Physics
The Quantum Pontiff
Category archives for Physics
QIP 2010 and CSQ 2010
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 22, 2009 Two conferences. Renato Renner sends along a note about QIP 2010. The paper submission deadline is one month away: QIP 2010 will be held in Zurich, Switzerland, January 18-22. The submission deadline for contributed talks is 22 October 2009. For more information, please see http://www.qip2010.ethz.ch We look forward to welcoming you to Zurich, the organizers…
LHC Director-General Interview
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 17, 2009 Get your daily dose of physics geekery–an interview with LHC director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer– I need to learn to use “symmetry breaking” in my everyday speech.
Gell-Mann on Conventional Wisdom
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 16, 2009 Via Asymptotia, an interview with Murray Gell-Mann (who just turned 80. Happy Birthday Murray!) I particularly like the comments at the end of the article: Battles of new ideas against conventional wisdom are common in science, aren’t they? It’s very interesting how these certain negative principles get embedded in science sometimes. Most challenges to scientific…
Apocalypse Avoided
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 10, 2009 As I discussed a few blog posts ago a serious hole in our apocalypse protection network was about to be compromised with the non-renewal of the website http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. But it seems that Domenic has come to the rescue! See comment in the above blog post and the RSS feed update: Domenic (a true fan of…
Weinstein v. Krugman v. Orzel (Mathematical Elegance Death Match)
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 8, 2009 Over at the most uncertain blog, he of uncertain principles (aka Chad) takes up a challenge posed by @EricRWeinstein on twitter concerning Paul Krugman’s recent article on why economists got the economic crisis so wrong. Since I know even less economics than anyone around here this seems like a great opportunity for me to weigh…
The World Is Ending (or at Least a Website)
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 8, 2009 One RSS feeds I subscribe to is the one at http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. I mean, if the world is going to end, I certainly want Google reader to be the first to tell me. But today’s RSS update is, instead of the traditional “no”, different: Bye bye everyone. This domain is not being renewed. It’s been fun.…
The Most Depressing Results in Physics
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 4, 2009 I’m a pretty optimistic guy. Okay, I’m a really optimistic guy. But even my optimism has its limits when bashing up against the cold hard reality of what experiments plus our understanding of the laws of physics tells us about the universe. Here are my top three most depressing facts about the universe coming from…
Zurich Trip Report 8/27/09 – 9/1/09
Posted by Dave Bacon on September 2, 2009 Trip to Zurich for 8th Symposium on Topological Quantum Computing, Zurich 29th-31st August 2009.
Microsoft Station Q Postdocs
Posted by Dave Bacon on August 19, 2009 Want a job hacking away at topological quantum computing (and more) by day and surfing (by morning?) on the beautiful Southern California coast near Santa Barbara? Okay, well maybe surfing isn’t part of the job description, but Microsoft’s Station Q at UCSB has postdocs available with a deadline of October 16, 2009: Station Q will…
March Meeting GQI Invited Speakers
Posted by Dave Bacon on August 10, 2009 March is ages away, but it is time to start planning for the APS March meeting, to be held in the beautiful rose city, Portland, Oregon (Note to skiers that Mt. Hood is just a short distance away ) Anyway an important part of the March meeting are invites sessions and the quantum computing/information/foundations topical…