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John Baez

John Baez

I'm trying to get mathematicians and physicists to help save the planet.

I teach at U. C. Riverside and work on mathematical physics — which I interpret broadly as ‘math that could be of interest in physics, and physics that could be of interest in math’. I’ve spent a lot of time on quantum gravity and n-categories, but now I want to work on more practical things, too.

Why? I keep realizing more and more that our little planet is in deep trouble! The deep secrets of math and physics are endlessly engrossing — but they can wait, and other things can’t.

So, I’ve cooked up a plan to get scientists and engineers interested in saving the planet: it's called the Azimuth Project.  It includes a wiki, a blog, and a discussion forum.  I also have an Azimuth page here on Google+, where you can keep track of news related to energy, the environment and sustainability.

Check them out, and join the team!  Or drop me a line here.







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I'm a mathematical physicist English Riverside California United States Centre for Quantum Technologies Massachusetts Institute of Technology Person

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Recent Popular Posts
+919
534 Shares
About 4 weeks ago On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of the Annals of Mathematics. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang — the paper claimed to have taken a huge step forward in understanding one of mathematics’ oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.  And it had!  Rumors swept through the mathematics community that a great advance had been made by a researcher no one seemed to know — someone whose talents had been so overlooked after he earned his doctorate in 1992 that he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop.

For the whole story read this:

https://simonsfoundation.org/features/science-news/unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/

Thanks to +Ian Agol for pointing this out!
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+776
153 Shares
About 9 weeks ago Creepy... but beautiful!  The Mar Sem Fim was a yacht owned by the Brazilian journalist João Lara Mesquita.   Four researchers were using it to film a documentary off Antarctica when the weather turned bad.  High waves and 40-knot winds made the boat toss back and forth “like a bucking bronco in a rodeo”.  The Chilean Navy was sent to the rescue, since the closest ships were at the Chilean Antarctic base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva.  They had to wait for the weather to calm down to save the four crew.

They did it just in time: icy water had filled the yacht.  Later this water froze, expanded and split the hull!  Surrounded by ice, the boat sank to the bottom of a shallow bay: Maxwell Bay of Ardley Cove, Antarctica. 

Lots of people who see this photo feel uncomfortable, and that fascinates me.  I think it's a metaphor of death.  But in early 2013, ten months later, the yacht's owner  returned to the site and rescued the Mar Sem Fim!  Divers wrapped strong lines under the hull
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+407
141 Shares
About 6 weeks ago Yay!  You can now search Gmail by size and/or age, which lets you delete big old useless mails!   It goes like this:

size:5m   older_than:1y

So, now I can delete emails like this one, which came with over 10 megabytes of attachments:

THE ATTACHED QUANTUM WORLD EXISTS INSIDE OF A BRAIN NEURON, DIRECTLY BEHIND THE RODS AND CONES OF THE EYE,  AND EVOLVES AND COMMUNICATES WITH ALL OTHER NEURONS IN THE BRAIN OF ALL CARBON BASED FORMS OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET, AND PROBABLY EXISTS IN ALL OF OTHER PLANETS OF THE UNIVERSE.

FORMERLY, I WAS DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION, WEST LOS ANGELES LOCATED IN WEST LOS ANGELES.  I WAS CONTACTED BY THE FORMER DIRECTOR TO TAKE OVER THE RESEARCH DEPARTMENT, AND ALL THE VARIOUS LABORATORIES, WHICH I AGREED TO DO.

IN THAT REGARD, I WAS ABLE TO DEVELOPMENT A LABORATORY PROCEEDURE, ENABLING ONE MICRON OF TISSUE TO BE SLICED FROM BRAIN TISSUE, AND WAS ABLE TO STAIN SAID  TISSUE WITH TWO TYPES OF COLOR RED AND BLUE,
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+317
114 Shares
About 9 weeks ago Physicist Gerard 't Hooft won the Nobel prize for work on quantum field theory.   Then he worked on quantum gravity.  Now he's become a spokesman for the Mars One project, which aims to send people on a one-way trip to Mars in 2023, funded in part by a reality TV show.  40,000 people have already applied to go!

Q: How do you feel about being associated with a project funded by reality TV shows? Might you live to regret it?

A: Well, if people blame me for it, I have brought it on myself. However, this is the world we live in today—governments are not prepared to finance projects like Mars One, so the money has to come from some other source, and if it is a TV show like Big Brother or X Factor, then so be it.  Then again, I would rather not be involved with the TV show itself. And yes, at times I have asked myself what I have got myself into. After all, it does sound like a crazy plan. But so far, it is still fun, everything is still on track, and there do not appear to be any majo
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+297
168 Shares
About 1 week ago The mathematician Euler found a way to add up the numbers from 1 to infinity... and he got the answer -1/12.   Later this kind of calculation was made illegal.  So we don't teach Euler's tricks to students anymore: they're too dangerous.

But the mathematician Riemann figured out how to extract some sense from Euler's calculation!  He invented a function now called the Riemann zeta function.  This function has

zeta(2)  =  1/1²  +  1/2²  +  1/3²  +  1/4² + ...

and

zeta(3)  =  1/1³  +  1/2³  +  1/3³  +  1/4³  +  ...

and so on, but

zeta(-1)  =  -1/12

and the proof of this is a cleaned-up version of Euler's original calculation.  In case you're wondering,

zeta(-2)  =  0

and in fact the zeta function is zero for all negative even numbers.  But it's also zero at other places!  For example, it's zero at about

1/2 + 14.1347 i

and about

1/2 + 21.0220 i
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+126
95 Shares
About 5 weeks ago Check out Anselm Levskaya's program called polyHédronisme, which lets you draw strange and beautiful polyhedra on your web browser!

http://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/

You start with a Platonic  solid and then do things to it.  I got this one by typing "aaaaD", which starts with a dodecahedron and then does "ambo" 4 times.  If you want to figure out what "ambo" means, try "D", then "aD", then "aaD".

Thanks to +William Rutiser for pointing this out! 
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+117
47 Shares
About 12 weeks ago THE UNIVERSE IS LOPSIDED, WITH A COLD SPOT

The Planck Mission found two big surprises in the cosmic microwave background:

• This radiation is slightly different on opposite sides of the sky!  This is not due to the fact that the Earth is moving relative to the average position of galaxies.  That fact does make the radiation look hotter in the direction we're moving.  But that produces a simple pattern called a 'dipole moment' in the temperature map.  If we subtract that out, it seems there are real differences between two sides of the Universe... and they are complex, interesting, and not explained by the usual theories!  

• There is a 'cold spot' that seems too big to be caused by chance.  I believe this is the largest thing in the Universe.

Paolo Natoli from the University of Ferrara, Italy writes:

"The Planck data call our attention to these anomalies, which are now more important than ever: with data of such
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+108
27 Shares
About 9 weeks ago John von Neumann next to the computer he designed.   He called it the Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer, or MANIAC.  It weighed half a ton.  He first tested it in the summer of 1951.  He had played a big role in the Manhattan project, but this time he ran a calculation for designing a hydrogen bomb.  It went on for 60 days nonstop!

Like the nuclear physicist Edward Teller, von Neumann was an apparently unconflicted proponent of the bomb. At the Institute for Advanced Study, his hawkishness clashed with Einstein’s pacifism, and Einstein opposed building his computer there. Virginia Davis, wife of the logician Martin Davis, remembers writing “Stop the Bomb” in the dust on von Neumann’s car. But von Neumann’s second wife, Klári, recalled him being shaken by what his computer might wreak. One night in 1945, John announced, “What we are creating now is a monster whose influence is going to change history, provided there is any history left.” His biggest worry wasn’t the bomb, however, b
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+107
49 Shares
About 3 weeks ago In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the number 42 is the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything".  But he didn't say what the question was!  Let me reveal that now.

If you try to get several regular polygons to meet snugly at a point in the plane, what's the most sides any of the polygons can have?  42. 

The picture shows an equilateral triangle, a regular heptagon and a regular 42-gon meeting snugly at a point.  The reason this works is that

(1/2 - 1/3) + (1/2 - 1/7) + (1/2 - 1/42) = 1

There are 17 solutions of

(1/2 - 1/p) + (1/2 - 1/q) + (1/2 - 1/r) = 1

with p ≤ q ≤ r, but this one features the biggest number of all!

But why is this so important?  Well, you can take

(1/2 - 1/3) + (1/2 - 1/7) + (1/2 - 1/42) = 1

and rewrite it like this:

1/2 + 1/3 + 1/7 + 1/42 = 1

So, 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/7 comes very close to 1.  And in f
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+107
58 Shares
About 7 weeks ago These are 20 different women: the top contestants in a Korean beauty contest called Miss Daegu 2013.   They're clearly approximating a specific ideal face... and +Jia-Bin Huang has computed their average to estimate what this ideal face looks like:

http://jbhuang0604.blogspot.se/2013/04/miss-korea-2013-contestants-face.html

The different faces form a cluster in a high-dimensional space, and using a robust version of a 'principal component analysis' he works out the longest axes of this cluster - that is, the main ways the faces differ from the average. 

I find the conformity built into this beauty contest somewhat horrifying... but the math is fascinating.  Thanks to +Wayne Radinsky for pointing this out!

(For more information, see Jia-Bin Huang's comment below!)
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