Asymptotia

I started a tradition a little while back where every year we have a special departmental colloquium entitled “The Nobel Prize in Physics: Who/What/Why”. This year my job in finding speakers was made easier by having 2/3 of this years newly-minted Nobel Prize winners in physics in the Department! (Michel Devoret and John Martinis.) So our room was a bit more well-attended than normal…(hundreds an…

Wow! Gorgeous! Good gardening Clifford! Here in KS my tomatoes are just starting to come in. I’ve had a few really tasty cherry tomatoes so far. I miss SoCal growing seasons, where I could definitely get two seasons out of many tomato plants. Still, Kansas has a longer growing season than Illinois where I grew up! Dear readers: I’ve begun transitioning my social media activity here over to anothe…

Well, I can now officially mention that I’ve been part of the filmmaking team (in a way) working hard to bring you an enjoyable and interesting Fantastic Four movie! I think it has been about two and a half years (?) since this all began. This was a nearly perfect model of how science consulting can work in film. I worked with everyone, wherever I was needed, with the director, writers, producers…

[More technical post follows.] I’ve been working on this project with (UCSB postdoc) Maciej Kolanowski on and off for a while now, but only in the last couple of weeks did I have the time to hunker down and help push the writing of the results to the finish. For your Sunday reading pleasure, it is already up on the arXiv here (it came out Thursday but I’ve been too busy to pause to post about it …

[A more technical post follows.] In January 2024 I wrote a paper showing how to define the Supersymmetric Virasoro Minimal String* (SVMS) as a random matrix model, compute many of its properties, and indeed predict many aspects of its physics. This was the first time the SVMS had been constructed. Despite that, a recent paper found it necessary to specifically single out my paper disparagingly as…

Some years ago I speculated that it would nice if a certain mathematical object existed, and even nicer if it were to satisfy an ordinary differential equation of a special sort. I was motivated by a particular physical question, and it seemed very natural to me to imagine such an object… So natural that I was sure that it must already have been studied, the equation for it known. As a result, ev…

This week’s lectures on instantons in my gauge theory class (a very important kind of theory for understanding many phenomenon in nature – light is an example of a phenomenon that is described by gauge theory) were a lot of fun to do, and mark the culmination of a month-long theme on topological objects and non-perturbative effects. I always enjoy teaching this stuff, including the history! –cvj

Thanks to everyone who made all those kind remarks in various places last month after my mother died. I’ve not responded individually (I did not have the strength) but I did read them all and they were deeply appreciated. Yesterday would’ve been mum‘s 93rd birthday. A little side-note occurred to me the other day: Since she left us a month ago, she was just short of having seen two perfect square…

I’ve been very quiet here over the last couple of weeks. My mother, Delia Maria Johnson, already in hospital since 5th November or so, took a turn for the worse and began a rapid decline. She died peacefully after some days, and to be honest I’ve really not been myself since then. There’s an extra element to the sense of loss when (as it approaches) you are powerless to do anything because of bei…

I’m a baker, as you probably know. I’ve regularly made bread, cakes, pies, and all sorts of things for friends and family. About a year ago, someone in the family was diagnosed with a severe allergy to gluten, and within days we removed all gluten products from the kitchen, began to be very selective about restaurants we ate at, and generally had to rethink a number of aspects of our lives as a f…

The good news (following from last post) is that it worked out! I was almost short of the amount I needed to cover the pie, and so that left nothing for my usual decoration… but it was a hit at dinner and for left-overs today, so that’s good! Dear readers: I’ve begun transitioning my social media activity here over to another place, with bluer skies. I hope you’ll come too and read/follow my post…

The delicious chaos that (almost always) eventually tames into a tasty flaky pastry crust… it’s always a worrying mess to start out, but you trust to your experience, and you carry on, with hope. #thanksgiving Search Categories Pages - Recent Posts From Instagram From Twitter Categories Pages - Recent Posts From Twitter

I realised just now that I entirely forgot (it seems) to post about an episode of PBS’ show Nova called “Decoding the Universe: Cosmos” which aired back in the Spring. I thought they did a good job of talking about some of the advances in our understanding that have happened over the last 50 years (the idea is that it is the 50th anniversary of the show) in areas of astrophysics and cosmology. I …

For those of you who keep up with my social media posts, you’ve probably been expecting that I’d eventually announce that I’m transitioning from Twitter to something else… and it is Bluesky. I’ll stay on Twitter for a bit longer while I settle in (and while I wait for people to see the change, etc.), but consider following @asymptotia.bsky.social asap. (I’ll continue posting at the Facebook and I…

Never toured the inside of the Houses of Parliament before, seeing all the red and green colour coded areas (lords and commons – look at the benches next time you see debates in either place) and busts and statues of some of the shapers, for better or worse, of much of the fabric of UK democracy. (Thanks to my sister for this wonderful opportunity on Friday!) BTW, most of the interesting stuff I …

During the pandemic shutdown I regularly ran these london streets and bridges -virtually- on a treadmill watching a YouTube video of such a run. This morning (actually 8 days ago since I see now I forgot to hit “publish”) was the first time I did it for real! I wonder … Click to continue reading this post → The post Running London appeared first on Asymptotia .

For some weekend listening, there’s a fun and informative podcast for youngsters called Tumble Science Podcast. I learned of it recently because they asked to interview me for an episode, and it is now available! It is all about time travel, and I hope you (and/or yours) have fun listening … Click to continue reading this post → The post Tumble Science Podcast Episode appeared first on Asymptotia…

This morning I had a really fantastic meeting with some filmmakers about scientific aspects of the visuals (and other content) for a film to appear on your screens one day, and also discussed finding time to chat with one of the leads in order to help them get familiar with aspects of the world (and perhaps mindset) of a theoretical physicist. (It was part of a long series of very productive me…

Since you asked, I should indeed say a few words about how things have been going since I left my previous position and moved to being faculty at the Santa Barbara Department of Physics. It's Simply Wonderful! (Well, that's really four I suppose, depending upon whether you count the contraction as one or two.) Really though, I've been having a great time. It is such a wonderful department with we…

(A more technical post follows.) By the way, in both sets of talks that I mentioned in the previous post, early on I started talking about orthogonal polynomials , and how they generically satisfy a three-term recurrence relation (or recursion relation): Someone raised their hand and ask why it truncates … Click to continue reading this post → The post Recurrence Relations appeared first on Asymp…