A science two-fer
Some interesting developments.
First, from the UK
Guardian:
Roll over Einstein: meet Weinstein
There are a lot of open questions in modern physics.
Most of the universe is missing, for example. The atoms we know about account for less than 5% of the mass of the observable universe - the rest is dark matter (around 25% of the mass of the universe) and dark energy (a whopping 70%). No one knows what either of these things actually is.
At the subatomic scale, we know there are three families of fundamental particles - called "generations" - and each one contains two quarks, a neutrino and a negatively charged particle (the lightest being the electron). But why are there three generations in the first place?
And the big one: why do the two pillars of 20th century physics, quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, not agree with each other?
Solving these problems, the last one in particular, has been the goal of many generations of scientists. A final theory of nature would have to explain all of the outstanding questions and, though many (including Albert Einstein himself) have tried, no one has come close to an answer.
At 4pm on Thursday at the University of Oxford, the latest attempt to fill the biggest holes in physics will be presented in a lecture at the prestigious Clarendon Laboratory. The man behind the ideas, Eric Weinstein, is not someone you might normally expect to be probing the very edge of theoretical physics. After a PhD in mathematical physics at Harvard University, he left academia more than two decades ago (via stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and is now an economist and consultant at the Natron Group, a New York hedge fund.
Weinstein's
wiki page has some interesting links as well.
Second, from the
Simons Foundation:
Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap
On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline�s preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field � a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang � the paper claimed to have taken a huge step forward in understanding one of mathematics� oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.
Editors of prominent mathematics journals are used to fielding grandiose claims from obscure authors, but this paper was different. Written with crystalline clarity and a total command of the topic�s current state of the art, it was evidently a serious piece of work, and the Annals editors decided to put it on the fast track.
Just three weeks later � a blink of an eye compared to the usual pace of mathematics journals � Zhang received the referee report on his paper.
�The main results are of the first rank,� one of the referees wrote. The author had proved �a landmark theorem in the distribution of prime numbers.�
Rumors swept through the mathematics community that a great advance had been made by a researcher no one seemed to know � someone whose talents had been so overlooked after he earned his doctorate in 1991 that he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop.
�Basically, no one knows him,� said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the Universit� de Montr�al. �Now, suddenly, he has proved one of the great results in the history of number theory.�
A lot more at the site -- fascinating stuff. Interesting too because most of the great mathematicians do their best work very early and are 'burnt out' by their 40's.
Posted by DaveH at May 25, 2013 11:33 AM