Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Holiday Message | Hits and Misses

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Dec 23, 2024

Reflecting on the year's journey, intriguing insights about scientific publishing emerge, showcasing unexpected collaborations and complex theoretical ideas. The conversation dives into the tantalizing concepts of time travel, general relativity, and the pursuit of self-improvement through language learning. Dark energy and cosmic acceleration take center stage, revealing the evolution of thought in these areas. Finally, the podcast explores the link between entropy and the universe's evolution, intertwining quantum mysteries with the broader scientific narrative.

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ANECDOTE

First Paper

Sean Carroll's first published paper, with George Field and Roman Jackiw, explored Lorentz and parity violation.
It unexpectedly became a hit, sparking research on Lorentz violation tests.

ANECDOTE

Jackiw and Field

Roman Jackiw applied mathematical ideas to physics, sometimes with major breakthroughs, sometimes not.
George Field, Carroll's advisor, brought a practical astrophysics perspective.

ANECDOTE

Unconventional Path

Carroll's path to theoretical physics was unconventional, starting in astronomy due to Harvard's acceptance criteria.
His advisor, George Field, shifted to particle physics and cosmology, influencing Carroll.

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It's the end of the year, and time for our annual holiday break here at Mindscape. But as usual, we wrap up with a Holiday Message. This year, inspired by Joni Mitchell's "Hits" and "Misses" albums, I go through my scientific papers and talk about some of my favorites -- some of which were hits, in terms of making an impact on subsequent research, and some of which were misses by that standard. But I love them all! It's an excuse to talk about process -- how papers come to be, from the initial informal idea to sitting down and doing the work.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/12/23/holiday-message-hits-and-misses/

Here are links to the papers I discuss in the episode.

S.M. Carroll, G.B. Field and R. Jackiw, 1990, "Limits on A Lorentz and Parity-Violating Modification of Electrodynamics,'' Phys. Rev. D 41, 1231. [pdf file; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll, E. Farhi and A.H. Guth, 1992, "An Obstacle to Building a Time Machine,'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 263; Erratum: 68, 3368. [pdf file; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll, E. Farhi, A.H. Guth and K.D. Olum, 1994, "Energy-Momentum Restrictions on the Creation of Gott Time Machines,'' Phys. Rev. D 50, 6190; gr-qc/9404065. [arXiv; pdf; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll, 1998, "Quintessence and the Rest of the World,'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3067; astro-ph/9806099. [arXiv; pdf; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll, V. Duvvuri, M. Trodden, and M.S. Turner, 2003, "Is Cosmic Speed-Up Due to New Gravitational Physics?'' astro-ph/0306438. [arXiv; pdf; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll and J. Chen, 2004, "Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time'', hep-th/0410270. [arXiv, inSPIRE]
L. Ackerman, M.R. Buckley, S.M. Carroll, and M. Kamionkowski, 2008, "Dark Matter and Dark Radiation," arxiv:0807.5126. [arXiv; pdf; inSPIRE]
S.M. Carroll, M.C. Johnson, and L. Randall, 2009, "Dynamical Compactification," arxiv:0904.3115. [arXiv; pdf; inSPIRE]
C. Cao, S.M. Carroll, and S. Michalakis, 2016, "Space from Hilbert Space: Recovering Geometry from Bulk Entanglement," arxiv:1606.08444. [arXiv, inSPIRE]
C. Cao and S.M. Carroll, 2018, "Bulk Entanglement Gravity without a Boundary: Towards Finding Einstein's Equation in Hilbert Space," arxiv:1712.02803. [arXiv, inSPIRE]
N. Bao, S.M. Carroll, A. Chatwin-Davies, J. Pollack, and G. Remmen, 2017, “Branches of the Black Hole Wave Function Need Not Contain Firewalls," arxiv:1712.04955. [arXiv, inSPIRE]

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