Comments on: EurekaUS?

By: Sacha

Sacha — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:44:04 +0000

(from my readings of popular physics works by Kim Thorne and others…)

By: Sacha

Sacha — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:43:17 +0000

“Stephen Hawking as a graduate student… …proved that singularities exist.”

…hmmmm – but isn’t it an assumption in that work that the universe is classical?

By: Luis Sanchez

Luis Sanchez — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:39:15 +0000

I had done a kind of EurekaMex post in my blog, in the particular case of an EurekaUS there are so many discoveries in the US (at least with a lead role done in the US), to name a few: inflationary cosmology, QED, the BCS theory of superconductors, nonabelian gauge theories,J-Psi, lots of results in string theory (like the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation, Branes, Mirror symmetry, Vafa-Strominger explanation of black holes entropy), G proteins, grow factors regulating cell growth, the gens of programmed cell death…

There is no question that US is the world leader in science, so this list will be nearly endeless…

By: Carl Brannen

Carl Brannen — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 22:52:18 +0000

I thought that the list was short on theoretical physics. They could have listed considerably more stuff by Hawking. There was no mention of Bohm or Hiley. And my personal favorite for unappreciated British theoretical physics research is the work by the University of Cambridge’s geometric algebra group in unifying GR and the Dirac equation. For example, see:

Gravity, gauge theories and geometric algebra
A. N. Lasenby, C. J. L. Doran and S. F. Gull.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A356, 487-582 (1998).
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/publications/abstracts/gravity.html

or a quick introduction:
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/publications/ps/grav_gauge.pdf

Carl

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 19:09:46 +0000

Belizean,

If I’m not mistaken, quantum computing/cryptography is in a rather unique position to receive a fair amount of private funding as opposed to public funding. Perhaps PK – as an expert in the field – could kindly refute or back-up my blanket assessment regarding the funding of quantum computing/cryptography.

Best regards,

By: Belizean

Belizean — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 20:59:28 +0000

Quantum computation is on firmer ground than the the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems in that the latter assume energy conditions of dubious applicability to the real universe, while the former rests solely on the axioms of quantum theory.

By: todd.

todd. — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:50:39 +0000

Can we claim teh interwebs, or does the governmental/military involvement invalidate that one?

By: PK

PK — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:01:59 +0000

Quantum computing still has to prove itself (although I am optimistic).

It is also not clear how secure quantum cryptography is in real systems. Sure, the maths tells you it can in principle be secure, but noisy components can introduce correlations that may give the game away. I want to know to what extent the companies making these devices have really tried to break their own crypto systems.

By: Haelfix

Haelfix — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:33:02 +0000

God where to begin. About 50% of physics has its origins in the US during the last 50 years, whether from natural born Americans or foreigners working at US universities. The big shift came following WWII (before that point, i’d point to England and Germany as the primary drivers of science).

I wouldn’t even know where to begin, a top 10 list for the US would immediately hit on personal biases towards which discoveries are nearest to our own line of work.. Maybe in the development and refinement of quantum field theory and its applications to particle physics (the standard model) and condensed matter.

I firmly believe the Hubble telescope, the space race and WMAP are amongst the greatest experiments of all time as well, on the astrophysics side.

By: Belizean

Belizean — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:21:35 +0000

The discovery of quantum computation and quantum cryptography doesn’t seem to be on the list (unless I missed it). Whopper of an oversight.