I recently gave an interview about my research to a newspaper run by my Alma matter mater. The article can be found here. It is in Spanish. As with most newspaper articles, very little science ends up punching through. It is extremely hard to communicate with the public without falling into my usual jargon. I learned that people like hearing about black holes, that it inspires a little fear of the unknown and that they think that the back holes just about eat everything. At least I was able to tell them that there is good evidence for a super-massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way and that my work hopes to disentangle some of the mysteries of black holes.
Another thing that happened recently, is that a book for which I made a contribution finally got published. The book is called ” Geometric and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory“. The book is a set of lecture notes of a school that I attended two years ago. In my section I try to explain some sring theory basics and the rudiments of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Unfortunately I was not allowed to post the notes in the arxiv when I asked. If your library happens to buy it you might want to give it a look.
Dear David,
congrats to your achievements. I don’t want to correct your Latin, especially because you’re from Latin America, except that I can’t resist haha: it’s Alma mater, not Alma matter.
The article looks nice. Here you have the English version:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.unperiodico.unal.edu.co/dper/article/empieza-a-desentranarse-misterio-sobre-los-agujeros-negros/&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=ISO-8859-1
Hi Lubos:
Thanks for finding the typo. The spellchecker couldn’t figure it out…
I’m going to complain for it not being able to read my mind when it should, and for doing it when it shouldn’t.
By the way, just because I grew up in Latin America does not mean I took Latin lessons. Its just that both Portuguese and Spanish are Latin languages and thus have a lot of Latin roots, so we can fake it sometimes.
Haha, David,
thanks, I suspected that Latin has probably been a dead language for a few weeks and that Portuguese could have taken over Brazil, while Spanish over the rest, but it’s always good to be re-taught the good old lessons.
Spellcheckers could have some black lists, i.e. frequently mistyped combinations of words – not only white lists – like “Alma matter”.
The English translation is entertaining to read:
“Scientists face the black holes with a high dose of passion”
“The Bogota David Berenstein, National University physicist and professor at the University of California, with prestigious colleagues,…”
“But peace!, Says David Berenstein”
“”says Colombian scientist, who has worked alongside physical and Willy Fischler”
Hi Paul:
This is why professional translations are still done by people.
The fragments I can read courtesy of Google make me want to buy the book.
Looks really good! Unfortunately, since our physics library is barely able to afford to stay open, I doubt I’ll see it there any time soon.
I speak English better than the translator, but not as well as my mater language where I’m one step behind Cervantes.
David,
In the article is said:
‘Brian Greene has stated that maybe the strings will never be measured.’
So, you have build a consistent mathematical theory that would describe Nature in its most fundamental level, but this level can’t be observed.
I’m afraid you have opened another problem. Are you able to face on the following questions? I mean:
Have you showed by means of the deductive reasoning, that string theory is the only consistent path to describe Nature? or Why strings and not other metaphysical entities?
So, I think the most important problem is to show that string theory is the unique logical paradigm to explain Nature. Is it possible?
Hi Cid:
No, we haven’t shown that strings is the only consistent path to describe nature.
Strings per se are not metaphysical objects, they are postulated and once this is done their dynamics follows from physical principles. They are physical and are subject to physical laws. They also give predictions, but in regimes that are beyond what we can access with current experiments or any forseable technology:
If we had experiments at the Planck scale we should be able to detect strings. We could get lucky and the Planck scale might be nearer than expected. Or it could be way up there in which case we would need an accelerator of the size of the Milky Way to probe them.
Their observation would not necessarily be different from resonances as happens in QCD, indeed, it is widely believed that there is a string theory of QCD. That particular string theory model would describe physics we have already observed and be very physical. Nobody has the found the right model yet. Whether that should be called fundamental depends on whom you’re asking.
Also, the name `fundamental’ can be misleading. Its more important to ask if a model is useful for calculations.
Hi David,
It is nice to know, here in Colombia, about your work, I think we need to know about people like you that with his outstanding work inspire our young students to follow this field.