pi, 314159265358 from 1,142,905,318,634-th digit after the decimal.
As far as we know, it doesn’t recur. The physics at different scales is very different. Universality only seems to apply to systems in equilibrium.
This is a little dark, but still worth watching
I also would recommend this one just to leave on a happy note