New research money going into non-string QG--and the 08 conference

[Martin]

Europe has a European Science Foundation, like the NSF we have in the USA. And the ESF has set up two new funding agencies called "networks" recently. These are multi-country arrangements where 8 or so countries pool resources with one director and advisory board with a charter to support some specific kind of research. In each case there's a committment of some millions of dollars over some period of time like 5 years, from the participating countries, and then the network charter goes up for renewal.

 

In the past 2 or 3 years there has been a big increase in research activity in nonstring QG (that covers several categories) and almost all of it is outside the USA. The field has just now reached the kind of critical mass where it can have an annual or semiannual international conference. This is also a sign of the new money, because somebody has to pay for a big international conference. In the case of "QG-squared 2008" the conference will be sponsored by one of the new ESF networks.

 

It is called "The QG Network"----the longer title being "Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity Network"---and John Barrett of Nottingham is the director.

 

This year there was a "QGQG School" for some 100 graduate students and young researchers who are getting into the field and/or considering research projects. Sometime the handle on these events is QGQG and sometimes simply QG or QG². The conference in June next year is designated QG-squared.

 

It will be interesting to see how the program for the conference shapes up because these annual international meetings are a research field's DEFINING EVENTS. You get to see who the major figures are, who is doing new research, what the new directions are, and so on.

 

http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/conferences/qgsquared-2008/

 

So as informed onlookers we should probably be checking to see how QG² shapes up. So far here is the SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE.

Nominally these are the people who have an overview of the significant work being done in the field and who can advise the director John Barrett who should be invited to give plenary talks. there are always the invited bigname talks (often in the morning) and then there are several parallel sessions of contributed talks (often in the afternoon).

 

So here's the page with the names of people on the Scientific Committee for next year's Loop community conference.

http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/conferences/qgsquared-2008/organizers/

 

Victor Aldaya (Granada)

Abhay Ashtekar (Penn State)

John Baez (UC Riverside)

Jürg Fröhlich (ETH, Zürich)

Harald Grosse (Vienna)

Shahn Majid (QMUL)

Carlo Rovelli (Marseille)

Thomas Schücker (Provence)

Lee Smolin (Perimeter)

 

As a science-watcher, the first thing I notice (maybe the only thing of unusual significance) is that two NON-COMMUTATIVE GEOMETRY (NCG) people are on the committee.

Shahn Majid, and Thomas Schuecker.

 

Also the director of the QG Network, John Barrett, has done both LQG Spinfoam research and NCG research. He is hosting the conference at his institution (Univ. Nottingham in UK) and heads the organizing committee.

 

In Autumn 2006 both John Barrett and Alain Connes (the top NCG authority) separately brought out papers in which the Standard Model of Particle physics was derived from the NCG model, and also I believe gravity in some form or other. In later papers of the same series, Alain Connes made a FALSIFIABLE PREDICTION OF A CERTAIN NEUTRINO MASS that could be measured soon---perhaps at LHC. This takes guts. He derives the mass from his NCG theory so if his mass prediction turns out to be wrong it will mean his theory is wrong. I will hazard a guess that Alain Connes will be one of the invited speakers of the QG-squared 2008 conference.