Physics, Storms and Black Holes

So ... many things happened during these months. Harvard had its winter break and returned to full speed a few weeks ago. There was a secret conference about Quantum Entanglement in St. John, U.S. Virgin Island while the Nemo storm hit Cambridge, and last week many got jealous in the physics community because a new Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences prize was announced. The award not only pairs to that in physics but it was created and is being partially funded by the Milner Foundation that started last year honoring discoveries in fundamental physics -- even the web pages look alike!

Personally, I had some very productive days and visited the String Theory Group at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill last week where I gave a talk and engaged in very interesting discussions about a new subject I am working on: Black Hole Scattering (click on the title or slides).

Please check my upcoming post about the Physics Harvard Puppet Show & fast spinning black holes.

 

Societies in the Boston area

One of the oldest and most prestigious societies, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is  housed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Today, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture there. Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004) talked about "The Modern Concept of Matter" and explained the impact of the recent discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC after a brief introduction by Jerome Friedman (Nobel Prize in Physics 1990). If you get the chance to visit the building take some time to read the (old) letters around the entrance wall written by the some of its famous members. Here are my pictures of the evening.