“THE PHYSICIST’S PHYSICIST” — by Steve Nadis
Recently I’ve been writing about the decay of the vacuum, which is how I’ve become familiar with the work of Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman. I wrote about Coleman, who was known by his colleagues as “the physicist’s physicist,” for the first time this week and just learned of his death in yesterday’s Boston Globe. Apart from being a deep thinker–a person who could help us know the unknowable–he was also a notorious night owl. Once he turned down a request to teach a 9 a.m. class, saying “I can’t stay up that late.”
Posted by
at
13:29:59
Clearly this is an allusion to James Clerk Maxwell who, in the other Cambridge, upon being told that there was an obligatory six (AM) o’clock mass in his College, replied “Aye. I think I can stay up that late.”
Thanks Anon, I didn’t know about that but it sounds like Coleman did. –Snake
Writin’ about the decay of the vacuum, huh?
Well,my Eureka’s gettin’ pretty rusty, come to think of it.
As far as Sidney, they MIGHT want to check up on ‘im before they bury the guy. He could just be catching up on all that lost sleep…
-Marco Polo
If theorists like Coleman are right, all vacuum cleaners will eventually decay. So you might want to keep a spare on hand. –Snake
If Theorists like Coleman ARE correct, there, Snark,
the one I’m keeping as a spare will become as useless as the one I occasionally employ!
I think the trick is to put the 2nd into a virtual time-space “neutral zone”. Sort of like a suspended animation of matter.
‘course, that’s easier said than done…
-Marco Polo
You’re right about the 1st part, MP; you hit the flaw in my argument. As for your 2d point about the 2d vacuum cleaner, on that one I must confess to being lost in virtual time-space… –Snake