Well, that’s it… my paper is finally up on the web, available to the public, now with its very own preprint number, hep-th/0210175. It’s funny, it didn’t feel like it was really sent out until now… there’s just something about seeing my name on the daily papers list that just amplifies the reality.
OK, now to go submit it to a journal…
Updated: And it’s off… submitted to Physical Review D. Plus got to talk on the phone with my father, which is always good.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, today’s edition:
Investigator Ron Josephson alerted us to the following mathematics-related dispatch, which appeared in the October 11, 2002 issue of “The Salt Lake Tribune”:
The menu at the Coffee Garden at 900 East and 900 South in Salt Lake City has included a scrumptious selection of quiche for about 10 years.
The recipe calls for four fresh eggs for each quiche.
A Salt Lake County Health Department inspector paid a visit recently and pointed out that research by the Food and Drug Administration indicates that one in four eggs carries salmonella bacterium, so restaurants should never use more than three eggs when preparing quiche.
The manager on duty wondered aloud if simply throwing out three eggs from each dozen and using the remaining nine in four-egg-quiches would serve the same purpose.
The inspector wasn’t sure, but she said she would research it.
Wow.
After way too many months of work, I just sent my latest paper up to the archive. (Not accessible to the public yet; it’ll be available starting Sunday night)
The basic result:
In string theory (type IIA string theory, to be precise) there exist certain higher-dimensional objects called D-branes, whose important dynamical property is that strings (the basic objects of the theory) can end on them. (Normally strings are little closed loops; there can also be open loops if the ends are on these D-branes. Closed strings behave like gravitons, open strings behave like photons and gluons and other force particles, and their endpoints on the D-brane behave like matter particles such as electrons and quarks) In type IIA string theory, these exist in even-dimensional variants: There are point particles (D0-branes, 0-dimensional) membranes (2-d) and so on up to 8-dimensional branes.
It’s been known for some time that certain collections of D0-branes can form a membrane: because of their interactions (imagine strings stretched from one D0-brane to another) they develop a tension, and fluctuate like a single membrane. This membrane is known to be the same as the D2-brane. (So you can think of a D2-brane as a bound state of a bunch of D0-branes)
My research was examining the most general configuration that can show up as a bound state of (infinitely many) D0-branes. The answer turns out to be that all of the ordinary branes (Dp-branes for p even) can be thought of as bound states of D0-branes. In addition to these, there seem to exist “exotic” branes which don’t fall into this usual category: Strings can end on them (like ordinary D-branes) but they have more complicated dynamics, their shapes being described by noncommutative geometry. (Which is kinda hard to explain – think of the points of space “fuzzing out” into patches in an irreducible way)
And, after something like 9 months on this, it’s finally ready to go. Submission to a journal (Phys. Rev. D) for peer review the moment it’s up on the web…
Yipee!
Well, I was reading Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe, volume 3,(which is very much worth reading, by the way; it’s even more full of good stuff than the first few volumes, and has quite a few more dirty jokes) when I came across a discussion of the origin of the word “bugger.” Now, not many history books talk about this (it originates with the Albigensian heresy), but since Gonick doesn’t give the whole story, and since I’m avoiding work (I’m holding office hours right now, does it show?) I figured I would insert a discourse here on…
Just finished reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Wow. Very heavy, fucks with your head. Powerful and skillful use of the full range of the English language, from street dialect to things normally found only in the O.E.D.
And I’m such a junkie that upon finishing this book (granted, heavily caffeinated, and granted also after finishing the book and returning to the first 80 pages or so to try to find some reason in how the beginning (which happens after the end) connects to the end (which ends well before the beginning, seemingly before the resolution?)) and while still on the rushed glow that comes from some really damned good literary indulging, I promptly walked right into the bookstore next door and picked up a copy of Starship Troopers and of the new Cartoon History of the Universe volume 3, just as a way of coming down.
Bloody hell… that was good…
I just had one of the mysteries of life explained by fortune(1).
The answer to the ultimate question being 42 and the ultimate question being what do you get when you multiply six by nine are consistent iff God has thirteen fingers.
I feel much better now…
Operator overloading not required.
* The First Name Yonatan is not common in the US and if it exists, the shared population is less than 1,000.
* The Last Name Zunger is not common in the US and if it exists, the shared population is less than 300.
* The First_Name + Last_Name Yonatan Zunger is not common in the US, with a shared population of around 0 – 10 individuals.
* The First_Name + Last_Initial Yonatan Z is not common in the US, with a shared population of around 0 – 10 individuals.
* The First_Initial + Last_Name Y Zunger is not common in the US, with a shared population of around 0 – 10 individuals.
Note: For populations of less than 1,000 the margin of error increases significantly.
(Side note – to the best of my knowledge, the set of people in the US who share the name Zunger are all my immediate relatives, and number under a dozen.)
So I just picked up a Hebrew copy of the Bible (which, for some odd reason, is impossible to find in the States) and was scanning through it, and had some random thoughts come to mind on the interpretation of the second genesis story and the story of the Tree of Good and Evil.
Well, since everyone else is posting week status, I may as well join in. Mine’s been pretty
exciting so far, with the partial down note that my great-uncle passed away last night.
I say partial because it was probably in the best of possible ways; (well, apart from being
shot in bed at 98 by a jealous husband – and knowing him, he would have probably found
that a pretty good way. For those of you who have heard the stories, he’s the one whose
sister gave him a bike helmet for his 80th birthday, and he thought it was so cool that he
immediately put it on and biked 40km through Israeli traffic to show his nephew; he’s
also the one with the huge scrapbook of pictures of girlfriends) he was very healthy until
a few months ago, then suddenly everything happened at once. So his death was both
swift and an end to suffering, and it’s for the best. Funeral tonight.
Apart from that: Trip has been going very well so far. Got to see lots of people that
I’ve been wanting to, got to travel in all sorts of odd parts of the country (random note: There’s
a not-bad coffee house called Coffee Annan – and the pun is even worse in Hebrew, BTW – on
a tall mountain overlooking the Syrian border. It’s kinda weird, especially because the border
is visible – the ground changes from a rich brown (on the Israeli side) to a sort of
gray (on the Syrian side). I have no idea what they’re doing to the ground to make it look that
way, but it doesn’t look particularly arable. The coffee house itself is right next to an old IDF
bunker, which is still open as a sort of museum; kinda in a loose sense of the word, though.
The machine-guns are all still there (but completely rusted; kids play with them) and there are
even sheets still on the beds in the bunker. The border area is actually surprisingly calm;
basically both Israel and Syria are more or less satisfied with the status quo, at least for now,
and so in the far north people are actually much more relaxed than in the center.
I’ll save the detailed stories for when I get back – but there are some good ones, including a
wedding and getting to visit an archaeological site in Jerusalem that isn’t open to the public.
*hug* to everyone!
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 