O brave new quantum world!
From the LA Times:
In another measure of the evolving social structure of U.S. politics, those who drink wine with dinner prefer a Democrat over Bush for 2004 by 7 percentage points. Those who drink beer back Bush over a Democrat by 23 percentage points.
What is this? It seems this charmonium-like state is a bit of a mystery. Theoretical calculations for the possible identity of this particle are off by ~50 sigma. I’m betting the theory just needs tweeking, but who knows? Anyone want to take the bet?
Join now: The Presidential Prayer Team! Make sure you don’t forget the “additional leaders to pray for this week.”
No, I don’t know that [a]theists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under [g]od. George Bush the First
Famously, classical general relativity tells us that black holes “have no hair”: the mass, electric charge, and angular momentum of the black hole are the only parameters about the black hole measurable by us “outside the horizon” observors. Silly me it was only today while exercising that I realized that it might be interesting to ask if black holes can carry a charge from a non-abelian gauge theory. While I was pondering this, the other thought I had was that maybe if the theory of nature has multiple gauge fields, not just just the U(1), SU(2), SU(3) we know, but other higher ones, then this the “hair” produced by these theories might help explain the information paradox for black holes. Amazingly, this is deeply related to the content of some ideas about string theory and black holes!
Update 11/14/03: and of course, embarrassingly, there is this famous paper as pointed out by Ben Toner in the comment section.
Oh how it taunts me, this “Powder” magazine. Confined to my office writing applications for jobs, it sits, silly little magazine, on my desk and taunts me. “Ski,” it jeers, “Snow” it whispers. But no! I must apply for jobs. Of course it affects my judgement. Of course I dream of the academic jobs where one might do physics and also ski. A theoretical ski bum’s paradise is not complicated, just hard as hell to achieve. But it must be some kind of Nirvana, this physics job in the mountains. A heavenly bliss of powder in the mornings and equations at night. The two converging, diverging into a state of infinite bliss.
Someday I dream of writing a letter to “Powder” magazine. All those years you teased me with your pictures of powder days while I slaved away in the bowels of academia. “Get a Ph.D. and then find someplace to ski.” “Take a postdoc and then find someplace to ski.” But now I actually have a job in academia where I can ski! While others dreamed only of academic success, you “Powder” magazine made me dream of the mountains, of snow, and of doing physics while riding the first chair of the day.
Until then, I content myself with my small dream. And go back to work on another beautiful physics problem.
Sometimes papers on the ArXiv are crazy. From the amusing but more than a bit scary department comes this paper comparing astrophysics and prostitution.
Here is a Powerpoint copy of the talk I gave at MIT: QIP seminar talk. If you can’t view powerpoint, here is an html version.
Today I will be giving a talk at the MIT QIP seminar. Here is the abstract for the talk
There are distinct physical reasons why classical computers act as naturally error free devices. Not all classical systems can act as robust classical computers. Similarly we should not expect all quantum systems to be useful for quantum computation. More interestingly we can ask the question of whether there exist (or whether we can engineer) naturally fault-tolerant quantum computers. In this talk I will discuss recent progress toward this goal and present a sequence of examples which possess many of the properties of a naturally fault-tolerant quantum computer.
I like to call this talk my “sermon on the mount” talk. In case anyone is interested in attending, the talk will be held at 16:00 hours in room 4-270.
Well I’ve made it to MIT. But not before spending 9 extra hours in LAX due to the southern California fires! My nice easy flight back to Boston turned into a horrible 9 hours plus a redeye. Ouch. OK Chronos, I have learned my lesson. Temporal karma is worth more than gold.
Off to MIT for ten days. From “hi”s in the 90s to “lows” in the 40s. Brrr. Notice how I have planned my trip back east to coincide with the end of day light savings time. Wahahaha!