Towards a Theory of Quantum Gravity — Panel in Two Days
This coming Sunday, in two days, there will be a panel discussion with the topic:
Towards a Theory of Quantum Gravity
This is at noon, November 20th, 2009, at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention, in Cherry Hill, PA. Directions and so forth at www.philcon.org.
The official description of the panel is:
Modern physics has two fundamental models of reality – Quantum mechanics and general relativity. The first describes the world of fundamental particles, the second explains gravity in terms of warped space time. A theory of quantum gravity would unite these two models and finally bring gravity into the unified field theory, along with the other three fundamental forces. The current leading contender is string theory, but there are others, such as loop quantum gravity, supergravity and noncommutative geometry. Which, if any, of these theories will prove to be the answer?
Panelists: Catherine Asaro (moderator), John Ashmead, Jay Wile, Robert Kauffmann, Karl Kofoed
The multi-talented & charming Catherine is the Guest of Honor at Philcon this year. She has a Ph. D. from Harvard in chemical physics, is a former professional dancer, and has written a series of very successful science fiction romances, most recently Diamond Star.
I hope to do a blog post in a bit on her notion of complex time, “Complex speeds and special relativity”, published in 1996 in the American Journal of Physics. Amusingly enough, she has used her ideas on complex time in a few of her novels. Science fiction feeds on science which feeds on science fiction which ..
I’ll do a post on how the panel went, come Monday. Should be interesting.
By Jay Wile, November 24, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
I loved doing this panel and the biological computers one with you! I started plowing through your thesis, but it might take a while!