Blogs / Cosmic Variance

I live in the city. I understand and accept the compromises that my choice entails. I know that in exchange for being able to walk and bike everywhere, I also have to accept the impact of being in close proximity to many other people, not all of whom I may agree with.

But, am I asking too much to want people to stop peeing on my yard?

Today, it was two fine upstanding young men who pulled their car over just for the privilege of pissing on the side of my garden. At 10am.

Last fall it was the gentleman walking along at night, dropping trou to pee on the bushes outside my kitchen window. Where I was sitting. With the window open.

Last summer it was multiple incidents of my spotting pairs of sneakers confidently walking into my fenced-in driveway, stopping, and whizzing past the front of my car. You know, where no one could see you, except for the person on the other side of the fence, the bottom of which is at eye level.

Hey dudes. A little tip. Just because you can’t see me, doesn’t mean I can’t see you.

PS. Hope you didn’t catch anything in the zipper when you took off running. I hear that hurts.

Miscellaneous happenings, including a couple of talks I’ll be giving — one on another coast, one in another plane of existence.

• 3 Quarks Daily has announced a series of four annual prizes, for blog posts in Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy. Science is the first one up, and they’re asking for nominations — the deadline is soon (June 1) so head over there and make suggestions. The final winner will be chosen by a well-known person in the appropriate field; this year’s Science judge will be Stephen Pinker. You are of course welcome to suggest your favorite CV post, because we like the attention. But this would also be a great opportunity to give a boost to that lesser-known blog that you really like and think should get more attention. (There are a lot of good blogs out there.) And if you are someone with a blog, don’t feel shy about nominating a post of your own — most readers don’t keep a mental file of your best posts over the last year.
• The World Science Festival is happening in New York (the U.S.’s second most interesting city) from June 10 to 14. I’ll be there, speaking at two different events. On Friday June 12 there is the WSF Spotlight, which is an informal forum with short talks and a lot of discussion. Participants include Kristin Baldwin (cell biologist), Dominic Johnson (political scientist), Christopher McKay (solar system researcher), and Frank Wilczek (not sure what he does for a living). I believe alcoholic beverages will be available; it’s that kind of event. Then on Saturday June 13 I’ll be on a panel discussing Time Since Einstein, with David Albert, George Ellis, Michael Heller, John Hockenberry, Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara, and Roger Penrose. (I predict already that insufficient time will be a popular complaint about the time panel.)
• In Second Life, I’m giving a talk tomorrow morning at 10 am Pacific, sponsored by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. It will be a colloquium-level talk about “Dark Forces,” concentrating on building models of interacting dark matter and dark energy. Second Lifers can beam right there thanks to this elegant and finely-crafted link: http://slurl.com/secondlife/StellaNova/76/200/32.
• Max Brockman (son of John, doyen of Edge) has edited a new collection of essays: What’s Next? Dispatches from the Future of Science. There’s an essay by me in there on “Our Place in an Unnatural Universe.” You should buy it, because it would be like reading a set of interesting blog posts, but on paper. And most of these folks don’t have blogs!

Of course we hand out congratulations for newly minted Ph.D.’s; but there are other milestones worth congratulating as well. Yesterday our very own JoAnne got married, at a beautiful winery nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It comes at the end of some trying times, so all the more worthy of celebration. Congrats to the happy couple! (Now back to blogging, okay?)

John Archibald Wheeler embodied the golden age of physics. He was perhaps unique in having made foundational contributions to both pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity. He helped develop the theory of nuclear fission, and then was an important participant in the Manhattan project. He discussed quantum mechanics with Bohr, relativity with Einstein, and electrodynamics with his student, Feynman. One of Wheeler’s particularly nice calculations (on asymmetrical nuclei) got scooped because Bohr sat on it too long. The person that scooped them, James Rainwater, subsequently won the Nobel prize for the result. In Feynman’s Nobel lecture, he credits Wheeler with many of the key insights. Wheeler mentored over one hundred students, and those students (and grand-students) now populate leading physics departments throughout the world. In addition to his facility with physics, Wheeler displayed a wondrous command over language. His career is partially encapsulated in his coinages: wormhole, black hole, the planck length and time, quantum foam, the sum over histories, the S-matrix, It from Bit, the wavefunction of the Universe.

John Wheeler passed away almost exactly a year ago. In commemoration of his tremendous contributions to physics, the current edition of Physics Today (the monthly magazine of the American Physical Society) is dedicated entirely to his memory. [Sadly, only select articles are public, which I find incomprehensible.] The issue includes an article on Wheeler’s early work on particles (written by Ken Ford), as well as one on his later work on fields, gravity, and information (by Charlie Misner, Kip Thorne, and Wojciech Zurek). There are also two reprints of articles authored by Wheeler, one on nuclear fission (describing his pioneering work with Niels Bohr), and one “introducing” black holes (written with Remo Ruffini). As a sign of Wheeler’s enduring legacy, the magazine ends with an article (by Terry Christensen) focused on his tremendous mentorship.

It is impossible to summarize Wheeler’s impact, both as a physicist and as a human being. How do you reduce someone to a few paragraphs, or a few articles, or a few interviews? Wheeler was unique in his insight, his breadth, his generosity, and his humanity. For those that were fortunate enough to spend time with him, he left an indelible mark. As one of Wheeler’s students put it in the acknowledgment to their thesis:

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the tremendous support and encouragement given to me by John A. Wheeler. Over the last two years he has introduced me to the world of physics research and shaped the way I think about physics. I have benefited greatly, both as a physicist and as a person, from his example, and will carry this with me always. John Wheeler has had a profound impact on my life and I am deeply indebted.

I wrote that over 15 years ago, and it is no less true today.

There’s a major event in the life of every young book that marks its progression from mere draft on someone’s computer to a public figure in its own right. No, I’m not thinking about when the book gets published, or even when the final manuscript is sent to the publisher. I’m thinking of when a book gets its own page on amazon.com. (The right analogy is probably to “getting your drivers license” or something along those lines. Feel free to concoct your own details.)

So it’s with a certain parental joy that I can announce From Eternity to Here now has its own amazon page. My baby is all grown up! And, as a gesture of independence, has already chosen a different subtitle: “The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.” The previous version, “The Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time,” was judged a bit too dry, and was apparently making the marketing people at Dutton scrunch up their faces in disapproval. I am told that “quests” are very hot right now.

All of which means, of course: you can buy it! For quite a handsome discount, I may add.

It also means: I really should finish writing it. Pretty darn close; the last chapters are finished, and I’m just touching up a couple of the previous ones that were abandoned in my rush to tell the end of the story. The manuscript is coming in at noticeably more words than I had anticipated — I suspect the “320 pages” listed on amazon is an underestimate.

And, yes, there is another book with almost the same title and an eerily similar cover, which just appeared. But very different content inside! Frank Viola’s subtitle is “Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God,” which should be a clue to the sharp-eyed shopper that the two works are not the same.

Writing a book is a big undertaking, in case no one before me had never noticed that before. I’m very grateful to my scientific collaborators for putting up with my extended disappearances along the way. It’s also very nerve-wracking to imagine sending it out there into the world all by itself. With blog posts there is immediate feedback in terms of comments and trackbacks; you can get a feel for what the reactions are, and revise and respond accordingly. But the book really has a life of its own. People will read and review it for goodness knows how long, and I won’t always be there to protect it.

Frankly, I’m not sure this “book” technology will ever catch on.

I’m happy to announce that the first review of From Eternity to Here has appeared, over at Michael Bérubé’s blog. It has also appeared at Crooked Timber, a phenomenon that can ultimately traced to the holographic non-locality inherent in quantum descriptions of space as well as time.

Readers of underdeveloped imagination will wonder how a review could appear when the book has not yet been written. When one has mastered the mysteries of time, should anyone be surprised?

The results are in for the Foundational Questions Institute essay competition on “The Nature of Time,” which we discussed here. And the winners are:

First Juried Prize:

Julian Barbour on “The Nature of Time”

The jury panel admired this essay for its crystal-clear and engaging presentation of a problem in classical dynamics, namely to find a measure for duration or the size of a time interval. The paper argues lucidly, and in a historically well-informed manner, that an appropriate choice for such a measure is not to be found in Newton’s pre-existing absolute notion of time, but rather emerges, in the form of ephemeris time, from the observable motions and the assumption of energy conservation. The paper also suggests how this emergence of duration might be relevant to problems in quantum gravity.

Second Juried Prizes:

(1) Claus Kiefer on “Does Time Exist in Quantum Gravity?”

A fundamental problem in quantum gravity is that the “Wheeler-DeWitt Equation,” probably our most reliable equation of quantum gravity, does not refer to or even suggest anything like time or evolution. In this context time must emerge in the form of relations between a given system and some other system that may be considered a clock. Kiefer beautifully reviews this problem, and argues how, via quantum “decoherence,” time as described by the usual Schroedinger equation in quantum mechanics can emerge from this timeless substratum, via entanglement between physical systems within space, and the spatial metric that controls motion.

(2) Sean Carroll on “What if Time Really Exists?”

Drawing on recent developments in string theory, Carroll impressed the panel with an exciting account of how a gravitating spacetime might in fact be just a holographic approximation to a more fundamental non-gravitating theory for which “time really exists.” Contemplating the difficulties raised by strange recurrences in an everlasting universe, he argues for a strong condition on the set of allowed quantum states that would disallow such repetitions. Carroll closes by attempting to reconcile this picture with recent observations that indicate that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, with surprising results.

Tied for second is not at all bad, considering the number of interesting entries. There are more prizes, actually, as there are “community” awards as well as “juried” prizes, so check those out as well. It’s pretty amusing that the top three essays all attack, in one way or another, whether or not the subject of the competition actually exists. (I was in favor, the others were more skeptical.)

Besides the essays themselves, I very much appreciate the huge amount of work it must have been for the various judges to read through all of them and make hard decisions. Thanks to the FQXi for sponsoring the contest, and thanks to all the judges for doing a great job!

Many Cosmic Variance readers will recognize friend-of-the-blog Allyson Beatrice — frequent commenter, occasional solo blogger, and co-blogger at Cocktail Party Physics. For a while now, Allyson’s day job has been as an administrator and conference organizer for groups of scientists and engineers — a task of uncertain rewards which, for whatever murky reasons, she truly seems to love.

I’m a lab secretary. If I’m your lab’s secretary, I have access to your credit cards, your CV, your passport, and your society memberships. I could write a crackpot paper about string theory and its effects on pineapple custard and publish it under your name on Optics Express.

But I wouldn’t do that. My job is to get you to the plane on time so that you can present your brilliant paper on quantum physics and gravity in the solar system to a bunch of people whose lives revolve around fun new uses for cesium fountains. I have no idea what any of it means, but if some government bureaucrat gets in between you and your travels, I will cut a bitch to make sure you get to your conference.

Unfortunately, through a series of circumstances too forehead-slappingly stupid to be convincingly related here, Allyson is soon going to be out of her current job. (She gave her notice at her lab, under the impression that an even better gig had been lined up, before the rug was pulled out from under her.)

So — anyone in the LA area in the market for an extraordinarily talented and dedicated lab secretary? Whoever ultimately hires Allyson will be extremely lucky, but in this economy jobs don’t come easily. Things are tough all over, but it’s heartbreaking to see someone so good go jobless through no fault of their own. Email me and I’ll pass along any leads. And thanks.

Most physics fans out there have probably heard of Kip Thorne, author of Black Holes and Time Warps and some other books. If you polled physicists to find out who they thought had been the most influential American scientist doing research in general relativity over the past several decades, Thorne would win hands-down. (Here’s a recent interview in Discover.)

And if you dropped the delimiter “American” from the question above, the winner would undoubtedly be Stephen Hawking. So we’re very happy to have a guest post from Kip, announcing an upcoming talk by Hawking.

Left to right: John Preskill, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking.

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Stephen Hawking is coming to town - to Pasadena, that is.

Caltech, in Pasadena, California, is Hawking’s home away from home. Since 1991 he has spent roughly a month a year here as our Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar. This year he flies in from his English home at the end of February, then heads off to Texas in early April.

He arrives with an entourage of five care givers to tend to his physical needs, one or two family members, several graduate students, and a “graduate assistant” who handles logistics and serves as general fixit-person for his computer system and mechanized wheel chair. His current chair is new and sophisticated. At the flick of a switch, its hydraulics can lift him up to a standing person’s eye level or slide him down near ground level for high-speed chases — he has been known to take pleasure from running over the toes of university presidents.

Hawking’s Pasadena sojourns are rather like Einstein’s in the 1930s. Caltech is an intellectual magnet - a crossroad for ideas about the cosmos and the fundamental laws of nature, which are Hawking’s passion. He contributes mightily to the ferment, and partakes. Our California night life (LA, not Caltech!) is also pretty good; and Hawking, like Einstein, is a party animal, only more so. During his annual month here, my own social life intensifies five-fold just from being his closest California friend. He loves opera, theater, jazz clubs, barbecues that he hosts in the patio of his Pasadena home, and dinners with fine wine - especially an Indian Feast prepared for him by Caltech undergraduates. Yes, we geeks can cook up a storm - well, not me, but the younger generation.

Conversation with Stephen is slow, about 3 words a minute, produced by Stephen moving a muscle in his face (imaged by a lens and photodetector) to control a cursor on his computer screen. It’s slow, but rewarding. You never know, until his sentence is complete, whether it will be a pearl of wisdom or an off-the-wall joke. Faster speeds are on the horizon: computer control via brane waves, without drilling a hole in his head (he’s opposed to that). But he resists changing technology, even without drilling, until forced to. “I can’t believe it’s as good as what I have.” (It actually is; my wife has a friend with ALS who proves it so.)

Most of Hawking’s Pasadena time is spent thinking, conversing, and working on projects. Jim Hartle drives down from Santa Barbara to continue their decades-long research collaboration on the birth of the Universe. Leonard Mlodinow, a Pasadena-based free-lance writer, toils with him on a book: in the past, A Briefer History of Time; now, their forthcoming The Grand Design. And there are drives to Hollywood to film for Star Trek or the Simpsons or the forthcoming Stephen Hawking’s Beyond the Horizon.

On each Pasadena visit, Hawking gives a lecture for the general public - always before in Caltech’s limited-seating Beckman Auditorium, but this year in the newly renovated Pasadena Convention Center, at 8PM, Monday March 9. “Why We [the human race] Should Go into Space” is his title. It’s an opportunity to see him in action, be immersed in his mind’s world, and - if last year’s lecture is any indication - participate in a happening. Tickets are available from the Caltech ticket office, (626) 395-4652, at $10 each.

The last time I saw Hawking speak to such a large audience, thousands, was in a converted railway station in Santiago Chile, soon after General Pinochet’s regime gave way to civilian rule. It was quite a show. Hawking made a grand entrance to rock music and charmed the crowd. The President of Chile and other civilian officials sat on one side of the giant stage, the military brass on the other, with enormous tension between them; they were hardly speaking to each other in those days. Only Hawking could bring them into the same room. His aura works magic. The next day the military flew us to Antarctica: a C130 cargo plane filled with TV cameras, journalists and physicists. It was August, the Antarctic winter, the first flight to Antarctica in more than a month due to winter storms. It was a Hawking Adventure, one among many. He lives life to the fullest. He will fly on a rocket into space soon.

Back when I was fresh out of grad school, a mere pup still pinching myself that I was constructively participating in this marvelous endeavor called “science,” I noticed in a book store an issue of Time magazine proclaiming “America’s 40 Leaders Under 40.” Since, back in those days, I was technically eligible for honors and awards bestowed upon people under the age of 40 in a way that I no longer am, I turned to the article in anticipation. Perhaps they had written something about me without actually letting me know, right?

Somewhat to my surprise — there I was! Or someone with my name, in any event. Further sleuthing revealed that this guy was Sean B. Carroll, an evolutionary biologist in Wisconsin. Clearly there had been some sort of mixup on the part of Time magazine, but I would forgive them and him this once.

The problem is, the guy refuses to go away. He becomes some sort of evo-devo guru, gets elected to the National Academy of Sciences, writes books — and they’re good books! I’ve read some of them. I hate this guy.

But at least, through it all, I had the blog. A little realm of intellectual endeavor (ahem) that I could enjoy free of interference from other Sean Carrolls. True, the very first link to my own blog was from PZ, who expressed profound disappointment that I was not the other SC. But through it all, as I deflected occasional requests to referee papers about fruit flies or speak at fancy conferences on evolution, and accepted that I was not the first answer to questions like “Who is that Sean Carroll who does science?” or “Who is that Sean Carroll who writes books?”, I was at least the appropriate response if someone were to ask “Who is that Sean Carroll who blogs?” And I had the superior Google page rank to prove it.

So now, here in the Darwin Year, what does (former, I’m thinking) friend-of-the-blog Tom Levenson go and do? He recruits the other Sean Carroll for a blogging project! So Simple a Beginning seems to be the name, although the project itself doesn’t seem to “exist” quite yet. Blogging about The Origin of Species, blah blah blah.

I guess I need to find some other area of human accomplishment in which I am likely to be the leading Sean Carroll of the world for some time to come. Playing poker? Making ice cream? My skill set is rather circumscribed, it would seem. Suggestions welcome.