Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Lisa Randall Online!

Just a short note to let you know that Lisa Randall, will be online tomorrow (Thursday 8th Novermber, 2006) for an open discussion about physics, strings, Warped Passages and how to create your own universe (presumably). The event is being run by Discover magazine, and to whet your appetite you can read an interview with Lisa from Discover earlier this year here. I don't know exactly what you have to do to be involved but presumably turn up at Discover magazine's site from 2pm until 3pm (in the reference frame of the eastern shore of the US) be dressed in your finest surfing gear (the web kind, anything else would be surreal wouldn't it?), bring a question and a bottle. Why not?

Thanks to Coco Ballantyne for the head's up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Physics is a reductionist science. The string is hypothesized to be the smallest particle of which everything is made. The goal of reductionist physics is to find a few simple principles that underlie complex phenomena. The string theorists invent astonishing physical and mathematical complexity as the end point of reductionism. Well, quite obviously, the end point of reductionism is a theory as Einstein stated that we can teach to the kids and quite obviously not a theory that nobody can understand. When the end point of reductionism is the greatest complexity imaginable it is just plain absurd.

In 2000 an independent scientist working alone sent a copy of his book, The N-particle Model, to all the physics graduate students at Berkeley. Now he’s back and on the Reference Frame. He claims the universe is made of a single elementary particle that he now names the Ö particle and that particle is neither created nor destroyed. He claims its energy is 2.68138x10^-54 J. He claims the small size of the Ö particle is the reason electric, magnetic, photon and gravity fields appear continuous.

There is the question about lemmings when they get to the edge of the cliff. Do they choose to jump off or are they responding only to herd instinct or maybe aerodynamically drafted. It looks to me like the theorists are right on the edge.

Ted Kociolek said...

Hi nice readiing your post