[General] Conference, spring/summer 2016

Roychoudhuri, Chandra chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu
Mon Nov 2 14:27:38 PST 2015


Dear Colleagues:

Adam is right that all of you across the “pond” take time to organize a special conference series with good amount of “mediation” to make it a broad in scope and sustainable in time.

If the conference is under the “umbrella” of a major professional society (of either Europe or USA); as the one in USA under SPIE; then, at least the overhead is covered automatically. Remember that SPIE does hold conferences in Europe. Then, if you can get some extra funds from the European Science Foundation for supporting students, PostDocs and needy senior researchers (especially retired ones); then you have a start that will be capable of creating a lasting impact on the Physics culture.

The conference name should be chosen with a lot of deliberations so you can attract a broad spectrum of physicists and engineers who can keep on participating for years to come. The current moribund state of physics cannot be solved in a few years. Physics theories need to be built upon modeling interaction processes in nature that give rise to measurable data. Just data validating math (“curve fitting”!), as we do now, is not keeping us anchored to ontological reality. So, here is a possible generic suggestion for the conference series: “Physics by mapping interaction processes in nature”. In this name, the subject is widely open; but it enforces the allowed thinking process well defined and yet generic. Of course, all of you should deliberate on this issue long and hard before you settling on a name for the conference.

Best wishes to all of you for the new venture!

Chandra.

From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chandra.roychoudhuri=uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] On Behalf Of Adam K
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2015 4:11 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Cc: Nick Bailey; Anthony Booth; Ariane Mandray
Subject: Re: [General] Conference, spring/summer 2016

John W,

It would be great to have the resources of a university in Europe rather than your or Martin's home for a recurring conference. Nothing against your homes (!) but it would be nice to have imprimatur, space, and FUNDS.

May I suggest that the way to pitch something like this might be to strike less of an epoch-making tone, and more of a perfectly placid tone which does two things: 1) arises from an analysis of methods and culture in physics, something like what Chandra mentioned above and has been talking about for awhile, and the stagnation and problems thereof, 2) suggests that the conference series could provide a focal point for a minority community which already exists and which has the potential to remedy the problem mentioned in 1.

In order to avoid appearing to ask for money in order to bring peace to the world and destroy all falsehood, your overall tactic could be to focus on the pilot wave approach, and others. So, you make a calm note of the situation depicted in 1) and suggest to the administrators and other scientists that the community of physics and science-at-large would benefit from a conference series on the pilot wave approach, and others. You are on much firmer ground then, because you come across as being almost like a bureaucrat, only smarter. Bureaucrats will respect you then and will think seriously about giving you money. Other scientists will see the analysis and, whether or not they agree, will have no grounds to make digs at you personally.

So, e.g. for 1) you could mention the fact that people in Quantum Gravity have been jumping ship for some time, how 't Hooft himself has started looking for alternatives, how String Theory is all tied in knots (Smolin et al), add Chandra's larger-scale observations about lack of fundamental progress for decades, your own experience with QCD, and so on.

Then, for 2) you could mention Coudet's experiments, the work of Valentini et al., Basil Hiley and the pilot wave model in general, and some other people I can hook you up with (I am sure others on this list will know people too).

It would be a good idea to actually get a team of people on board with this BEFORE you put together a proposal and talk to the people with the power. For example, Chandra has already said yes. You could get a list of people like me who you spin as the 'next generation', as well as some name recognition like Basil Hiley, Peter Holland (if you can find him), this guy at Cambridge http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/pilot_waves.html and so forth.

You get a list of people who are interested "in principle". It costs people nothing to say yes in this way because they are committing to nothing, but it advances your cause because you can go to administrators and say: all these people want to take part.

It strikes me that this email list is actually an excellent place to collaborate on the project of getting funding in this way. It is a concrete problem which would take more man hours than John W has now. If we cut it into about 10 different pieces each one won't be too onerous.

Adam


On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 5:11 AM, Roychoudhuri, Chandra <chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu<mailto:chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu>> wrote:
Hello Friends: This great idea was thrown around at San Diego this year. I am glad that the idea is now beginning to take shape. It should be organized with some European funding; especially to support PostDocs and graduate students.

Bringing serious change in the centuries old Messiah-Complex driven physics-thinking cannot be changed to Evolution-Process anchored thinking within one generation. We need long-term cultural changes spear-headed by our younger generation.

Just a note for your consideration in choosing the dates for this European out-of-box physics meeting: I am already committed for a lecture tour in India for the duration of February 20 through March 8. I will very much appreciate if you gentlemen choose the dates right after March 8 (then I couple my trip as a stop-over); or a couple of weeks after (then, I take rest and fly over the “pond” again).

Sincerely,
Chandra Roychoudhuri
From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chandra.roychoudhuri<mailto:general-bounces%2Bchandra.roychoudhuri>=uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org<mailto:uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org>] On Behalf Of John Williamson
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2015 4:44 AM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Cc: Nick Bailey; 'Anthony Booth'; 'Ariane Mandray'
Subject: [General] Conference, spring/summer 2016

Dear all,

I am thinking of calling a conference in late spring or summer of next year to alternate with the SPIE conference in odd years.

One possible venue is somewhere in Scotland (see copy of email I have sent to the head of Science and engineering at Glasgow below).

Alternatively anywhere else in Europe would be fine - for other members of the group who may like to host it. Martin and I have held workshops at various venues before. Our modus operandi has that we put a few folk up with ourselves or with friends- the rest fend for themselves.

In the first instance all we really need is a big enough room, nearby places to eat, and local accomodation.

A couple of thousand (Pounds, Dollars or Euros), would be enough for me to host this in my home town of Troon, on the west coast of Scotland. There are plenty of facilities here, provided we do not clash with the open golf (held here once every four years or so). With  a bit more we could begin to sponsor some of the younger members who could not afford to come to SPIE. There are even good campsites locally, for those who want to travel really cheaply.

I would like to know who might be interested, and also if anyone knows of any sources of funding we may be able to look to. We can do a sort of proceedings - and just post it to research gate, Vikra and/or Academia.edu. In another forum (Fanaten) we have produced a confernce book ... and this may also be possible.

What does everyone think?

Regards, John (W).

Text of today's email to Muffy Cladr (Head of Science and engineering at Glasgow) follows .......

Dear Muffy,

I enjoyed your talk last Monday, it was a breath of fresh air. I think I can throw some light on some of the points you raised on the NSS and on citations. I’m afraid I had to leave soon after your talk – so missed the discussion.  You asked for feedback – and also on ideas to take Glasgow forwards. That is what this note is about.

I want to give feedback on citations, on the NSS scores and how they might be improved and on a means to move Glasgow’s position up the rankings with respect to other Russel group Universities. I will cover the citations here, but will leave the NSS stuff to another note which was originally intended to be just for those teaching Mathematics in engineering, but which covers the points on the NSS and which I will circulate in engineering. The new action is the possibility of organising a possible set of conferences somewhere in Scotland on a new cross-disciplinary topic across physics, mathematics, computer science, chemistry and engineering, to be held in “even” years and to match up with a biennial conference in the California in “odd” years.

The first such would be held in 2016 and even years thereafter. It could become very very big indeed and may, in the longer term, represent an unprecedented opportunity to help take the university to nearer to the top of the Russell group.

Now you probably do not know even who I am, since you have not been active in any of the fields where I am well-known, so I will first fill you in on some relevant aspects.

Firstly- on the citations mystery. I think that may be, at least partly, down to me. I am the highest cited researcher (I think) in engineering in Glasgow. Also my citations, being mostly in physics journals, also count towards those for physics. This citation count is on a relatively small number of publications (about a hundred) but most with a very high impact, most published in the top journals, and covering three widely-separated fields. Most of the citations have no other Glasgow co-authors – so cannot count for others. The average impact (per paper – on citations (about 100 per paper) is far higher than that that for any of these journals (max about 4 per paper) – and my contribution is therefore part of the reason why the journals I submit to are “high impact” in the first place.  I could well be wrong on this, but will copy it to research and teaching staff and folk will correct me if I am wrong.

For comparison, the excellent (but no longer with us) Richard de la Rue used to beat me on the h-index count– but not on the number of citations. He is (rightly!) co-author on hundreds of Glasgow papers, but most of these have had little or no impact (as measured by citations). I have not checked, but I am pretty sure I have the top two (and quite possibly more) cited papers for the whole of Glasgow engineering.  Further, Richard having left us will have had little effect on the Glasgow citation count, as many Glasgow co-authors remain. The effect of his excellence is now “frozen in”, at least for the time being.

To numbers: Google scholar lists me with more than 10000 citations and an h-index of 42. Most of the citations are to papers in the top peer reviewed journals in whichever field. Though some of these papers are now rather old, they were both wide-ranging and seminal so there remains very high citation rate to them per year.

While citations in peer-reviewed high quality journals do not count strongly in the  recent ref , they may do so again in future. They DO count strongly for many of the “international rankings” (40 percent in some cases, I believe). I have not bothered to work out how high the impact on Glasgow would be if I left – but am pretty sure that would, by itself, drop Glasgow right out of the “top 100 universities” in most international counts for engineering. Because of the numbers it would also have some significant impact on the rankings “all of science” for Glasgow as well.

The reason that my citations are so high has been because of work at the absolute top international level in three distinct fields.  Work in particle physics (at CERN) pushed experiments which turned out to be seminal in two different areas. This led (and still leads) to a very large number of citations.  There followed a move to more practical science, to micro-electronics in industry. Here I was lucky enough to be given much freedom (and a very large budget ) to develop the experimental, device and material science needed to make a real impact and move the world forwards. I imagined, designed and developed the first electronic device to be called “nano” (not by me but by others), the “quantum point contact”. Again this was seminal work, again leading to lots of citations.

Two years after my design of two devices in particular the “quantum point contact” and the “quantum dot” (yes that was me – I invented the worlds first (semiconductor) quantum dot), most of the contributions at the major international conferences were derivative of the work on the experiments and devices I had designed. They still are – hence the continuing high citation rate.

This early work was why, in the late eighties, a certain Steve Beaumont got in touch asking to be included in the international collaboration I was putting together at the time. I said ok. I then wrote a (series of) grants (Steve put in quite a useful contribution there too).  One was called Quantecs, worth a good few millions at the time. I’m sure it is likely that “Quantics”, our present big grant, was not named after it – but there is always that chance! This early work had a large impact in the standing of Glasgow in the world and continues to do so.

I am afraid I have been a bit of a  disappointment to many here at Glasgow, as that field was dropped to work on something completely different. This was partly because it was exactly what I wanted to do, partly because I felt it was far more important to the progress of world science but also because Glasgow could not then get its act together (and still cannot) to measure the basic properties of what were (and still are in some respects) world-leading devices. I have a few dozen of in my desk drawer that I designed, developed experimental equipment to measure, and published papers on in the eighties and nineties. In Glasgow, we did not (and still does not!) have the capability to measure them in the (fractional) quantum Hall regime for which they were designed. If I am wrong, please let me know and you can measure them if you want to!

Instead, I have been working for the last decades on a very high risk, potentially very high impact piece of theoretical work (see below), covering the basis of most of science. It was to have the freedom to do this, in work-time as my research, that I took a factor of two pay cut at the time, refused offered salaries in the early nineties of 120 grand (four times my then Glasgow salary), and moved from industry into academia. The new work required the understanding of wide areas of science, from (classical and quantum) field theory to nanotechnology, from the Standard Model to pre-Einstein relativity and from computer science to the mathematics of reality. It may have been expected that other areas, such as string theory, may have been important too – but these proved dissappointing. It has taken some time, but work on the new theoretical basis is now yielding fruit. The work had, up until last year, yielded few publications, so does not figure in the last ref. Neither have I been writing grants. The salaries on offer on a grant simply do not attract the caliber of people required, so are a complete waste of time. The collaboration has been with many other high-level workers worldwide, including academics, industrialists and the independently wealthy.


So what is this other research – and why might it be that thing that could put Glasgow and Scotland back to the cutting edge of progress in world science?

The new thread was one tried by Einstein for 3 decades or so and also by Dirac, de Broglie, and so on. They were looking for an underlying theory of how “elementary” particles worked. What they were made of. What was the origin of matter, time and space. What is an “elementary” particle such as the electron? What is charge, quantum mechanical spin, the reason for the quantum and relativistic nature of space and time? That sort of thing. I have been doing this because I think I can make a contribution. I have been a “world changer” already in two different fields, as my record proves. Compared to those contributions, of international import though they were, the present work is at a different kind of level to that which is usually referred to as having “impact”.  This is indeed “world changing”.

What is it? It is an underling theory of space-time, matter and light. It is a new theory based on a new linear equation. The Dirac equation (the basis of relativistic quantum mechanics), as it should have been. Starting with just space and time the theory claims to describe BOTH light and matter. Exactly. Just and no more.  If true (and this is the big if), the new theory  is to present science as atoms were to Chemistry, relativity and quantum mechanics were to physics, Wittgenstein was to western Philosophy, and Pask was to cybernetics. An understanding of how things really work at the sub “elementary” particle level. A complete new framework for thinking. A framework where one can imagine and design new devices, new materials, and new systems. Sub-electron electronics. Sub-quantum chemistry. The underlying mechanics, subject to computer simulation, of the fundamental underlying processes of space, time and mass-energy.

Needless to say this is, potentially, very very big indeed. Dirac big, Maxwell big, Maybe even Einstein or Leonardo big. Either very very big, or just plain wrong. Unlike some controversial areas there is little risk though. It is, after all, only a theory!

Controversial or not: so far so good. The new theory has been “out” since last August. Since then, some top physicists have been trying very very hard to put a dent in it – but no-one yet has managed. One of the reviewers of one of my recent papers said explicitly that it reminded him of Einstein’s seminal work. It is, at the very least, an alternative to alternatives such as the various string theories.

Further, though controversial for the time being, it is only a theory. Most theories prove wrong.  Good grief, all of the current theories of science have areas where they do not describe all of experiment correctly. This one does not, as far as I know. You mentioned in your talk that others had called your work “good”. That goes for me too – up till now. Further, the new all-Scots Williamson-Maxwell theory seems sound.  At least it is so far, so good.

I have always had a small (but very international) fan-club on the theoretical basis of earlier ideas. There was much theoretical progress on many theoretical fronts over a couple of decades, mostly on complex, hard to solve, non-linear models.

Since I invented the new, linear, relativistic theory last year, affairs have been moving rapidly. There were invitations to speak at three international conferences this summer. I used to think it strange at one time if not invited as a keynote speaker at least one international conference per year, and had to turn down many invitations in the eighties and nineties. My last invited, plenary, keynote talk at an international conference (on computing!) had been in 2012. Things are hotting up again now: I was invited to speak at three this year – in Moscow (theoretical physics), Berlin (general physics) and San Diego (Engineering).  I had to turn two of the invitations down, for financial reasons.


Though there are, presently, no other Glasgow co-authors, the new theory is by no means all my own work. It is not a “one-man-band”. There are a whole lot of (also very good) international collaborators.  My contribution to the work is (at least!) matched by my good friend and co-worker of three decades, Martin van der Mark (in Holland). There are contributions from many others – Stephen Leary, Tim Drysdale Richard de la Rue and John Weaver here at Glasgow. Phil Butler in New Zealand. Niels Gresnigt in China. Half a dozen folk down in England (mostly academics).  Dozens of folk in America (mostly California, for some reason) People in France, Germany, Sweden  … people on every continent except Antartica. These are good people, but the contribution is usually limited to that appropriate to an acknowledgement. It is Martin, Stephen (who has now left Glasgow) and I who are the only authors on the papers.

Anyway … back to the conference I am thinking about helping to organise. I have organized conferences and workshops before, both in nanotechnology and in quantum field theory. I have organized a series of workshops in the past in various places round Europe. One of our group owns a Farmhouse in Sancerre, overlooking the river and with a room big enough to take 40 or so. Martin has a big room at the top of his house which will take 30. We have had workshops in both venues. We have, so far simply declared where and when they will be, invited folk, limited the numbers to our capacity, arranged a projector and screen and they have paid their own way. Though this model is still possible, the numbers interested are now getting too big for this for this and we need to have access to larger facilities.

Two years ago, after students kept badgering me to explain topics they found hard – quantum mechanics, relativity, quantum electrodynamics – just standard stuff from science but at a high level. I would help but the number of people trying to crowd round a table whenever I explained anything got a bit too big so I said I would get a room. I took the big lecture theatre in the Rankine and said I would give a series of lectures covering “all of science”. One lecture at a time – at 8am on a Friday morning.  First lecture – 30 folk, second one – about a hundred – with videos and cameras. Third one – folk standing at the back. Moved to a (much) bigger lecture theatre. Next one: there were three hundred or so folk – many having traveled from places such as Edinburgh or Dundee that morning, standing outside in the dark and the rain at 8am on a dark Scots winter morning. There is a huge appetite for understanding how things work!

Many colleagues that I know of from maths, physics, chemistry and engineering attended as well. The feedback indicates that many of them enjoyed these talks and learned something themselves. I had hoped to extend the series further this year – but have not been able to do so due to commitments in other work-areas.

I have no idea how many folk will want to come if I announce a workshop/ conference. This depends, of course, as to whether it is restricted to invitation only or is open.  It could be a hundred or three hundred, depending on the marketing.

The eventual scope may be similar to that of a workshop I was invited to in Autumn of last year, at Imperial. Access to a big lecture theatre, plenty of good restaurants in the vicinity, invitation only, further sort it out yourselves. Despite the lack of formal structure, there were many big names there in several fields. These included Roger Penrose (Oxford, physics), Tim Palmer (Oxford, climate change), and Basil Hiley (Birkbeck, fundamentals of quantum mechanics).  There were folk contributing from the U.S. by video-link. There were a hundred plus folk there. I had lunch on the first day with Roger, Basil and Tim. The discussion was on quantum mechanical wave-function collapse (mostly me Basil and Roger).  Spent subsequent hours with those two on the following evening and morning. These are the kind of folk I hope to invite. The conference will be on the nature of light, material particles and "quantum collapse".

I am far too busy to organize much. The main thrust of present research is to develop publicise and publish papers in the area of the new theory, not mess about with administration.  I have no funding and no time or inclination to spend much time looking for funding (my teaching load has been increased fourfold in the last few years – to the point where I am now responsible for about a tenth of all the FTE undergraduate student experience in Engineering ). I intend to apply for some funding this year – but only to try to mitigate my teaching load.

The main requirement for the conference will be for access to a reasonably big lecture theatre, preferably somewhere in beautiful Scotland, and with decent accommodation and a campsite (for some very enthusiastic, but poor PhD’s) nearby. Date: sometime in late spring or for over the summer 2016 (to repeat every even year thereafter).  Extent: three days to a week. Is there a possibility of finding some internal funding to help with this enterprise?

To others in science and engineering: is there anyone else out there who would like to help?

Regards, John Williamson.

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