Claudio F. Paganini

Finally I had to leave Berlin. My first stop on the way over to Melbourne was at the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard in Boston. Besides the fact that i had one of the most interesting accommodation i got to experience so far i ended up discussing more about the philosophy of science within these 7 days then I did within the 4 years of my PhD. I learned (ignorance is bliss) that apparently there is still no satisfactory resolution to the measurement problem in Quantum Mechanics… guess “shut up and calculate” is a valid strategy as long as it gives answers that match experimental results. Martin Lesourd explained to me that apparently evaporating black hole space times are causally fucked up. Further I had the chance to follow an interesting talk by Beatrice Bonga about a common mistake made in the calculation of angular momentum carried by radiating fields in GR.
Last but not least i had the opportunity to present our paper on the information content of a black holes shadow in the group meeting of  Ramesh Narayan’s group.

The Black Hole Initiative is a really interesting Institution as it brings together people from various branches of Physics working on topics related to black holes ranging from observations to pure mathematics and philosophy. (In the light of the fact that the Albert Einstein Institute seems to be moving towards being mono-thematical on  Gravitational Waves the Black Hole Initiative fills an important role)

Next stop on my list this year was Hamburg. Unfortunately I was only able to stay half the time.
Apparently (if i understood the talk by Shadi Tahvildar-Zadeh correct) the pilot wave interpretation of quantum mechanics can be made mathematically consistent after all.  Interesting as well the talk by Lydia Bieri on the different behaviour of gravitational waves in cosmological space times in the near field and far field regime.

Next on the list of this years travels: Spring School on Causal Fermion Systems
Well there sure wasn’t much spring in this (took one hour to warm up again after the hike on Wednesday afternoon at -10 C)
The spring school was really interesting. Helped a lot to get a vague understanding of the mathematical structures involved in the Causal Fermion System framework. Given the claims made at the time it is certainly an approach that deserves a deeper, critical investigation.
Check out the CFS section of my brain farts and conjectures  page
Check out the introductory papers:

For Physicists:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03587
More Mathematical:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.05075
The whole thing:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04742

PS: Regensburg is a beautiful little town. (except the University is rather ugly)

Trips back home are a rare occasion these days. Before going to the other side of the world I had to visit Basel for Fasnacht (first time in 4 years). If you ever plan on visiting this beautiful city: Fasnacht is the best time to do so.