Another culture difference between North America & (Western) Europe

which bit?

here, it is considered highly unusual to get married before 25

let alone kids

(especially when pursuing higher education)

same as it is here

hmm, you must be from a different part of Canada than John

but meh, I got married at 21 and kid at 24, don't see any problems so far ;)

he's from Calgary, and many of his friends are already married (he's 23)

I think it's perhaps becoming a trend to get married younger here?

hmm

anyhow

when I announced I was getting married, people from my grandparents generation were like "that's the age I got married at" while my parents & their generation were more like "are you sure? your're so young!"

about germany, I thin kthe universities are funded by the government

and that they keep tuition so ridiculously low that way

Haha, Kyle, times change (and revert)

which school are you headed to?

I am joining a joint program by the two major universities of Munich

Theoretical & Mathematical Physics - Ludwig Maximilian Univ. & Technical Univ. Munich

I'm excited to get into the more mathematical side of things; the course list looks great for that theorie.physik.uni-muenchen.de/TMP/courses/modules/index.html

heh they make cosmology look like an applied course rather than the theoretical reputation I'm used to seeing it have

:D That's the way I like it

I see cosmology as the only realistic way to probe higher energy physics than the standard model

(among other things...)

ehhhh don't know about that

what about astrophysical objects?

Okay, sure :)

or do you lump in smbh systems and such with "cosmology and GR"?

I have the bad habit of doing that, my apologies

It's just for the lack of courses that I've had on the relevant topics

no problem :)

during my internship last january I was painfully reminded every day

that that is wrong

During the noon-time talk session @ the princeton astrophysical sciences department where they discussed the new papers on the archive

Not even a single sentence was understood by me that month :)

oooh those sessions are famous

Jerry Ostriker attends, right?

really?

well, famous amongst astronomers

yeah

I think most of the 'big guys' attend

although I know next to nothing about astrophysics, so I really wouldn't know

^^

I know what you mean though, took me ~3 years of sitting at similar meeting a couple of times a week before I felt like I could meaningfully contribute to discussion about anything not directly in my little corner of the field

Yeah, I was just completely overwhelmed - I had fun though

who were you working with?

Daan Meerburg & Enrico Pajer

I wasn't really doing anything meaningful

I was only there for a month, and especially Enrico was just so so way ahead of me

a few months is rarely enough time to do anything meaningful

we were trying to think about a follow up to a recent paper of his

but once again, it was a lot of fun :)

at the time I was also hoping to continue my studies @ Princeton

but they rejected my application (I applied for Physics, not Astro)

so other than "learn about theoretical stuff" what do you hope to do? research in a particular area?

I think the direction I'm going to be taking with my MSc is something so different from what I've been doing so far, that it's impossible to say

I'm not entirely sure if 'rigorous physics' will turn out to be completely down my lane or not really

if it is, I might end up working on some mathematical issues of QFT or GR

I think this is what the Germans specialize in ;)

Otherwise, I'm not sure but I think it'll be high energy physics in one way or another

I think inflation is fun (that's what I worked on @ Princeton)

other than that, I worked on understanding the cosmological constant problem for my bachelor's thesis

QFT in curved spacetimes is very much fun

and the issues that it comes with are fascinating

cosmological constant problem? as in why do we need DE?

as in why is the value so low

I discussed a series of papers by Polyakov, in which he outlines a very speculative but interesting proposal

oh the discrepancy with the vacuum polarization value or whatever that thing is called

yeah the back of the napkin calculation

which estimates ~10^114

vs 10^-9

Papers 1-3,5

not even close enough by astronomer's standards

hmm?

120 orders of magnitude

not even an astronomer can ignore that sort of discrepancy

oh, hahahaha

exactly

not even on the right order of orders of magnitude

so the question is why it's like that

polyakov proposed a screening-type of mechanism

It's all completely vague and nobody knows what he is really talking about

(not even my supervisor, he just told me to 'try and figure out what he even means')

the important question is "is his idea testable" - specifically does he explicitly explain how one would test the idea in the reasonably near future in his papers?

oh hell no

well then to be blunt the idea seems to be of very limited scientific value

I'm talking vague to the point where another faculty member told me he "wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole"

Sure it is, Kyle :) I never defended it ;)

not saying you did

just not sure why it's interesting is all

because there have been some questions about infrared physics

in curved spacetimes, everything should 'go back to normal' in the UV limit

since high momentum ~ small lengthscales ~ everything is flat

but not so in the IR limit

hang on, isn't UV->IR only a couple of orders of magnitude in wavelength? why not radio limit/gamma limit?

I mean IR limit

as in infinite wavelength limit

not actual infrared part of the spectrum

see how vague it all is? :)

oh I see

odd that the jargon came out that way

I don't know, I think the IR terminology is pretty standard in QFT

infrared divergences

are a thing that is treated in Peskin & Schroeder (I think - I haven't read it :( )

Anyways, the proposal seems speculative at best as of right now

but there do seem to be some interesting infrared effects when you calculate some loop contributions

So there is some merit to it

Slim chance of practical application in the near future, but the same seems to hold for most things that interest me

sigh I really need to get G=4.301E-6 tattooed on my arm (that's in the only sensible units of course, km^2 kpc / s^2 Msun)

oh maybe not! wikipedia gives it in pc (km/s)^2 / Msun, close enough

calc

brr, I stick to either SE or planck units :)

or reduced Planck units, even better

SE = SI?

sounds more daunting ;)

haha, yeah, I'm still waiting for the day this website develops its own unit system

Upvotes as a unit of energy?

the day I learned what a Jansky was made me lose all faith in unit conventions

Urgh, all these unit conventions are ridiculous

I'm out for tonight, it's 0:00 here

cheers