links for 2009-07-04

A 1997 interview, when Wallace was promoting A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, covering a wide range of topics.

"Conservation of momentum happened. The collision was not entirely inelastic nor was it entirely elastic. The truck struck the car very solidly on its right side behind the center of mass of the car, sending the car into a spin more or less along its original trajectory. The collision reduced the speed of the truck but didn't change its trajectory much either, and the truck skidded to a halt. (A bonus friction problem!)"

"That the âbig threeâ science fiction magazine wonât accept electronic submissions in this day and age isnât merely anachronistic in both a business and social sense, itâs actually a bit embarrassing. Written science fiction already has enough problems working around the image that it is trapped in its own alternate universe branching off from 1971; the fact the major print publications of the genre deal with the electronic era as if it was something to be handled from a great distance, with tongs, isnât helping any of us."

"Most physicists donât consider a phenomenon to be understood until there are both repeatable experiments displaying it and a quantitative theoretical description. The only physics problems without both aspects are those unrelated to experiment. We have a name for such problems: mathematics.

The bookâs list, however, did inspire me to come up with my own list. Here are my âFive Great Problems in Theoretical Physics,â without the definite article:"