Friday, December 19, 2008

A wise man ...

... Q&A: 2008 Templeton Prize winner. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I am working on a fundamental problem in physics: unifying general relativity [which describes the large-scale effects of gravity], and quantum mechanics [which applies to sub-atomic scales]. With some colleagues from Warsaw I have created a model based on noncommutative geometry, which is an extremely interesting new branch of mathematics. In general relativity, spacetime is modeled as a smooth manifold [or sheet] - that's ordinary commutative geometry. But there are other algebras that are not commutative. In spacetimes that contain a singularity the manifold breaks down, so you can't use ordinary geometry. Our fundamental result is that at the smallest scale the geometry of space is noncommutative and nonlocal and it is probabilistic. When you describe the space probabilistically, singularities turn out to occupy a set of measure zero, which essentially means that singularities don't exist at that level. They only appear at the macroscopic level as a kind of construct.


Wonder what Richard Dawkins is working on these days?

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:16 PM

    What does that last sentence mean? Don't get the connection between the Templeton prizewinner's research and Richard Dawkins's current work.

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  2. As I understand it, Maxine, Professor Dawkins has not done very much research - at least he has not published a peer-reviewed paper - in something like 30 years. As I said in a review of The God Delusion (along with comparable books by Owen Gingerich and Francis Collins): "While Dawkins has established an impressive and richly influential reputation as a theoretician, when it comes to hard, direct-observation bench science, he has done nothing remotely comparable to the work of either Collins or Gingerich. He may preach the primacy of the hard sciences but he doesn't seem to practice them much. Too bad. As Gingerich points out, 'if you want to know how science works, there is a great advantage in actually working as a scientist, trying to tease out the structure of nature from among the ambiguities of the observations made at the cutting edge of the field.'" While it certainly good of Dawkins to explain science to us. other scientists are able to combine that with other things, such as the practice of science.

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  3. I should have added, Maxine, that if Dawkins is at work on something and I have not heard of it, then I preemptively apologize to him.

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