Spin networks: some continuous physics background (to be revised)

[bram]

Happy birthday, Sir Isaac Newton!!! You were a devious jealous joyless little prick but you gave us the tools to understand and create the modern world!

Some parts will be review, some will swoosh over heads:

Comments

[gmalivuk]

You ever find yourself reading something that you know would be very interesting, if only you could understand what it was talking about...?

[pbrane]

(heh - that's how I usually pick subjects to study... *shhhhhh!* )

[ukelele]

You know, this made surprisingly much sense. I even get the feeling that if I read it again, it would make more sense (I kept having points where I'd forgotten what a bit of previously-defined vocabulary meant, because I hadn't realized at the time that I should remember it

[csn]

Ahh. Gu is so crazy. I would like to learn Diff. Geo. one day bu I don't think I will while at Mudd. I might take Big Linear from her, though.

[csn]

That is very interesting stuff, though I need to learn a lot more math (not to mention physics) to begin to understand it all. I just discovered loop quantum gravity not a week ago (I see this entry is a good two years old) and found it awesome because the structure of spin networks seems to rely on graph theory, which I am enamored with.

Anyhow, you seem like a fascinating person with many similar interests and outlooks as myself. I'm a student at Mudd, so I find it interesting that you taught at the claremont colleges not too long ago. We currently have a great professor of string theory, the eccentric and wonderful Armenian Professor Sahakian. (His current page is at http://www.physics.hmc.edu/faculty/sahakian/ but the oher one is much more interesting).

P.S. The cultural physics class you taught seems very cool.

[bram]

Thanks. It was fun to teach the Cultural Physics class, but my background in superstring theory isn't strong--I'm just an interested person from another scientific field. Sahakian probably knows this stuff inside out and inside again.

This month's Scientific American had a cover article on Loop Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin. That's progress; the public really only knows about superstring theory. Most physicists find strings to be a more fruitful avenue of research and dismiss the importance of a "background independent" theory, as loop advocates claim their theory-in-progress may provide. It seems to me though that strings have a lot of hidden "free parameters" and may predict too many possible worlds.

I was always impressed (almost intimidated) by Mudd students. They were all so smart and rode unicycles all the time.

[csn]

Hah, I sent prof. Sahakian an email last night about loop gravity and some other stuff and he replied back, saying, "drop by my office with a book on graph theory so that I tell you why there is no future in loop gravity (or physics for that matter!)..."

Heh, thanks for the stereotype. :) it is true there is a lot of very smart people, but not as many unicyclers as there was once, I think, sadly.