Mr. Epstein was not only a world-class child abuser, he was a big fan of theoretical high-energy physics and of theoretical physicists. Some of my colleagues, unfortunately, got to know him. A number who were famous and/or had John Brockman as a book agent were even invited to a physics conference on Epstein’s private island, well before he was first arrested. This was no secret; as I recall, a lot of us heard about the existence of this conference/trip, but we hadn’t heard Epstein’s name before and didn’t pay much attention (ho hum, just another weird billionaire).
(more…)Tag: waves
Next Monday, November 17th at 7pm, I’ll be at the Harvard Bookstore with particle physicist and author Daniel Whiteson. Professor Whiteson and his co-author Andy Warner have a nice new book, for the general science-aware reader, exploring an age-old and unanswered question: how universal is the knowledge and understanding that we call “physics”? How much of modern physics is actually telling us about the universe, and how much of it is created by, or an accident of, the humans who have helped bring it about?
For instance, if we started all over again and reran history from scratch, would the physics (and science more generally) of this re-run culture look much like our own, or might it turn out very differently? If another culture on Earth had had time to develop highly mature science (or something like it) in its own direction, independent of Western Europe’s influence, how different might that science be? (Indeed, would our word “science” even be translatable into their worldview?) Or if we encountered aliens with far greater understanding of the universe than we have, would we be able to recognize, parse, grok, appreciate, comprehend, and/or otherwise make sense of their notions of scientific knowledge?
Whiteson and his co-author, wanting to write a popular book rather than a scholarly one, and desiring nevertheless to take on these serious and challenging intellectual questions, have set their focus mostly on the aliens, accompanied by amusing cartoons and a generous helping of dad jokes (hey, some dad jokes are actually very funny.) They’re looking for a broad audience, and hopefully they will get it. But don’t let the light-hearted title (“Do Aliens Speak Physics?“) or the charmingly goofy cover fool you: this book might well make you laugh, but I guarantee it will make you think. Whether you’re just curious about science or you’ve been doing science yourself for years, I suspect that, within the vast array of problems and issues that are raised in this broad-minded book, there will be some you’ve never thought of.
Among scientists and philosophers, there are some who believe that any aliens with the capacity to reach the Earth will obviously “speak physics” — that math and physics float above contingencies of culture and species, and will easily be translated from any intelligent creature to any other. But are they perhaps flying too high? It’s clear that Whiteson and Warner are aiming to poke some holes — lots of holes —- in their hot-air balloon, and to do so in a way that a wide variety of readers can appreciate and enjoy.
I tend to agree with Whiteson on a lot of these issues, but that won’t stop me from asking him some tough questions. You can ask him some tough questions too, if you like — just come to the Harvard Bookstore at 7:00 on Monday and join the conversation!
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON November 14, 2025
As many of you are no doubt aware, in the past few days the US Congress voted to make major cuts to scientific research, and the president signed the bill. The government’s National Science Foundation has been cut by more than half, which means that its actual science budget has been cut by much more than that after you account for fixed costs. So vast, sudden and draconian are these cuts that it will take a long time for me and others in the field to figure out what has actually happened.
The reductions seem extreme, quite arbitrary and very poorly thought out. As an example, half of the LIGO observatory (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, whose amazing discoveries, such as this one and this one, earned the United States a Nobel Prize in 2017) is being hit hard. There are currently two interferometers, one in Washington state and one in Lousiana, but one has been largely defunded in this bill, if I understand correctly.
I can see the logic: the scientists have two interferometers, but in tough times they ought to be able to get along with just one, right?
Well, that’s like cutting off one of a runner’s legs. Two were built because two were needed.
With just one, the signal from most gravitational wave events is so weak that you can’t distinguish it from noise. Other interferometers around the world just aren’t working well enough to make up for throwing away one of LIGOs. (And besides, you need three or four interferometers around the world to be able to know precisely in the sky where the waves are coming from, knowledge which can make other major discoveries possible.)
According to Science magazine, “In a two-sentence email to Science, an NSF spokesperson said the plan reflects `a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment.’ “
This is not strategic. This is stupid. The amount of money saved, less than 10 cents per year per US citizen, is very small compared to what we as a nation have already spent on this wonderful facility, and cutting LIGO in half makes it dramatically less than half as good — so this is actually a big waste of money both past and future. The decision to make this cut in this way is nothing short of ridiculous and incompetent.
[Not to mention that “constrained fiscal environment” is quite a phrase when you’re increasing the budget deficit rather than shrinking it.]
I fear there are many other similar examples to be found.
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON July 7, 2025
The United States’ government is waging an all-out assault on Harvard University. The strategy, so far, has been:
- Cut most of the grants (present and future) for scientific and medical research, so that thousands of Harvard’s scientists, researchers and graduate students have to stop their work indefinitely. That includes research on life-saving medicine, on poorly understood natural phenomena, and on new technology. This also means that the university will have no money from these activities to pay salaries of its employees.
- Eliminate the tax-advantageous status of the university, so that the university is much more expensive to operate.
- Prohibit Harvard from having any international students (undergraduate and graduate) and other researchers, so that large numbers of existing scientific and medical research projects that still have funding will have to cease operation. This destroys the careers of thousands of brilliant people — and not just foreigners. Many US faculty and students are working with and depend upon these expelled researchers, and their work will stop too. It also means that Harvard’s budget for the next academic year will be crushed, since it is far too late to replace the tuition from international undergraduate students for the coming year.
The grounds for this war is that Harvard allegedly does not provide a safe environment for its Jewish students, and that Harvard refuses to let the government determine who it may and may not hire.
Now, maybe you can explain to me what this is really about. I’m confused what crimes these scientific researchers commited that justifies stripping them of their grants and derailing their research. I’m also unclear as to why many apolitical, hard-working young trainees in laboratories across the campus deserve to be ejected from their graduate and post-graduate careers and sent home, delaying or ruining their futures. [Few will be able to transfer to other US schools; with all the government cuts to US science, there’s no money to support them at other locations.] And I don’t really understand how such enormous damage and disruption to the lives and careers of ten thousand-ish scientists, researchers and graduate students at Harvard (including many who are Jewish) will actually improve the atmosphere for Harvard’s Jewish students.
As far as I can see, the government is merely using Jewish students as pawns, pretending to attack Harvard on their behalf while in truth harboring no honest concern for their well-being. The fact that the horrors and nastiness surrounding the Gaza war are being exploited by the government as cover for an assault on academic freedom and scientific research is deeply cynical and exceedingly ugly.
From the outside, where Harvard is highly respected — it is certainly among the top five universities in the world, however you rank them — this must look completely idiotic, as idiotic as France gutting the Sorbonne, or the UK eviscerating Oxford. But keep in mind that Harvard is by no means the only target here. The US government is cutting the country’s world-leading research in science, technology and medicine to the bone. If that’s what you want to do, then ruining Harvard makes perfect sense.
The country that benefits the most from this self-destructive behavior? China, obviously. As a friend of mine said, this isn’t merely like shooting yourself in the foot, it’s like shooting yourself in the head.
I suspect most readers will understand that I cannot blog as usual right now. To write good articles about quantum physics requires concentration and focus. When people’s careers and life’s work are being devastated all around me, that’s simply not possible.
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON May 23, 2025
We’ll get back to measurement, interference and the double-slit experiment just as soon as I can get my math program to produce pictures of the relevant wave functions reliably. I owe you some further discussion of why measurement (and even interactions without measurement) can partially or completely eliminate quantum interference.
But in the meantime, I’ve gotten some questions and some criticism for arguing that superposition is an OR, not an AND. It is time to look closely at this choice, and understand both its strengths and its limitations, and how we have to move beyond it to fully appreciate quantum physics. [I probably should have written this article earlier — and I suspect I’ll need to write it again someday, as it’s a tricky subject.]
(more…)
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON April 14, 2025
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