position:theoretical physicist

Freeman Dyson on How Robert Oppenheimer Ran Hot and Cold - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/freeman-dyson-on-how-robert-oppenheimer-ran-hot-and-cold

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Robert Oppenheimer could be extremely generous and friendly or he could be very harsh. He was very quick to judge and decide that somebody was no good, and then that was final.Photograph by Ed Westcott (U.S. Government photographer) / WikicommonsKai Bird is miffed. His 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer was exhaustively researched, but not quite to his satisfaction. Bird’s co-author, Michael J. Sherwin, had hit up Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist and mathematician, to open up about his time working with and under Oppenheimer, who, after having given birth to the atomic bomb, began directing the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. Dyson never let loose that he had a store of letters Bird and Sherwin could (...)

What This Drawing Taught Me About Four-Dimensional Spacetime - Issue 46: Balance
▻http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/what-this-drawing-taught-me-about-four_dimensional-spacetime

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My aim as a theoretical physicist is to unite quantum theory with Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. While there are a few proposals for this unification, such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, many roadblocks to a complete unification remain.Einstein’s theory tells us the gravitational force is a direct manifestation of space and time bending. The sun bends the fabric of space, much like a sleeping person bends a mattress. Planetary orbits, including Earth’s, are motion along the contours of the bent space created by the sun. This theory provides some critical insights into the nature of light.As I gazed at the drawing, I could feel the artists challenging me to reconsider the nature of light. Quantum mechanics, however, says many weird things about physical reality. For (...)

A Brief History of the Grand Unified Theory of Physics - Issue 46: Balance
▻http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/a-brief-history-of-the-grand-unified-theory-of-physics

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Particle physicists had two nightmares before the Higgs particle was discovered in 2012. The first was that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator would see precisely nothing. For if it did, it would likely be the last large accelerator ever built to probe the fundamental makeup of the cosmos. The second was that the LHC would discover the Higgs particle predicted by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs in 1964 ... and nothing else. Each time we peel back one layer of reality, other layers beckon. So each important new development in science generally leaves us with more questions than answers. But it also usually leaves us with at least the outline of a road map to help us begin to seek answers to those questions. The successful discovery of the Higgs particle, and with it (...)

Listen to the LHC’s Weird, Whale-Like Sounds - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/listen-to-the-lhcs-weird-whale_like-sounds

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To refer to the Large Hadron Collider merely as the world’s largest machine, or the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, would be to engage in prosaic understatement—the Collider is nothing less than a scientific and engineering wonder of the world. Nominally an underground ring 27 kilometers in circumference, the Collider is tasked with accelerating, in opposite directions, bunches of protons to within a millionth of a percent of the speed of light. I started my work there as a theoretical physicist in 2012, anticipating enjoying interactions with fellow theoretical physicists like the ones Alan Lightman once described over a decade ago, in the New York Times: “the exhilaration of seeing brilliant people at work, watching their minds leap right in front of me—not the brooding (...)

Stephen Hawking Starts Posting on Facebook: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Universe Exist | Open Culture
▻http://www.openculture.com/2014/10/stephen-hawking-starts-posting-on-facebook.html

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I have no idea whether there’s intelligent life out there in the universe. But we can at least confirm that there’s a little intelligent life on Facebook, seeing that Stephen Hawking, the world’s best known theoretical physicist, began posting there yesterday. His first status update reads:

I have always wondered what makes the universe exist. Time and space may forever be a mystery, but that has not stopped my pursuit. Our connections to one another have grown infinitely and now that I have the chance, I’m eager to share this journey with you. Be curious, I know I will forever be.

Welcome, and thank you for visiting my Facebook Page. -SH

Join his official Facebook page here. And find/like the official Open Culture page here, where we make it easy to share our daily cultural posts with your family and friends....

#Stephen Hawking

#Iraq intervention, redux?: The folly of ‘humanitarian imperialism’
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iraq-intervention-redux-folly-%E2%80%98humanitarian-imperialism%E

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Jean Bricmont’s powerful book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War , written during the occupation of Iraq, is a timely historical critique of Western interventionism, one worth examining as the United States of America moves once more in the direction of military entanglement in Iraq. Bricmont, a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at The Université catholique de Louvain, discusses the ideological factors which legitimize military action in response to humanitarian abuses and “in defense of democracy” (p. 7). — “This is the discourse and the representation that must be challenged in order to build a radical and self-confident opposition to current and future wars.” The humanitarian rationales offered under the banner of there being “a responsibility to protect” (...)

#USA

Et un(e) de plus :

« Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel »

Physicist pulls out of conference hosted by president Shimon Peres in protest at treatment of Palestinians

►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-israel-academic-boycott

Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval described it as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

#Palestine #BDS #boycott_Israël #Israël