What's happening in physics right now?

rcaz

I'm in second year studying theoretical physics in NUIM at the moment, and the other day I was thinking about what I'm learning, and the most recent stuff I've done so far has been Quantum Mechanics from around 1920, Schrödinger and Heisenberg's work and the maths for it. 90 years old!

I've been trying to find out more about what's being discovered in theoretical physics right now. I've heard the words Quantum Chromodynamics and Lattice groups mentioned a lot, from the reading I've been doing about university professors and their research topics.

How do you go about learning what's going on at the leading edge of physics today? I'd love to get really up to date and keep informed.

Morbert

El Pr0n wrote: »

I'm in second year studying theoretical physics in NUIM at the moment, and the other day I was thinking about what I'm learning, and the most recent stuff I've done so far has been Quantum Mechanics from around 1920, Schrödinger and Heisenberg's work and the maths for it. 90 years old!

I've been trying to find out more about what's being discovered in theoretical physics right now. I've heard the words Quantum Chromodynamics and Lattice groups mentioned a lot, from the reading I've been doing about university professors and their research topics.

How do you go about learning what's going on at the leading edge of physics today? I'd love to get really up to date and keep informed.

There is a lot of theoretical progress being made in fields like semiconductor and condensed matter physics, which heavily employ quantum field theory (the modern, more robust form of quantum mechanics). Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics is also a progressive area thanks to advances in computing technology. A friend of mine in CERN has also recently made good progress in trapping techniques for anti-hydrogen. There is also the obvious buzz around the LHC.

As far as fundamental, theoretical grand unified theory physics goes, there is a lot of mathematical methods being developed, but enter at your own risk.

As you are in university (The same one I went to for my theoretical physics undergrad degree!), you will have access to all the latest journals. You might want to check out journals like Physical Review ( http://pra.aps.org/ ) (one I use a good bit) though it can be a bit heavy at times.

But an absolute essential must-buy is Roger Penrose's book "A Road to Reality". It will be your Bible throught undergrad, and covers a wide range of modern physics.

rcaz

Morbert wrote: »

There is a lot of theoretical progress being made in fields like semiconductor and condensed matter physics, which heavily employ quantum field theory (the modern, more robust form of quantum mechanics). Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics is also a progressive area thanks to advances in computing technology. A friend of mine in CERN has also recently made good progress in trapping techniques for anti-hydrogen. There is also the obvious buzz around the LHC.

As far as fundamental, theoretical grand unified theory physics goes, there is a lot of mathematical methods being developed, but enter at your own risk.

As you are in university (The same one I went to for my theoretical physics undergrad degree!), you will have access to all the latest journals. You might want to check out journals like Physical Review ( http://pra.aps.org/ ) (one I use a good bit) though it can be a bit heavy at times.

But an absolute essential must-buy is Roger Penrose's book "A Road to Reality". It will be your Bible throught undergrad, and covers a wide range of modern physics.

Cheers for the reply! I'll look that stuff up.

Good to hear from another NUIM student too I'm not in the proper Theoretical Physics degree course though (you got me :pac: ), I'm in Arts doing physics as one of my subjects. The things I've been learning have been really grabbing my attention and at this stage I really feel like I want to pursue physics much further than my BA. That's the motivation behind wanting to keep up to date.

antiselfdual

I did a TP/Maths undergrad and am now halfway through a Masters, so I've almost reached the 1970s... (and have to pretend I know what from the 2010s I want to do when writing PhD applications)

Miscellaneous methods of familiarising yourself with modern physics:

http://physics.aps.org/ - I get a weekly email from this site with not-really-technical summaries of interesting recent papers, sometimes I even read it.

http://arxiv.org/ - Pick a section at random, click on "New" or "Recent," pick something with interesting sounding words in the title/abstract, open pdf, scroll through wondering how you'll ever get to the stage when you understand something like that.

Browsing Wikipedia articles is a good way to absorb relevant words/ideas also (as well as providing handy links to find out what modern research builds on, and what that builds on etc until you find something you can learn properly in the near future).

Look for interesting blogs by real physicists, the only ones I can think of off-hand are Lubos Motl's and the ones at Discover Magazine. There are no doubt others.

Some current buzzwords off the top of my head: LHC, beyond the Standard Model physics, Ads/CFT + holography, quark-gluon plasma, higher dimensional black holes.

Pablo_

..or maybe look at the nobel prizes? I know they can often be for research made a while back but take the two guys who 'discovered' graphene last year ...