The Gaia mission and its data releases are driving a revolution
in our understanding of the Milky Way and its constituents. In this
talk, I will highlight a few of the results stemming from the
analysis of the truly spectacular datasets produced so...
The study of linear spaces of matrices arises naturally (and
independently) in many different areas of mathematics and computer
science. In this survey talk, I will describe some of these
motivations, and state and prove some (old and new)...
The operator product expansion of massless celestial primary
operators of arbitrary spin is investigated. Poincare
symmetry is found to imply a set of recursion relations on the
operator product expansion coefficients of the leading singular
terms...
A random walk on expanders, despite its strong underlying
correlations, poses extremely useful pseudorandom properties. The
expander hitting property and the expander Chernoff are two such
classic examples. That is, the AND function and certain...
I will review some interesting features regarding the spectrum
of near-extremal black holes in gravity and near-BPS black holes in
supergravity, which are derived from the Euclidean path integral.
For simplicity, I will focus on the case of charged...
I will discuss how I came to write The Last Empire of Iran and
why. My main motivation was to portray the Sasanian state as the
great world power that it was, and to situate it properly between
Rome and the nomad powers of Inner Asia. The talk will...
In the Solar system, the planets follow orbits that are nearly
aligned with the Sun's equatorial plane. What about planets around
other stars? Many techniques are available to measure the
obliquities of planet-hosting stars, ranging from an effect...
