I have been enjoying the hospitality of the Simons Center for Physics and Geometry these past two weeks. I have been attending the workshop on Mathematics and Physics that has been going on yearly for the past few years.
It is a fun filled event where there is about one talk per day (on most days) and where I get to have a lot of conversations with very many people that I don’t see all that often.
The most interesting day of the week is when we have a seminar at the beach. We get together and drive away for about an hour to reach Smith Point Park. We then get to hear a whiteboard talk from some participant under a tent while the rest of the passer-byes gawk at us: the idea of going all the way to the beach to hear someone speak about physics just floors them.
There are some pictures about those events that you can find in the webpage of the workshop, so you can go there to have a look (if you really must).
Perhaps because of my sense of humor, I kind of imagine us as a flock of kids who suddenly find themselves without their toys: the laptops are missing and we have to have `fun’ without doing calculations. Such activities involve tanning, getting in the sea and riding the waves, walking on the beach and perhaps even play volleyball.
All in all I definitely recommend the experience and welcome the chance to get some rest from my laptop.
Did you happen to find pebbles that were smoother than normal or shells prettier?
Hi Navneeth:
I found a pretty looking shell: it had a very nice shape and was about an inch and a half in diameter, with a very uniform black color. More surprisingly we also found a dead shark that had been washed onto the sand about a mile and some away from where the main beach area is located. The shark was slightly short of a meter long. We also saw a lot of shark eggs washed onto the beach.
They looked like the pictures on the following link:
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Mermaid.htm
David won’t you tell us something about your discussions with your colleagues on the fringe of the workshop? Which is the hottest topic in physics circles these days? Is it LHC (String) phenomenology or something else like some new promising development?
Dear Giotis, my understanding of David’s text is that the hottest topic was tanning. So it may be some ultraviolet (but, from a HEP viewpoint, infrared) absorption of U(1) Abelian gauge quanta.
I don’t believe that Lubos. These are dedicated people. Have you seen the photos on the beach? No offense but they reminded me the all time classical movie of the 80′s “The revenge of the nerds II”. Just kidding of course:-)
Hi Giotis:
Lubos is of course entirely correct on this one. The hottest topic at the beach was tanning. Or more precisely, how not to tan. People were reminded of the dangerous side-effects of being in the sun for prolonged periods of time without sunscreen. Sunscreen was provided. Also, people decided to stay or leave the beach sooner or later depending on the quality and numbers of the photons that were arriving at our location: if the weather was good and sunny, people stayed. If it was cloudy they left as soon as was politely acceptable.
The second most important topic was transportation: to and from the beach. Didn’t want anyone to get left behind, so there was a lot of wheeling and dealing on that particular topic.
I’m sure other important stuff was discussed, but that could be done anywhere and anytime without having lasting consequences on the well being of the participants.
Hi Giotis:
I wouldn’t say there is a ‘hottest topic’. Instead there are a lot of luke-warm areas of research where each of us spends some time swimming in. For my part I talked a lot about computer codes, matrix black holes and was disparaging in good company about the fact that most of the results we have are about BPS quantities and very little about dynamics.
For many other participants, what was hot were either topological strings, wall crossing phenomena, toric geometry, sigma models or applied AdS/CFT. I’m sure I missed some other topics.
Now I’m safely back in Santa Barbara.
Dear Giotis, I don’t think that e.g. David is a revenged nerd but whether or not they are ones, even nerds can go tanning sometimes, can’t they? Especially if some of the other ones are only nerds by job occupation, not by their nature.