Disturbing the Universe

Elegant universe

2004-07-02T02:43:00.000-07:00

There is a video ``elegant universe'' at PBS website. It is fun.

Conferences and internet

2004-06-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

I had been invited to give a talk at the Fourth meeting of oversea Chinese physics association, starting yesterday, in Shanghai. Unfortunately I was not able to go, though I am interested in such a conference, which covers a wide range of topics in physics.

Nevertheless, the internet has decreased the necessity of attending conferences, among other huge impacts on the way of doing research. Many talks are now available online. It is really good.

Majorana and social sciences

2004-06-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Today I got to know that the famous name Majorana once wrote a paper on analogy between statistical laws in physics and social sciences, from the book by Mantegna and Stanley. In particle physics, if the complex conjugate of a spinor is itself, it is called a Majorana spinor. Majorana was a colleague of Fermi in Pisa. He disappeared in a boat trip. In my memory of what I read about him, he was not self-confident. Also, once Fermi was going to present a result of Majorana in a conference, the latter strangely asked Fermi to give credit to an irrelevant senior person.

Recently I found some interests in social sciences.

First blog

2004-06-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog.

The title is adapted from the title of the famous autobiographical book of Freeman Dyson, which I am fond of very much. Perhaps it had contributed to my sticking to the road of being, or trying to be, a theoretical physicists. I read the Chinese translation of this book when I was a beginning undergraduate student. Later on I read the original English version. I like other writings of Dyson as well, such as `From Eros to Gaia', `Origin of life', `Infinites in all directions', where I learned the significant role of John Randall in post-war science, for example in making the work of Rosalind Franklin on DNA possible. In 1999, Dyson gave a beautiful speech in the occasion of the retirement of Chen Ning Yang.

I actually saw Dyson once, just last year, when he gave a Dirac Lecture at Center of Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge. His clear thinking and rapid answers to questions were very impressive.

According to Yang, it was Dyson who brought the program of renormalization to completion.