Other

The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012 was a watershed in particle physics. Its existence focuses attention on the outstanding questions about physics beyond the Standard Model: is `empty' space unstable? what is the dark matter? what is the origin of matter? what is the explanation for the small masses of the neutrinos? how is the hierarchy of mass scales in physics established and stabilized? what drove inflation? how to quantize gravity Many of these issues will be addressed by future runs of the LHC, e.g., by studies of the Higgs boson, and also motivate possible future colliders.

Confomal transformations and conformal algebras in D=2 Recap Lecture Six

Twenty-first century finance is built on complex mathematical tools developed by “quants,” a different breed of investor with expertise in fields such as physics, mathematics, and computer science. These models have been the basis for both new trading strategies and new financial products, leading to untold wealth. In some cases, however, these models have done more damage than good, making markets less stable and introducing new systemic risk. In this talk, Dr. James Weatherall will tell the story of how in the aftermath of World War II, some innovative physicists and mathematicians saw surprising connections between physics, gambling, and finance, and put those connections to use to become the first quants. Dr. Weatherall will introduce some of the ideas behind modern quantitative trading and show how the history of mathematical reasoning in finance reveals that these models can be extremely useful-but only if we understand their limitations.

Black holes of 1 million to 20 billion solar masses have been found at the centers of galaxies.

New observational data and improved orbit models in the past several years have substantially expanded the sample of black holes with dynamically measured masses.  I will describe recent progress in discovering a new population of ultra-massive black holes and its impact on our understanding of the symbiotic relationships between black holes and galaxies.  I will discuss the implications for the ongoing pulsar timing array experiments searching for nano-Hertz gravitational waves from merging supermassive black hole binaries.