STRINGS '05 PUBLIC LECTURES

Peter Woit:

Dijkgraaf’s talk was completely standard string evangelism, and except for a couple slides mentioning D-branes and black holes, could easily have been given, completely unchanged, twenty years ago.

Sometimes if you do not do this assessment for the general public, and make correct the way in which a Peter Woit, Robbert Dijkgraaf or even a Lubos Motl might have views on things, then to introduce on religious grounds the ownership of perspective, one might move to defend themself as being free of "faith based organizations?" One would have been classically stereotyped, because of the position they hold? You'd all be backing away from each other?

But that's not the point I think. It's sort of like Lee Smolin synopsis, on the way "Three Roads," now leads to where one had moved since then. You see, one has to do this checking all the time, just so that the position held in context is necessary for further developmental strategies to future perspective. This is what Lee Smolin does that I like.

The harmony that is required might be okay to diverge into positions distinctive, but the larger populace would, and might see such dialogue as discerinig of the struggle that lays before all.

Such talks would be signatory of such synoptic ends, that to move forward, new harmonicial standards might be now further discussed, as they were in Solvay with friction?:)


Cosmic Landscape:
String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design


No wonder Susskind, moved to consider himself free of some intelligent design model that might have been imposed by the sean's carroll and others, who would seek to tie an aspect of theoretcial developement to some "faith based idealization of research" and developement. I have listen to it long and hard about the way in which there is some master plan to have some movement take over the common sense of the scientific trades?

So you decide and listen reader. For you, it may be something new. I can assure you you will not be taken over by some unseen force, where an exorcism is needed to bring you back to common sense.



Strings, Black Holes, and the End of Space and Time
Robbert Dijkgraaf (Amsterdam)
Strings05 Public Lecture

The Fifth Dimension, is the Spacetime Fabric

Perhaps Quantum Gravity can be Handled by thoroughly reconsidering Quantum Mechanics itself? by Gerard t' Hooft

I was attracted to Nigel Cook's statement on Peter Woits blog entitled, "Panel Discussion Video" by the quote of his taken here below. What immediately struck my mind, was the Bekenstein Bound and how "temperature" would have been seen from that perspective.

Bekenstein Bound:

Superstring theory rules in the 5-D spacetime, but a so-called conformal field theory of point particles operates on the 4-D hologram. A black hole in the 5-D spacetime is equivalent to hot radiation on the hologram--for example, the hole and the radiation have the same entropy even though the physical origin of the entropy is completely different for each case.

Lee Smolin post given at Peter Woit's site was a ressurrection of "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity", and I like the fact that he wants cohesion amongst physicists and theoriticians alike. But if stauchly held to any position, then you have divisive comment about the ways in which to approach things. It can't be helped. But asking for more clarity this might be a good thing, and a approach by Lubos to qualify the string theorist position.

Lubos Motl:

The holographic conjecture, based on the Bekenstein's bounds and the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the black hole,has been first proposed by Gerard 't Hooft and discussed in more detail by Lenny Susskind:

But before consider Nigel's comment, I wanted to quote something from Lee Smolin.

Consider any physical system, made of anything at all- let us call it, The Thing. We require only that The Thing can be enclosed within a finite boundary, which we shall call the Screen(Figure39). We would like to know as much as possible about The Thing. But we cannot touch it directly-we are restrictied to making measurements of it on The Screen. We may send any kind of radiation we like through The Screen, and record what ever changes result The Screen. The Bekenstein bound says that there is a general limit to how many yes/no questions we can answer about The Thing by making observations through The Screen that surrounds it. The number must be less then one quarter the area of The Screen, in Planck units. What if we ask more questions? The principle tells us that either of two things must happen. Either the area of the screen will increase, as a result of doing an experiment that ask questions beyond the limit; or the experiments we do that go beyond the limit will erase or invalidate, the answers to some of the previous questions. At no time can we know more about The thing than the limit, imposed by the area of the Screen.

Page 171 and 172 0f, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin

Nigel Cook:

'Caloric’, fluid heat theory, eventually gave way to two separate mechanisms, kinetic theory and radiation. This was after Prevost in 1792 suggested constant temperature is a dynamic system, with emission in equilibrium with the reception of energy.

Yet I understand this call for bringing a string theorist into the fold of Lee's, but I would remind him, that such cosmological approaches are well on their way with the course ISCAP set for themselves and how comsological realization, are still important features that string theory would like to get a hold of.



Juan Maldacena:

The strings move in a five-dimensional curved space-time with a boundary. The boundary corresponds to the usual four dimensions, and the fifth dimension describes the motion away from this boundary into the interior of the curved space-time. In this five-dimensional space-time, there is a strong gravitational field pulling objects away from the boundary, and as a result time flows more slowly far away from the boundary than close to it. This also implies that an object that has a fixed proper size in the interior can appear to have a different size when viewed from the boundary (Fig. 1). Strings existing in the five-dimensional space-time can even look point-like when they are close to the boundary. Polchinski and Strassler1 show that when an energetic four-dimensional particle (such as an electron) is scattered from these strings (describing protons), the main contribution comes from a string that is close to the boundary and it is therefore seen as a point-like object. So a string-like interpretation of a proton is not at odds with the observation that there are point-like objects inside it.

Bridging the chasm between mathematics and human culture

Thanks to Peter Woit for these kinds of links. As a lay person, to see this idea exemplified by such gatherings, closes the great divide. It is wonderful in a way, when one can see where these mathematics are really quite interesting aspects of vision, that can and are related to the physics of life.

What ever perspective could Thales have brought?

Thales says Water is the Primary Principle

Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge of certain principles and causes (Metaph. 982 a2-3). He commenced his investigation of the wisdom of the philosophers who preceded him, with Thales, the first philosopher, and described Thales as the founder of natural philosophy (Metaph. 983 b21-22). He recorded: 'Thales says that it is water'. 'it' is the nature, the archê, the originating principle. For Thales, this nature was a single material substance, water. Despite the more advanced terminology which Aristotle and Plato had created, Aristotle recorded the doctrines of Thales in terms which were available to Thales in the sixth century BCE Aristotle made a definite statement, and presented it with confidence. It was only when Aristotle attempted to provide the reasons for the opinions that Thales held, and for the theories that he proposed, that he sometimes displayed caution.

So it will be interesting to see what arises from Thales inauguration in this group, as I like this approach. "The principle" with which Thales of Miletus contributed to the early dialogues? Such a foundation, might have had such topological beginnings in the idea of continuity?:) Who knows, that such thinking could be the basis of another point of view that I share here. Such vision developement would have warrented a good understanding of ways in which we can see this world, and such a basis woud have been drawn up for other perspectives. You see?:)

Spend some time on what Thales might have revealled on the site I developed, had he known the issues of gravity could have been measured in ways? That the world, is only now becoming familiar with?

Might one called it a "landscape approach" using the basis of Thales principles, and understanding the measure of the world and globe, other then the round pearl of vision and euclidean measure. That we have attached heightened and perspective minds who see this earth other then in the way evidentuary minds will accept. This might have been my message to Peter Woit, that such journies, although mathematically embued, would have been seen in theoretical developement, as useful, from the developement and perspective of what these maths entail physically. This is what is beautiful to me, that such a vision that I have attained through my work, could marrying the physics of life with abstract and somewhat untouchable connections? This method created relevance to the mathematics and the understanding of what might issue from other methods, that were "revolutions in themselves," in the way we could interpret the phsyics and world we see in careful ways.

Investigating the complex relationships between mathematics and human culture.

Exploring new ways of talking about mathematics inside the mathematical and scientific communities.

Creating new methods for communicating mathematics to the culture at large, including education.

You will find throughout my site, many links to different mathematical perspectives that were developed, from following the world of Einstein and General Relativity.

Who would have known Gauss's world might have revealled an aspect of the understanding of non-euclidean perspectives? That would point us to see Gauss's coordinates much different then Euclids. here parallel lines woud have taken on greater connotations, when elevated to brane and parallel worlds?

By studying this history, I learnt to see where physics join mathematics in a wonderful way. Some might even say that for such a roque scholar and student, there might have been some inroads to perceptions not realized before? This has been a wonderful feature of reading and writing, that model building might had truly gone on?

While it is wonderful to protect the interest of all students of a kind, the link presented here, in "Thales and Narrative," has been one that that could only come about by dialogue. Unfortunately for me, at a distant work, had to cleverly institute a method to continue such work, without the incentives and encouragements, that proper students and scholar would enjoy. But this is minor, to the wonderful things I have learnt and am learning.

The Earth as a Layered Pearl of Vision

While the Image seen here, is one week into our trip back east to the prairies, this leg of the vacation is being shown for a particluar reason.

HUman nature saids we like to embedded and concretize the greater philosophies into the images of history? Americanization would embue itself to the higher standards of which this society would develope itself. So with insight, a sculptor might embedded these into the images that we visited, to see here. Allow people to give nergy to such gatherings and become the blazoned typical image to reside now in the deeper functions of scoieties long lasting and timeless embodiement within that same consciousness.

BIGHorn Medicine Wheel


This place is called Big Horn Medicine Wheel, and is located near Sheridan Wyoming.

At a elevation of 9642 this is located on Medicine Mountain. This Medicine Wheel, was used by the Crow and Cree Indians and is remote and inaccessible most of the year.

While the walk is about a mile and half in, the trail takes you to vistas, and reasons why such a view woud have held the nature of sight beyond border from sights seen at lower elevations. At that Height, it was beautiful, and held me in wonder why such a jouney would have been endured by these cultures to participate in a ritual of harmony.

This is one aspect of the culture to which the idea of "liminocentric structures" are brought forward for inspection, and aside from the context with which I have spoken here in this blog. I wanted this relation to reveal the topological recognition of what wraps the brain and bodies's home much like the earth, that although it is physical as th ebody is the earth has certain qualties that we give the earth body, a layered recognition, much like the pearl, deepr levels of consciousness exist.

But there is another layer to the idea of what existed long before we had ever set our hands to work in these concretize forms, that the historical significance reminds us of a civilization that existed long before the scuptor saw fit to immortalize the subject in stone.

But before I continue with this explanation I wanted to move forward with the idea of this entry, so one gets this sense of the layered vision with which we assign humanities philosphies to concretization and heights, from which modern day visions are circumvented to our daily lives.

Devil's Tower


From a distance, as I looked at this object of consideration,I thought too, that such a distance could have been associated to the depth with which our consciousness sees fit to bring into the light of day, much as the story unfolds in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

So who is that plants these idealizations in the hisory of mankind, that such mountains and stories of myth would challenge the mind to ascend the mountain landscape, to become in touch with the finer aspect of spirit, that so close and intouch we might have become with the true goals of what exists at these deeper levels of mind. That such universality would have pointed all to the aspect with which we encounter these deepr levels of unconsciousness that you or I have given, in meaning?

Where the greater context of people gather on a scupltured mountain, or high mountain place that a INdian culture would gather, or where the society would see the layered source of true metal, of mountain stone revealled, in President Heads, or as Devil's tower?

The struggle is for recognition, and verbalization, artistically inclined, that such a struggle would bring identification to a certain reality and life's fulfillment of a plannned unfoldment in one's life's work.


I am not sure if any remember this image when it was first introduced for the general public in a movie known as, Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Where Richard Dreyfuss in his struggle to identify this deeper conscious recognition implanted in the brains of the public, for a meeting ground of contact.

The nearly vertical monolith known as Devils Tower rises 1,267 feet above the meandering Belle Fourche River. Once hidden below the earth's surface, erosion has stripped away the softer rock layers revealing Devils Tower.

Known by several northern plains tribes as Bears Lodge, it is a sacred site of worship for many American Indians. The rolling hills of this 1,347 acre park are covered with pine forests, deciduous woodlands, and prairie grasslands. Deer, prairie dogs, and other wildlife are abundant.

Proclaimed September 24, 1906 as the nation's first national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt.

So it seems such a idea of the first contact of the extraterristial kind should have brought the publics to consensus in this planted image of gathering. What value then of such a natural consequence would lead anyone to write this image into a movie and draw from the myth that surrounds it's very formative and geophysical relevance to other worldly ideas?

A electrical beacon for other civilizations? The universality of a life living would be in greater context then the one life we choose to live now? The greater context would say, that Like Ben Franklin, the cloak with which we wear, can be taken off and put on. But in the deeper context of this outer covering, the truth still exists and is retained as a thread, through all our choosen existances.

So we are not so divide in this culture or that one that we might not have expeirnced the model of wholeness through which each life is represented as a point onthis circle of time, that such wholeness would say that the inner/outer compulsion for expression would be out there int helayered vsions of relaity yet they are tied deeply to the home in which we live now. The Earth with which we reside now?

Trembling, in the Unshakeable?

There is a story on this page that unfolds the more you enter the depth of perception that is offered. If you click on the picture supplied below it takes you into a deeper "cavern of thinking", that relates the depth of ideas that Lubos talks about, with ways in which the standard model might have been used.

I don't say this is the way, but just that in observation, I delved deeper into the meaning of what is not apparent on first look, had me realize that the way history can be rewritten, with a artistic inclination could hold a scientific mind to valuation of what others who demand of this reasoning to be sound.

"But now, almost a century after Einstein's tour-de-force, string theory gives us a quantum-mechanical discription of gravity that, by necessity, modifies general relativity when distances involved become as short as the Planck length. Since Reinmannian geometry is the mathetical core of general relativity, this means that it too must be modified in order to reflect faithfully the new short distance physics of string theory. Whereas general relativity asserts that the curved properties of the universe are described by Reinmannian geometry, string theory asserts this is true only if we examine the fabric of the universe on large enough scales. On scales as small as planck length a new kind of geometry must emerge, one that aligns with the new physics of string theory. This new geometry is called, quantum geometry."

The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene, pg 231 and Pg 232

On observation alone, who might judge what might issue responsibility, and we have one man's take here. I thought, why waste having hard work deleted, when I can explain myself here:)It always amazes me that such theories were allowed expression and crackpotential meter status recognition, were allowed to live well on, "Not Even Wrong."

New York Times on Toronto Panel Discussion

In Comment Section:

Peter Woit:I’ve always personally felt that the real question is not how to quantize gravity, but how to quantize gravity in some way that tells us how the geometry of space-time is related to the geometry of the standard model.

So Tony Smith opens the door to crackpot alley, and the chances of who might issue forward with possible scenarios, can include, not just the sane in respect of one man's view, but others to comment regardless of the stature with which he might impose a strict recogniton of what is required.

Do they all follow this regiment?

So while this topic was going on I thought about something, or rather someone, who might fit the requirement of Peters statement. Why not my words, and the perspective of another, who saw historically one way, had revisionistic insight, to redraw the picture in a way, that such a view could be extolled in Peter's Comment?

While the Standard Model has been very successful in describing most of the phenomemon that we can experimentally investigate with the current generation of particle acceleraters, it leaves many unanswered questions about the fundamental nature of the universe. The goal of modern theoretical physics has been to find a "unified" description of the universe.

This indeed leaves a "pretty big question mark", but Prof.dr R.H. Dijkgraaf might he learnt to hide this question mark in a place where few with good observational skills might find it? So how lovely indeed, that such a veiw that Peter Woit asks for, might have been embued in artistically thesis of the good professor?

See if this "picture" rings a bell?:)



The dynamical nature of this movement, is the status of what quantum gravity might have brought forward in unseen lines and such, that Prof.dr R.H. Dijkgraaf maybe, just maybe, the answer lies here? What do you think Peter Woit?

Dealing With a 5d World

A black hole is an object so massive that even light cannot escape from it. This requires the idea of a gravitational mass for a photon, which then allows the calculation of an escape energy for an object of that mass. When the escape energy is equal to the photon energy, the implication is that the object is a "black hole".

A lot of us understand I think that the cosmological world we had been lead through by Einstein, has geometrical principals embued with this organizational ascent. So too alongside of this equative understanding, the geometry must be understood as well, as the role we have in develoing to non euclidean geometry.

The basic principals have direct physics results as we learn to explore these potentials.



If we are taken to understand this progression, how did we get here? Are there higher dimensions without the geometry?



Measuring the depth of ideas

Lubos saids:Instead, let us ask: is quantum mechanics deep? Yes, I think that quantum mechanics is perhaps the deepest idea we know. It is once again a deformation of a conceptually simpler picture of classical physics. Much like the speed of light is finite in relativity and it unifies space and time, the Planck constant is finite in quantum mechanics which allows us to identify the energy with the frequency, among many other things - quantities that would otherwise remain as independent as space and time without relativity.

Lubos Motl talk about the depth of ideas, for me, leads to this progression of geometry. Talked about it in a way I saw leading and consenting ideas to this progression, by developing these deeper qualities of "quantum mechanics".

We had to understand then that such a physics progression would follow hand in hand, with the ideas of geometrical expression? So how were we lead into the non-eucldean world?



So too then, how would it be, if we use a different method to extoll the holographical understanding in how we percieve the natural abilties of information related to this geometrical form? Bekenstein Bound holds important clues about this fifth dimensional attribute?

Holography encodes the information in a region of space onto a surface one dimension lower. It sees to be the property of gravity, as is shown by the fact that the area of th event horizon measures the number of internal states of a blackhole, holography would be a one-to-one correspondance between states in our four dimensional world and states in higher dimensions. From a positivist viewpoint, one cannot distinquish which discription is more fundamental.

Pg 198, The Universe in Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking

How would then would we reduce Higher dimensions to relativity?

Superstring theory rules in the 5-D spacetime, but a so-called conformal field theory of point particles operates on the 4-D hologram. A black hole in the 5-D spacetime is equivalent to hot radiation on the hologram--for example, the hole and the radiation have the same entropy even though the physical origin of the entropy is completely different for each case. Although these two descriptions of the universe seem utterly unalike, no experiment could distinguish between them, even in principle.

History of Gravity and the Equivalence Principle

History rerun on bar ringings?


That's it: the bar is in place.

Our word gravity and its more precise derivative gravitation come from the Latin word gravitas, from gravis (heavy), which in turn comes from a still more ancient root word thought to have existed because of numerous cognates in related languages. For example, compare the Old English word grafan (grave), the Old Slavic pogreti (to bury), the Sanskrit guru (weighty, venerable), and Greek barus (heavy, grievous) among others. These words have common meanings of heaviness, importance, seriousness, dignity, grimness; the modern, physical sense of a field of attraction did not appear until Newton's time. Indeed, for Galileo, Newton, and scientists up to the beginning of the twentieth century, gravity was no more than an empty name for the phenomenon, a fact that they were well aware of.

How the Natural World has Been Painted

While some are intrigued by EM waves, I have a fascination for GW and the way we can portrait the natural world, we do not see.



The sounds of gravitional waves are probably too low for us to actually hear. However, the signals that scientists hope to measure with LISA and other gravitational wave detectors are best described as "sounds." If we could hear them, here are some of the possible sounds of a gravitational wave generated by the movement of a small body inspiralling into a black hole.

There is a lesson in this, when you learn to hear what billiard balls sound like, and what the resulting "click" could represent.

Savas Dimopoulos

Here’s an analogy to understand this: imagine that our universe is a two-dimensional pool table, which you look down on from the third spatial dimension. When the billiard balls collide on the table, they scatter into new trajectories across the surface. But we also hear the click of sound as they impact: that’s collision energy being radiated into a third dimension above and beyond the surface. In this picture, the billiard balls are like protons and neutrons, and the sound wave behaves like the graviton.

It helps you to see the world as a very much different place then the one we are accustomed too.

Can these be applied to such romantic reasoning, that we are encouraged to poetry and other things, where such idealizations, are battling for whose interpretation is right? What portraits are these that there is no romm for them to hang for observation? A glimpse of Mona Lisa's smile, that if taken from various perspective it would seem to be always looking at you? How could you distance yourself, if you are what you think?

Quantum Gravity

The jump from conventional field theories of point-like objects to a theory of one-dimensional objects has striking implications. The vibration spectrum of the string contains a massless spin-2 particle: the graviton. Its long wavelength interactions are described by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Thus General Relativity may be viewed as a prediction of string theory!

Imagine the very canvas is string theories very fabric of the cosmos:)


J. Metzinger Le Gouter/Teatime (1911)

"Dynamical triangulations" and such, that such a painting will explore the greater potential of perception, from varying perspectives?

Art Mirrors Physics Mirrors Art

The French mathematician Henri Poincaré provided inspiration for both Einstein and Picasso. Einstein read Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis (French edition 1902, German translation 1904) and discussed it with his friends in Bern. He might also have read Poincaré's 1898 article on the measurement of time, in which the synchronization of clocks was discussed--a topic of professional interest to Einstein as a patent examiner. Picasso learned about Science and Hypothesis indirectly through Maurice Princet, an insurance actuary who explained the new geometry to Picasso and his friends in Paris. At that time there was considerable popular fascination with the idea of a fourth spatial dimension, thought by some to be the home of spirits, conceived by others as an "astral plane" where one can see all sides of an object at once. The British novelist H. G. Wells caused a sensation with his book The Time Machine (1895, French translation in a popular magazine 1898-99), where the fourth dimension was time, not space.

Shakespearean Quandry Has Limits

As a measure how far can this be taken? Some like to think like Smolin, and Smolin's reference to Glast is a important one:)This defines his limits.

Others, have decided to go beyond this.:)

Torsors Made Easy

John Baez:

In Newtonian mechanics, we can only measure energy differences, not energies themselves. The reason is that we can add any real number to our definition of energy without changing any of the physics. This means it doesn't make much sense to ask what the energy of a system is - we can answer this question only after picking an arbitrary convention about what counts as "zero energy". What makes more sense is to talk about the difference between the energy of a system in one state and the energy of that system in some other state.

We can express this in terms of torsors as follows: energy differences lie in the group of real numbers R, but energies themselves do not: they lie in an "R-torsor".

In quantum mechanics, we can only measure relative phases, not phases themselves. The reason is that we can multiply the phase of a quantum state by any unit complex number without changing any of the physics. So, it doesn't make much sense to ask what the phase of a quantum state is - we can answer this question only after picking an arbitrary convention. What makes sense more sense is to talk about the relative phase between two states that differ only by a phase.

We can express this in terms of torsors as follows: relative phases lie in the group of unit complex numbers, which is called U(1), but phases themselves do not: they lie in a "U(1)-torsor".