Monday, April 11, 2011

Twistors at KITP

The scattering theory workshop (to which I was not invited) has started at KITP and talks are available online.

6 comments:

  1. Part of me wishes to be at COSMO11 in Cordoba, where we were invited. We had a wonderful time in Buenos Aires last August, and have another conference to attend in Houston. Even if we could attend conferences full-time, we would still have to choose.

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  2. Yes, Cordoba would have been nice. I don't actually know anyone else here in NZ who was not able to give a conference talk through lack of funding. People tell me there is plenty of money for that kind of thing. Of course, I am also invited to speak at another cosmology conference next month, but I do not expect funding to materialise for that either.

    Heh, that KITP talk was cool: an introduction to the jargon of $N = 4$ SYM. He mentions motives and Hopf algebras at the end! And I nearly fell out of my chair when he mentioned having worked with the mathematician Goncharov ... see this paper.

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  3. Perhaps a new post on mixed motives and polylogarithms is now fitting?

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  4. Kneemo, everyone knows that polylogarithms show up in physics, and absolutely nobody understands mixed motives (although we do try). Sure, I could go back to what I was talking about 5 years ago, but would anyone listen?

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  5. Kea,
    your polylogarithm link looks most promising!
    Perhaps future generations will listen!

    The PeSla

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  6. Kea,

    I recall a decade or so ago that string theory looked like a dead end while it was the only game in town. This was unfortunate for those who had based careers on it, just like friend had to change directions from the "bootstrap hypothesis". But the stringer got a reprieve. I feel, despite all the hints of your wonderful links and all the papers, that the physics community do not realize it is now not the only game in town. But Einstein said it best, nothing impedes such theoretical progress as the lack of funding for the struggle for daily living (paraphrase from his biography).

    Let us hope such equations written on the sand are seen by someone before the tide comes again, and stand proud that you have seen it, to be human proud of such achievement even if you stand alone in the end.

    The Pe Sla

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