The string theory debate

There is a considerable debate, especially in the United States, about
the achievements and/or failure of string theory. The one outcome of this is that there is pressure on the string community to come up with ways in which theory can be verified or falsified. Of note in this regard is the paper entitled

`` Falsifying String Theory Through WW Scattering''

by Distler, Grinstein and Rothstein. What is of course very gratifying to me is that ref.[2] of this paper is our work on axiomatic constraints on the low energy constants of chiral perturbation theory obtained from analyticity, unitarity, crossing and positivity considerations of neutral pion scattering . One has to read the paper of DGR to figure out the connections.

Some of my all time favourite quotes

Here are two of my all time favourite quotes:

``There is a strong tradition in theoretical physics, which by no
meansaffected everyone but certainly affected me, that the strong
interactions are too complicated for the human mind.'' (attributed to
Steven Weinberg, for which I have never been able to find the original
source).

``The earth is degenerating fast. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer mind parents and it is evident the end of the
world is approaching fast.'' (Assyrian Tablet, 2800 B. C., which
I first found in an email from Sreerup Raychaudhuri, and
later confirmed by google search).

Update: I wrote to Sreerup about this and in his reply, among
other things, he says:

``Incidentally, there is another Weinberg quote "We do not really understand
the Higgs sector", which nicely complements the one you have. I'm not
asking you to put it up, but it's just for your delectation.''

I must confess that I had to look up ``delectation'' on my favourite
online dictionary. The answer it gives is

1. Delight.
2. Enjoyment; pleasure.

Thank you, Abi

I guess I never did acknowledge the role Abi
has played in all this. I would have never
had the courage or initiative. Of course he
is already famous as the author of
Nanopolitan.

Back from vacation

Back from vacation in Hyderabad. I left almost immediately
after creating the blog! It was a great vacation: kept my
promise of not reading e-mail or reading the internet.
Aparna had a great time with grandparents and Chinni
and Anju. Jubilee Hills was very beautiful as ever. I saw
many kinds of birds. Crosswords, sudoku, coffee and
tea made the holiday memorable. Periappa was happy
to get back to Hyderabad. Anita finally got to see and
buy many copies of 'The Little Grey Hare' (Spark-India).
At Rs. 70 per copy it is a steal. The illustrations by
Sarada Natarajan are wonderful.

My first blog entry

I thought to myself why not? I discovered that even a
technophobe seems to be able to pull this off. I am
not sure I will be regular, but let us hope for the best.