Canto XLVII

So there's really not all that much new going on right now. I'm here at TASI getting my learn on. The lectures seem to be stepping up this week, and I've really been enjoying them. Although by the last afternoon lecture today, I could just feel my brain starting to tap out, I think I was asleep for maybe 10 minutes, and when I woke up, I was totally lost. I'll have to go through the notes tonight. But there was one rather great comment from Nima Arkani-Hamed. Much of his discussion revolves around the anthropic principle, which is basically saying that various constants of nature are "tuned" just right to support life. This has gained a lot of ground in the theoretical physics community (although remains highly controversial) due to two outstanding unsolved problems in physics right now: the Higgs mass (for those who keep up on such things, yes we still expect to find the Higgs at the LHC, this has to do with it's coupling to matter) and the Cosmological Constant/Dark Energy (the recently observed fact that our universe is just beginning to accelerate). Basically, the idea is that there is a huge multi-verse of many different universes with many different values of these various constants of nature, and we just happen to live in one of the universes that can support life. There are certain features and drawbacks to this, but before you dismiss it completely remember that the Earth you are sitting on is an anthropic argument. We didn't just happen to live on a planet that supports life, we could only live on a planet that supports life. Anyway, his lecture included a lot of examples of interesting "accidents" about out universe and situations that may seem to be "tuned". But one was particularly funny. The size of our moon is just such that it can block out our sun. In fact, it works to about one part in 10^3 or 10^4. That's an amazing amount of "tuning", even worse odds than the Blazers winning the Lottery! But he called this a case of mis-anthropic tuning, thinking about all the virgins who were sacrificed to "bring back the sun" or some other such nonsense. It got a good laugh. Well, they say it's not funny if you have to explain the joke, but maybe you learned something along the way.

I'm looking forward to being back in Boston. My parents are heading off across the pond tomorrow to visit my brother in London, and also visit Paris and some other parts of France. Two weeks of European vacation. I'm a little envious, Steph and I tried to see if we could work it in this year, but no luck. We'll make it there sometime. We've both been separately, but not together. Someday.