Today at tea we were arguing whether Newton deserves a higher place among the metric of genius then Einstein. I am a sucker for the personal side of science, but to me, the larger problem is the question of which revolution shook our view of the universe the most. There have been three revolutions in physics: Newton, Einstein, and Quantum. Newton said “there is order and math governs our universe” Einstein said “time and space are not what you think they are and further these so basic concepts are maleable.” Quantum said “here an operating system for all our physical laws.” Now which of these revolutions had the greatest shock towards our view of the universe?
Certainly, before Newton, the very idea of physical law was at best a blur. So the revolution of seeing the world before and after Newton is very much a nothing out of something experience. With Einstein, we have a revolution where we had previous concepts, concepts that seem deeply ingrained in our everyday experience, but these concepts are wrong. And with Quantum, we find that our very concepts of what is real, especially when combined with the insights of Einstein, are vastly in contrast to the way the universe works. Which revolution was greater?
Old Bacon
From Scott Aaronson’s upcoming thesis:
For better or worse, my conception of what a thesis should be was influence by Dave Bacon, quantum computing’s elder clown, who entitled the first chapter of his own 451-page behemoth “Philosonomicon.”
Isn’t it great to be in a field where at age 29 you can be considered “elder”? In fact I was just looking at the schedule for the upcoming QIP conference at MIT and was a bit taken back by the youthfulness of the invited speaker list.
Homer No Function Beer Well Without
An amusing little article about beer and geology. Speaking of mountains and beer, anyone remember the Rainier Beer ads with the motorcycle whose engine noise sounded out the words “RRRRaiaiaiaiaiaineeeeeeeeeer Beeeeeeeeeer”?
E=mc^(Hawking)
From today’s New York Times, a few questions for Stephen Hawking
With all your intense erudition, why do you bother writing pop-science books about the universe, the latest of which is the illustrated version of ”On the Shoulders of Giants”?
I want my books sold on airport bookstalls.
Day 4
Half day skiing at Santa Fe Ski Basin. They need about 2 more feet of snow. The funny thing about the Ski Basin is their trail maps where they have drawn in a lift which is “planned.” The planned lift is called the Millenium lift. Sounds like their a little behind schedule.
Stringing Us Along
From the a New York times article on the first string revolution
Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., described it this way: “String theory is not like anything else ever discovered. It is an incredible panoply of ideas about math and physics, so vast, so rich you could say almost anything about it.”
And thus spoke Voltaire:
The way to become boring is to say everything.
Da Plane, Da Pain
Oh boy: four hours in the San Diego airport! Thought my flight was at two. It’s at six.
Blessed be wireless access at airports.
Quantum Dollars
At the workshop here a claim was made that the world has now spent over one billion dollars in the field of quantum information science since the discovery of Shor’s algorithm in 1994. How many billions more before a useful quantum computer is built?
Sound Projects Down the Aisle
If you concentrate hard enough on the book you’re reading on the planeride, you won’t even hear the two women behind you discuss the fate of their souls. But you have to concentrate really hard.
Now I’m in San Diego for a workshop resembling a particle theory experiment. In this case we’re smashing together quantum algorithm people with signal processing people in hopes that this collision will produce some new particle of knowledge unknown to man.
Day Three
There is nothing quite like the silence of snow. This morning the sound of snow woke me up before my alarm went off. Two new inches of new fluffy right outside my bedroom window. Quick to the qubit-mobile and off to Taos for $20 all day skiing! Taos had around three inches of new snow and I spent most of the morning skiing a run on the backside until my legs felt like jello. When my legs felt like jello, well this reminded me of jello shots. At Taos they used to have a tree where people would stop and have a martini. That’s right, a tree. That’s right, martinis. The locals would supply a community batch of martinis. Well, lawsuits and all, you know, and now the martini tree is no more. Instead I grabbed lunch and headed upstairs to the Martini Tree Bar. There I discovered what the straight version of a cool tradition had become: a bar with pool tables, foosball, video game machines, and air hockey. Anyone who visits me will therefore be immediately challenged to one of these games. Better practice.
In the afternoon I made the acquaintance of “K squared,” the son of a national medal of science winner, and, apparently, on a permanent ski vacation. What a life. The fun thing was that K^2 kept giving me puzzles to work on as we went up the lifts. Hard to ski when you’re trying to reason through a logic puzzle. Well at least it makes a good excuse for a few of my terrific crashes.