Dmitry Podolsky has got his PhD from Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He currently works as postdoc at Case Western Reserve University. He is also one of the editors of NEQNET.

240. On credit market debt

According to our tradition, no science discussions are allowed on Sunday (a gentleman has to be able to find fun beyond the area of his expertise), except maybe video of the day. So, I decided to revive the old topic – global financial crisis – and continue the discussion from where we stopped last time. [...]

239. Susskind’s lectures on general relativity

A most natural generalization of the lectures posted yesterday and on Friday

238. Twitter updates for 2009-02-07

New metallic carbon crystal: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.110…..102.055703 #prl #carbon # Computational power of correlations: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.110…..102.050502 #quantum # Quantum fluctuations in small lasers: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.110…..102.053902 #prl #laser # It seems that Senate is going to cut the funding of NSF: http://short.to/rem #nsf # It is pretty clear to me that the recent NSF porno story was a black PR [...]

237. What is eternal inflation?

Via immortal xkcd.

236. Video of the day: Susskind’s lectures on special relativity 5 – 8

Continuation of the lectures posted yesterday.

235. Twitter updates for 2009-02-06

Singularity University – overview: http://singularityu.org/overview/ #transhumanism # Mini-course on Mach’s principle: http://pirsa.org/09020029/ #mach PI does become a Theoretical Institute for Theology. # How to evaluate lab work: http://is.gd/itYf #science # Looking for dark matter in wrong places: http://short.to/r9t #cosmology #darkmatter # Liouville theory in the infrared: http://twurl.nl/3visr0 #string theory # Simple introduction to quantum groups: [...]

234. Continuing dS/CFT. Why it is so hard to prove?

I continue today the discussion of dS/CFT correspondence started a week ago. As you probably remember, I finished last time pointing out the discrepancy between non-perturbative and perturbative values of the dimension of the dS Hilbert space. Namely, since the entropy of dS space is finite, the dimension of of the Hilbert space is finite [...]

233. Video of the day: Susskind’s lectures on special relativity 1 – 4

Fun to watch even for professional physicist – he also effectively teaches quite well how to present the subject. The lectures are quite extended (more than 1 hr 30 min each), so I’ll post one part today and another – tomorrow.

232. Twitter updates for 2009-02-05

Clifford Johnson http://snipr.com/bb3p5 (or more accurately Joe Polchinski) explains what is string theory #strings #stringtheory # Corot-Exo-7b: Venus from the other world – http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nou…..7.en.shtml #planetology Another distant planet! # David Berenstein is doing physics as two level system: http://jijr.com/lml #physics #fun # Lubos Motl continues his rant series on Lorentz symmetry: http://tinyurl.com/c97tfc #lorentz #relativity # [...]

231. Don’t EVER criticize string theory

By Abstruse Goose (found via Clifford Johnson).