“Negative Energy, Quantum Information and
Causality”
Einstein’s equations of gravity show that too much negative
energy can lead to causality violations and causal paradoxes such
as the so-called "grandfather paradox.”...
Historians of Science and Medicine emphasize how the circulation
of human biological material for global science involves complex
exchange systems amongst foreign and local scientists. Here,
notions of the gift and reciprocity underpin the idiom of...
Developments in fundamental physics over the last century have
led to the formulation of a universal language successfully
describing Nature from the subatomic scale to the universe as a
whole. This language is known as quantum field theory. In...
Histories of ancient cultures often present the image of clearly
recognizable peoples. Those who are centered in historical
canons—Egyptians, Greeks, Romans—are often subject to the most
longstanding and unyielding historical expectations. In this...
IAS Director Robbert Dijkgraaf recently remarked that 21st
century scientists are shifting “from studying what is to what
could be.” We urgently need a social science of what could be, if
we are to face challenges from inequality and racial...
Most readers of Toni Morrison know her best as a novelist. She
is the author of 11 extraordinary works of fiction, including the
1987 masterpiece, Beloved, and her work is assigned
in high school and college classrooms and debated at book
club...
Mathematics is an extremely deep and extensive subject, but
amazingly we are surrounded by easily stated mathematical problems
about which almost nothing is known. These kinds of problems
tantalize mathematicians with their combination of
simplicity...
Black holes create the most extreme gravitational fields
imaginable, and therefore offer a unique and unprecedented
opportunity to test our current understanding of gravity. We've
known about the existence of black holes in space for many years
but...
The IAS has the world's second largest collection of epigraphic
squeezes, and a project is under way to digitize them. But what is
an epigraphic squeeze? What's more, how does one digitize a
squeeze? And why does any of this matter? In this talk...
