Physics is Solved.

Last Friday, Peter (who did his PhD in maths (analysis) at King's and is now working in The City), having joined us at the pub, sat down and promptly informed us, much to the dismay of the theoretical physicists present, that "physics is solved." He had found this article and the paper on the arXiv to which it referred. Peter's claim was intended as mockery of the grandiose title of the paper, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" but of course it's difficult to mock such a title with exaggeration.

I don't know much of anything about physics, but Not Even Wrong explains a bit more of what Lisi did (and did not) do, and gives references to some other commentary as well, leading to this pretty picture.

I kid you not.

Perhaps they're being sarcastic. Or maybe the Chinese confused the program. If it could understand what I've written in Chinese, my blog would be at toddler level. Possibly it extrapolates more than it should from the occasional math post. Or do they mean that it takes a genius to decipher my garbled posts?

Guo Juan visits London!

I had lunch with Guo Juan and her friend Bob this afternoon. They're in London on holiday this week. It's always great to see Guo Juan.

She took us to a restaurant in Chinatown which she says is famous for having good cheap food and awful service. I didn't notice the service being so terrible, but then Guo Juan just ordered for us quickly in Chinese. We didn't even look at the menu. It was certainly good, and unbelievably cheap.

They were supposed to join me for the Royal Opera House lunchtime recital today, but unfortunately it was cancelled. Apparently the singer was ill, which is no surprise given the cold, wet, windy, dark and generally miserable weather we've had lately. Last night my umbrella broke while I was walking home. Fortunately, one can buy an umbrella anywhere in London, including any post office. Of course I haven't bought a new one yet. I just walk around with one side of the umbrella flopping down. I'll have to give in soon though, as the weather is unlikely to change.

Guo Juan asked me if I know Pierre Colmez, who is an excellent number theorist in France. He's also a very good Go player, at French 5 or 6 dan. I certainly know of him, and I've seen him give talks, but I've never actually met him. Go players always ask me if I know him, because he is a mathematician and mathematicians always ask me if I know him, because he is a Go player. I'm afraid I'll have to get much better at both before anyone asks him whether he knows me.

Salsa

My friend Alicia lives in a residence hall for graduate students which is not associated to any particular university. It's centrally located and relatively affordable, but it is still a residence hall and worse, they expect you to be involved socially with the community living there. She's joined the wine tasting club and salsa dancing lessons, so it's not all bad, but she's also required to invite her supervisor to a meet-each-other's-supervisors dinner. (Her supervisor turned down the invitation, so that's a potentially awkward situation averted.)

Anyway, I've been going to the salsa classes with her on Saturdays. Gabriel (the guy who is teaching the classes) is a friend of Alicia's who is also from Mexico. It's no easy task trying to teach these stiff Brits how to dance, especially because he has to teach them in English instead of Spanish.

I've been going for a few weeks now, but last week was the first week that I felt like we were actually dancing a bit. It was a small group on Saturday, with more guys than girls. This was a welcome change but more importantly the guys who showed up on Saturday were decent and, having a few weeks under our belts, we could finally do a bit more than just stumbling through disjointed sequences of moves, desperately trying to remember the next step. Also, I got to dance with Gabriel more. He's really good and it's so nice to dance with someone who can.

I like my Mexican friends. We spent the rest of the evening drinking beers chelada style and then Mezcal with lime and a crushed salt/chili/worm mixture.

On Thursday this week, we took our dancing public for the first time. It was really fun, but much harder than our lessons, where we have a big room with plenty of space. At the bar it was crowded, with everyone bumping into each other. I kept getting thrown off balance or just distracted. And the music they played there was Cuban and much faster than the Mexican salsa we've been learning. Also, it had been a long day and I was really tired. But I hope we go back soon. Pubs beat bars by a long shot, but it's so nice to get up from the sedentary office/pub life and move.