Who is Sabine Hossenfelder and what are her research interests?

[marcus]

Sabine ("Hossi") Hossenfelder

this is Sabine Hossenfelder
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Bilder/Fotos/Fotokl1.jpg
she just posted this on arxiv
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0510245
Self-consistency in Theories with a Minimal Length
"The aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between three different approaches of theories with a minimal length scale: A modification of the Lorentz-group in the 'Deformed Special Relativity', theories with a 'Generalized Uncertainty Principle' and those with 'Modified Dispersion Relations'. It is shown that the first two are equivalent, how they can be translated into each other, and how the third can be obtained from them. Self-consistency requires that all three features be present to adequately describe the effects of a minimal length."
She was at Frankfurt, then Arizona, now Santa Barbara. PhD was in 2003, now postdoc in UCSB Physics Department.

She paints mostly oil but also acrylic and other media. Nudes, landscapes, different subjects. She writes verse---some is rhythmic, formal, with rhymes, which I tend to appreciate. Some is kind of popular lyrics as one gets from singersongwriters of her (b. 1976) generation. Some has an uninhibited irrepressible spirit. One wants to be careful with that.
Imagine, someone still under-30 who does not have a blog!
her CV and published research
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Physics/physstudies.html
her research interests
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Physics/phystop.html
other photos:
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Kontakt/conphotos.html
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Bilder/Fotos/bett.jpg

I don't know what to say. I think it is splendid that a smart enthusiastic young person at UCSB has found out about Doubly Special Relativity (DSR) and also Loop Quantum Gravity---so she is making citations to papers by Rovelli and Thiemann, Ashtekar, Lewandowski, Perez. Can't say what will come of it. Maybe she should drive over to UC Riverside and visit [URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john-baez/']John Baez[/URL]. It isn't all that far and its freeway all the way. My guess is Hossi drives a red Miata.

 

[hossi]

miata

I am slightly irritated. Sat here wasting my work time with a new poem (instead of visiting the seminar) and was surprised what Google finds when I enter my own name! Thanks for the kind words
I hate to destroy your illusions but I am not driving a red miata. I actually had to Google that too to find out what UR talking about. I am driving a white Honda '89 as you see on the photo on my webpage.
Nice forum by the way. Take care,
Sabine

 

[marcus]

I am slightly irritated. Sat here wasting my work time with a new poem (instead of visiting the seminar) and was surprised what Google finds when I enter my own name! Thanks for the kind words
I hate to destroy your illusions but I am not driving a red miata. I actually had to Google that too to find out what UR talking about. I am driving a white Honda '89 as you see on the photo on my webpage.
Nice forum by the way. Take care,
Sabine

Hi Sabine, I really like that you write poetry. Please post one for us, or if you are too modest I will get one and post it.
I like to translate poetry that rhymes in the original and try make it rhyme naturally in the translation too. So it helps that I happen to read German a little.

It was wrong of me to suppose that you drive a red miata and I apologize but at least it is a little car that gets good gas mileage, like a Honda '89 probabably does. Best wishes.
==========================

just as a sample of hossi poetry, here are two short lyrics from 1999. this is a teaser. if you like it look more up at her site:

http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Kunst/kunstgedh.html

----sample of two shorties by hossi---

WAS DU WILST

Was ich will? Das ist doch klar.
Erstmal ordendlich in bar,
Und aufs Konto auch noch fett,
Das wär nett.

Und als nächstes? Ja, da wäre
Dann natürlich die Karriere,
Ohne Stress so richtig steil
Das wär geil.

Selbstverständlich noch ein Typ,
klug, charmant und hübsch und lieb,
Der das tut, was ich sag,
Das wär stark.

Und wenn ich dann wär soweit,
Bräuchte ich mal richtig Zeit,
Zeit zum Denken und zum Checken,
Und um endlich zu entdecken,
Was ich will.

OHNE DICH

Wolken ziehen mit dem Wind
Berge bleiben wie sie sind
Flüsse nehmen ihren Lauf
Nachts geh'n noch die Sterne auf

Tage kommen, Tage gehen
Uhren ticken, statt zu stehen
Winde weh'n und Regen fällt
Kein Ruck stört den Lauf der Welt

Sonnenstrahlen spenden Licht
Doch es füllt die Leere nicht
Noch immer dreht die Erde sich
Ohne Dich

----end of sample---

 

[marcus]

WOW, GREAT CAR!

http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Home/homewille.html

thank's for putting up the photo!

that is a great quote from Frank Wilczek too.

 

[marcus]

hossi's German "fall" poems

hossi has written some good poems in German on the dark/bitter themes of fall
with a new poet that one just meets, one has to choose. there are too many to read at first. so I choose to focus on this group

http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Kunst/kunstgedh.html

it happened with another woman poet that some of her best were the bitter/angry ones-----(that was Akhmatova, a great poet but no mathematician)----and so this guides me to look at this group instead of the group she calls "spring" and "summer" or the probably sad lonely ones she puts in the "winter" group

so I look in hossi "fall" group and I am very pleased with the German ones---and I think that anyone who can write poetry with a definite voice if they are lucky enough to grow up speaking German then they should write as much in German as possible, to keep the language singing

languages that stop being worked on by poets will gradually stop singing and may become stupid.

so I am feeling cheerful reading hossi dark bitter German poems, and the angry ones which can also be the most amusing.

it is a little moment of happiness between cups of coffee and stuff I have to do. thank you hossi if you get back here. fun website. I hope your car runs for a long time.

 

[Kea]

Hossi

We should welcome you to PF. I'm a poetry fan myself, but alas, my German is not up to appreciating the art in that tongue.

All the best
Kea

 

[hossi]

You psychic or what? Here is what I wrote yesterday. I have not made up my mind whether to call it 'Fall' or 'One Careless Moment'

Fall

I had gotten tired, or maybe just old,
Had nowhere to go to and no one to hold,
For one carless moment, I loosened my grip,
I made a wrong step and time started to slip,
One careless moment, just one that was all,
Time slipped away and spring turned into fall.

I tried to stay focused and not to look down,
I could not stop thinking that I should have known,
That things far below me would drop out of sight,
And I could not tell what was wrong and what right,
One careless moment, I lost my connection,
Time slipped and left me without a direction.

Well. You might guess that I am kind of stuck with my work at the moment

Anyway, I find it really difficult to write poems in English. But admittedly, German is not a nice language, neither for singing nor for rhyming. Too many hard consonants.

I would like to invite everyone to post some poems too... (not necessarily own ones)

I think I need more coffee, maybe that helps

Take Care,

Sabine

 

[marcus]

But admittedly, German is not a nice language, neither for singing nor for rhyming. Too many hard consonants.

hossi I am really shocked you would say this. German is just about my favorite language for poetry----LOVE the hard consonants. German is not like overcooked spaghetti.
it is like really juicy and crunchy like sausage so you know when you bite something. you should be so happy you grew up with such a language and can write in it.
and anyone who can write German with some distinction should do so, because that is the way a language livesDid anyone ever show you Renate Loll website?

go here
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/title/title.html

I greatly prefer the sexy picture of you sitting on your Honda to her presenting the Albert action figure but this is not about joke photographs, it is about quantum gravity

if you select "publications" you will get a link to "The Universe from Scratch". have you read that paper by any chance?

 

[marcus]

I am sorry that you are sad. paradoxically if you want to do quantum gravity it could be that the US is not such a good place to be
(even though Santa Barbara with nearby KITP would have seemed like heaven 5 years ago) because people in the US are so over-invested in string theory that there almost has to be a painful dying-off of part of that string effort.

this is just my stupid idea, which I shouldn't tell you since I am ignorant of your real situation. but I think if you are interested in quantum gravity---quantum theory of spacetime (not some perturbative graviton jazz) then it might be better to look at what people are doing in other places-----Utrecht, AEI-Golm, Waterloo. not necessarily to GO there but to look at what they are doing and keep oriented by that instead of by local forces.

BTW I am curious if you happen to have met John Baez since he is in your area (over at UC Riverside) and an acclaimed Kyoo-Gee guru and friend of Abhay Ashtekar and Renate Loll and the rest. If you have written a QG paper like the above about DSR and bumped into him on the street why wouldn't he give you his take on the situation?

He just gave a QG overview talk at Loops '05 conference
http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/
and posted it at his website.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/loops05/
Don't know if you were at that conference or checked the program out.

my first impression of you is you are a really great person and so I think you will not be sad long, but will find the idea you need and will go shooting off in the right direction. whatever that is.

BTW thanks for writing that paper about DSR. there does need some mathematical work to put all that in order.

 

[Kea]

...I made a wrong step and time started to slip,
One careless moment, just one that was all,
Time slipped away and spring turned into fall.
I tried to stay focused and not to look down,
I could not stop thinking that I should have known,
That things far below me would drop out of sight,
And I could not tell what was wrong and what right,
One careless moment, I lost my connection,
Time slipped and left me without a direction...

hossi

Thank you so much! I can only conclude that your German poetry is of the highest calibre.

From Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust in English translation:
Listen to me, who have through aeons flown,
And chewed this barren food from year to year:
No mortal, from the cradle to the bier,
Digests the bitter dough; a god alone
Can hold this sense of oneness. In a blaze
Of lasting light he sees a whole serene,
But as he leads in chequered, darkened ways,
While yours are broken days
With night between.

All be thankful that I refrain from posting my own verse.

 

[marcus]

Whether by intent or not, Kea has caught Mephistopheles warning of the frustrating difficulty perceiving the quantum law of gravity.

Listen to me, who have through aeons flown,
And chewed this barren food from year to year:
No mortal, from the cradle to the bier,
Digests the bitter dough; a god alone
Can hold this sense of oneness. In a blaze
Of lasting light he sees a whole serene,
But us he leads in chequered, darkened ways,
While yours are broken days
With night between.
...

O glaube mir, der manche tausend Jahre
An dieser harten Speise kaut,
Dass von der Wiege bis zur Bahre
Kein Mensch den alten Sauerteig verdaut!
Glaub’ unser einem, dieses Ganze
Ist nur für einen Gott gemacht!
Er findet sich in einem ew’gen Glanze,
Uns hat er in die Finsternis gebracht,
Und euch taugt einzig Tag und Nacht.

only God gets to see the whole Law.
the fallen angels Mephistopheles et al are in total darkness (like some theorists we know) and humans have sporadic flashes of insight like daylight separated by dark---never quite enough time to grasp the whole picture.

Faust Part I, Scene 4
http://www.wissen-im-netz.info/literatur/goethe/faust/1teil/04.htm

 

[dubmugga]

I think these are the only things close to poetry i have written...

nothing is perfect
in the space where nothing exists
will one find perfection
the perfect nothing

bubbles

Imagine, if you will bubbles...
expanding as they float around
bumping into other bubbles
and inside of these bubbles
is another bubble expanding
and so on...
...and if all these bubbles
made a musical note,
as they bumped and merged
and expanded,
they created chords and melodies
and so on...

...this is a grafik i did for a screenprinted shirt trying to fake a japanese aesthetic and reminiscent of autumn
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/1216/japneasy1bz.jpg

 

[hossi]

n=3

hi dubmugga, I like the bubbles. makes me think of a talk I heard last week by Bjorken. Pretty weird though. As he said that stuff is 'tenure only'.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0404233
The Classification of Universes
James D. Bjorken

Marcus, I did not put up the photo yesterday. It has been there since more than a month (so has the so-called quotation of the week). I am not sure which way you came across my homepage, but apparently not the way you should have. unfortunately, I had to replace the nice license plate with a
californa one since the photo was taken.

I have never meet Baez, or at least not that I know of. I don't think I would recognize him. I think I probably would not recognize Madonna if I would met her. I absolutely loved his book 'Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity'.

I would have liked to go to the Loops '05, just that buying the flight ticket would have meant that I had to sell my car.

Besides this, I have to agree that the US is probably not the best place to be for QG. However, I think that sometime in the near future even the NSF will come to realize that string theory is over-supported whereas alternatives are under-supported. Might take some more decades. Anyway, SB is a very inspiring place to be not only for the stringy folks. And the beach is nice.

I found the article by Lee Smolin in Physics Today (I think it was the December issue) so great that I cut it out and hung it over my desk:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-6/pdf/vol58no6p56_57.pdf

I think it perfectly pins down the situation.

By the way, I solved the problem that I had yesterday. The solution is n=3. As things are, the interpretation of this causes more headache and needs more coffee...

Take Care,

Sabine

 

[marcus]

this is a mensch
we can use more like you hossi
mach's gut

 

[milou]

physics, poems, or photos?

marcus,

interesting thread, and exciting physics, indeed - DSR and all that!

However, I'm a little puzzled that you place so much emphasis on the more personal side of Sabine, the poems, the car, the fotos. Don't get me wrong: it is great to see that her mind is not restrained to juggling around with equations and abstract mathematical and physical concepts, and that she is obviously a really creative person. But the way you talk about her sounds, to my ears, a little bit to patronizing, and even sexist.. I mean, would you talk the same way about a young male physicist? OK, you've got a point: physics could only profit if there were more young women like her in the field...

By the way, and to shift focus back to physics: Did you note on the publication list the stuff about large extra dimensions Sabine has been working on before? Black holes at the LHC and such things - really cool stuff! And did you see that paper "What black holes can teach us?" I've read into it a little bit: There are really great explanations, and I think that she is very successful making clear the concepts, not blinding her readers with lots of formalism...

But thanks to point out Dr. Hossenfelder and her work to me!

And Sabine: All the best for your future work and life!

 

[marcus]

... But the way you talk about her sounds, to my ears, a little bit to patronizing, and even sexist..

the way you talk to me sounds to my ears a bit patronizing and sexist.

however the way I talk to hossi, and about hossi, does not to my ears sound patronizing and sexist.

however it does to YOU!

so I guess we each have different ears and we have to live with the ears we have.

=====================

if you like my profile of hossi, look around for my profiles of other researchers in QG-----with many men and women scientists I have dug up photographs and kept track of gossip and tried to bring out something of the personality as well as the research. I try to do it kindly with a light touch and it personalizes science.

If you have a favorite researcher in QG (doesnt matter man or woman, that's irrelevant) why don't you suggest to me that person and I will see what my reactions are. If I don't like them I won't say anything. If I like them and think their work is interesting, then I will.

 

[hossi]

let me entertain you

Well, to generalize the issue - it is sometimes really disturbing to me how fast people can be judged by their appearance. Since I graduated among nuclear physicists in Germany - usually male, in their 60ies - let me tell you it can be difficult. Imagine you try to work professionally but no matter what you do, you are the 'schoenes maedchen' (pretty girl) with the cute nose and nobody even listens to what you say. You just get a smile and a pad on the head.

It is MUCH better in the US. Really!

Still, I find it sometimes hard to be taken serios.
That is not necessarily a problem of being female but one of being young.
I wish the whole business would be more professional.

Its not so much about what you do, it is how you sell yourself. It is who you know, who knows you, it is
where you come from, if your talks are witty, your smalltalk appropriate and your presence entertaining.

So. To summarize, I am corious myself about what physicists do when they don't do physics, and - to be honest - the personal side is sometimes just more interesting. But I do understand milou's concern and I appreciate his/hers posting.

Take Care,

Sabine

 

[Kea]

...and nobody even listens to what you say.

Dear hossi

How true. When I was younger I was naive enough to think the world might change for me, as all the hype promised! But now I'm much more realistic ... I'd give it another 100 years at least ... assuming we don't start going backwards.

Kea

 

[Andre]

matter what you do, you are the 'schoenes maedchen' (pretty girl) with the cute nose and nobody even listens to what you say.

Same is true for the other end of the spectrum. Who is listening to ein alten hässlichen Bursche?

 

[dubmugga]

hey hossi...

...what isn't weird really isn't that interesting then

thanks for the link, that's kinda what I been thinking for ages, bubbles in a foam at the micro and macro scales...

...leaking black holes as a means of maintaining equilibrium and stability of a universe or an atom and living in the membrane

btw what does "tenure only " mean ?

and are you suggesting it would help your career if you were old, ugly and male with a big bulbous nose from too much drinking and talking sh!t at the same time ?

 

[hossi]

btw what does "tenure only " mean ?

I guess it means, you should not work on it unless you have already a save position.

and are you suggesting it would help your career if you were old, ugly and male with a big bulbous nose from too much drinking and talking sh!t at the same time ?

well, about the talking s h i t I guess that would not help. but actually, being one foot taller and having a voice that propagates farther than my perfume would makes things much easier. If I have to give a talk, I could kiss the organizers when I can have a micro. There is nothing which I hate more than people going: 'eeeh? could you speak up? how was that? sorry?!' after the first sentence. I mean, why does everyone sit in the last row anyway?

And, being mistaken for the secretary is always very embarrasing.

Take care,

Sabine

 

[Spin_Network]

WOW, GREAT CAR!
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hossi/Home/homewille.html
thank's for putting up the photo!
that is a great quote from Frank Wilczek too.

Marcus, should you rephrase your "WOW,GREAT CAR!
to:Owch..Hot CAR!..if one considers that great quote from Albert Einstein:
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity." -- Albert Einstein
One word comes to mind, quite literally..Sizzling!
Relativity speaking I would not mind getting my backside scorched a little on such a hot-day?..the photo just reminded me of a very..very hot-stove
There are a number of great images on the site, some very personal and some quite abstract, all make's for a interesting and varying talented person, but I think the attention should be directed on scientific quantity?
Marcus, care to do a little back-of-envelope calculation from the hot-photo?..taking into considerations:the WMAP background sky...Human pigmentation variations..Car pigmentation for arbsorption factors.. Glare Factors..?
A rough B-O-E calculation I deduce that the projected pose/calmness, by the said person, is either faked..or the said person is:
1)In Thermal Equilibrium with her surroundings?
2)Hotter than the Car?
NO-ONE!..can possibly look so calm and collected in such a thermal Harsh environment, sitting on what is obviously comparable to a very Hot Metalic Stove
I am leaning to the 2nd..after making this obvious statement, its time to move into the physics?

 

[dubmugga]

I guess it means, you should not work on it unless you have already a save position.

...being one foot taller and having a voice that propagates farther than my perfume would makes things much easier

oh right, like "don't give up your day job"...

...sounds like you need to get a soapbox and a megaphone

BTW is that you on the car ?

this is me and a son Chiron, but we call him Chi, taken in front of my graffitti painted van...
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/9893/mechinkobe9ft.jpg

have you ever been to NZ ?

 

[hossi]

thermodynamics

Hey dubmugga,

cool haircut No, have never been to NZ, always wanted to go there!

Say hello to your son, looks cute - bet he can be nasty at this age?

BTW is that you on the car ?

Yeah, I mean, why would I place someone elses photo on my website?

Actually, I have no idea what you think is so great about the car. It is making lots of funny noises lately and it needs an amount of gas that makes my environmentally trained german soul flinch each time I am at a station. Not to mention that I absolutely can not understand why anyone would prefer having an automatic. If I hit the accelarator what happens is: Boing ... nothing ... nothing ... nothing ... *grurgel* ... nothing ... WUUUUUUIIIII ... and the car makes a jump (potentially onto the middle of the street when the light was already red or something).

And, yeah, the back of the car was quite hot when the photo was taken. But as my friends know, I like it hot...

(It's probably a requirement when you want to live in Tucson).

Take Care,

Sabine

 

[dubmugga]

hey hossi...

...mind if i call you Sabine it's sounds much nicer and you can call me dubby or mugga or dummy depending on whether you think I am being cute, threatening or stupid

i can see why the oldboys patronise you though...:!)

...anyway it wasn't clear the photo on the car was you, i thought it might have been one of your spunky mates

my hair thing is just a lo maintenance style i been growing for 13 yrs and Chi is actually quite a nice, well balanced, little 2yr old chap, he says "hi hossi" back to you...

...do try and come down to NZ. We can hook up, shoot the breeze on art, science and nonsense with a couple of other net buddies lurking round here

there is actually a science fair next year which we were talking about doing an event for, even got the venue sorted http://www.artscentre.org.nz/ and click on rutherfords den...

...was thinking along the lines of guest speakers, holiday programme for the kiddies and a broadcasted, interactive internet component

sorting out an underlying theme/angle will probably be the hardest thing. As it stands we are looking at category theory, scale free networking and consciousness/intelligence in 4d since the big bang, all for dummies so as not to scare or bore the public too much with maybe some plenary sessions for the slightly better informed...

...anything you'd suggest would be much appreciated. After that we'll just give it a push and let natural physical laws determine it's momentum and final resting state

should be fun though, want to play, maybe get a posse together and bring your toys ?

NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE FESTIVAL, 1-9 July 2006
Science Futures: New Horizons


Events and programme contributions are now being sought for the 2006 New Zealand International Science Festival, New Zealand’s icon science event celebrating and promoting New Zealand’s achievements and advances in science, technology and the environment. The 2006 Festival will be based in Dunedin, but we would like events to happen all over the country, under an informal “National Science Week” umbrella.

The theme for the 2006 International Science Festival is Science Futures: New Horizons and will focus on future issues facing science, technology and the environment, in order to promote informed discussion and interesting debate.

Whether you’re a researcher, educator, business or community group, the Festival provides an exciting and unique opportunity to promote your activities and organisation to your audience, public and media through the 2006 International Science Festival.

Primary registrations of interest are due by Friday November 25 2005.
If you would like more information or to register your interest, please contact Karen Hartshorn, the Festival Director, on 03 474 9256 or by emailing mailto:director@scifest.org.nz

 

[garrett]

New talk up on the Perimeter Seminar page:

http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca:81/mediasite/viewer/FrontEnd/Front.aspx?&shouldResize=False

Am listening now...

 

[marcus]

New talk up on the Perimeter Seminar page:

http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca:81/mediasite/viewer/FrontEnd/Front.aspx?&shouldResize=False

Am listening now...

good find! I didnt know she was giving a talk.
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/seminarseries/alltalks.cfm?CurrentPage=1&SeminarID=627

Sabine Hossenfelder
Phenomenological quantum gravity: Pieces of the puzzle
Tuesday December 13, 2005, 4:00 PM

"The phenomenology of quantum gravity can be examined even though the underlying theory is not yet fully understood. Effective extensions of the standard model allow us to study specific features, such as the existence of extra dimensions or a minimal length scale. I will talk about some applications of this approach which can be used to make predictions for particle- and astrophysics, and fill in some blanks in the puzzle of quantum gravity. A central point of this investigations is the physics of black holes. I will comment on possible ways to proceed and on the missing pieces I find most important to look for."

I still didnt find the stream for this talk.
got it now. just needed to click on "seminar series" in the menu
I just listened to a few minutes

 

[hossi]

back

I made it back to Santa Barbara though it seems my baggage ended up in Oklahoma City instead. At least AA found it yesterday. I am looking forward to change my clothes.

Hey dubby, I actually prefere Sabine (or Bee) over hossi, but the name is apparently in use (and I can't stand names like Sabine39479 or so). I have had a look at the page, that sounds really interesting. I will think about it over the holidays! Concerning NZ, I would LOVE to come but right now so much depends on whether and where I get the next job, I just can't tell anything.

I tried listening to my own talk, that is SO weird! It seems it is true what people tell me: if I am nervous it appears as if I am about to fall asleep
(and I should get my hair cut).

However, the week at PI was definately the best thing that has happened to me since... don't know... a really really long time.

 

[marcus]

We haven't heard from Sabine since mid-December, when she gave a seminar talk at Perimeter (which some of us watched in streamer video).

Just as an update, today Sabine posted a revision of her recent QG paper, with a changed title.

She indicated that the paper was accepted for PUBLICATION.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0510245
Self-consistency in Theories with a Minimal Length
S. Hossenfelder
... published with new title following referee's advice
Classical and Quantum Gravity. 23 (2006) 1815-1821

"The aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between three different approaches of theories with a minimal length scale: A modification of the Lorentz-group in the 'Deformed Special Relativity', theories with a 'Generalized Uncertainty Principle' and those with 'Modified Dispersion Relations'. It is shown that the first two are equivalent, how they can be translated into each other, and how the third can be obtained from them. An adequate theory with a minimal length scale requires all three features to be present."


Congratulations to Sabine!
Anyone who wants the video of her PI talk can find it here:
http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca:81/mediasite/viewer/

Also we must remember not to call her Hossi, because she prefers Sabine.

 

[nrqed]

. My guess is Hossi drives a red Miata.

Why? because young and smart people necessarily must want to be flashy and to use money for more expensive cars rather than to use it for betetr purposes?

 

[marcus]

Why? because young and smart people necessarily must want to be flashy and to use money for more expensive cars rather than to use it for betetr purposes?

Do you seriously think that? Please do not attribute your opinions to me! I was teasing in the hopes of getting a rise out of Sabine, but you sound as if you might be serious.
In my experience young smart people do not necessarily want to be flashy. But if you think that, you are entitled to your opinion.

Physics and math grad students and postdocs, in my experience, tend to be on the plain sensible and unostentatious side, car-wise and often in other departments too. You don't make much money and have a lot of financial security---unless you also are heir to the family fortune or something.

But BTW I think Miatas are cheap. If a hardworking physics postdoc was going to drive a sporty car, it would likely be the dime store version sporty car-----not a Porsche!

 

[hossi]

coolness factor

Hi Marcus,

thanks for mentioning my paper. Actually, the new one is far more interesting

Interpretation of Quantum Field Theories with a Minimal Length Scale
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603032

Sorry for the self-ad The referee reports on the other one were pretty weird btw. For some reason I got 4 of them at once. They all said, its obvious. Then I wrote back, yeah, well, might not be obvious for everybody and that was it.

Anyway, coming back to the car thing, you underestimate the distracted genius factor. I am not so sure whether a postdoc in theoretical physics wants to be flashy in the first place... The experience I have is more an astonishing amount of people who consider their desk-chaos to be an indicator for their IQ, don't wear socks, insist on not combing their hair, and display all kinds of behaviour they think is somehow Einstein-like. I have no idea what kind of a car Einstein had, but I guess it wouldn't be a red sports car.

Btw, I haven't ever met any string theory postdoc I would have called flashy. The coolness factor in the heavy ion community is at least by two orders of magnitude higher.

best,

B.

 

[hossi]

Imagine, someone still under-30 who does not have a blog!

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/

 

[marcus]

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/

Thanks for letting us know. I see you have been blogging a bit over a month already---and have a couple of fellow bloggers. I hope you still will have time to take part here.

Padmanabhan must like you. As soon as you post a paper he writes you email complaining that you didnt cite a bunch of his papers (even unrelated ones to the topic). Amusing comments about the major religions from him.

 

[arivero]

Padmanabhan makes very good (the best, sometimes) reviews on anything. The problem is that nobody quotes reviews, just say "As it is known...", so I guess he will need to ask people to quote him, even it he is not anymore in a publish or perish position.

By tye way, it seems that there is some femenine touch in geometry. Are the good old times coming back? Had I lived the 1950, I had battled with De Witt for Cecile at the Alps (and actually she has taken age very well).