Perimeter Institute
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor is Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Mike Lazaridis. The original building, designed by Saucier + Perrotte, opened in 2004 and was awarded a Governor General's Medal for Architecture in 2006. The Stephen Hawking Centre, designed by Teeple Architects, was opened in 2011 and was LEED Silver certified in 2015. In addition to research, Perimeter also provides scientific training and educational outreach activities to the general public. This is done in part through Perimeter's Educational Outreach team. History Lazaridis' initial donation of $100 million was announced on October 23, 2000, believed to be the biggest private donation in Canadian history to that point. A subsequent personal donation of $50 million was made on June 4, 2 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (formerly Waterloo County, Ontario, Waterloo County). Waterloo is situated about west-southwest of Toronto. Due to the close proximity of the city of Kitchener, Ontario, Kitchener to Waterloo, the two together are often referred to as "Kitchener–Waterloo", "K-W" or "The Twin Cities". While several unsuccessful attempts to combine the municipalities of Kitchener and Waterloo have been made, following the 1973 establishment of the Region of Waterloo, less motivation to do so existed, and as a result, Waterloo remains an independent city. At the time of the Canada 2021 Census, 2021 census, the population of Waterloo was 121,436. History Indigenous peoples and settlement According to the city, Indigenous peoples in Canada, indigenous peoples lived in its area, including the Haudenosaunee, Iroquois, Anishinaabe and Neutral Nation. After the end of the Am ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Howard Burton
Howard Burton is a physicist who is the creator of Ideas Roadshow, a multimedia initiative dedicated to harnessing the benefits of modern technology to explore ideas across the arts and sciences through thoughtful and seriously-entertaining documentary films, books and podcasts. Ideas Roadshow was the recipient of the Educational Learning Resources Award at The London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards in 2018. Burton holds an M.A. in philosophy and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, and was the founding executive director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ... in Waterloo, Canada, from 1999–2007. He received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Waterloo in 2007. His book ''First Principles: Building Pe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simons Foundation
The Simons Foundation is a private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the US with assets of over $5 billion in 2022, the foundation's mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. The foundation supports science by making grants to individual researchers and their projects. In 2021, Marilyn Simons stepped down as president after 26 years at the helm, and astrophysicist David Spergel was appointed president. The Flatiron Institute In 2016, the foundation launched the Flatiron Institute, its in-house multidisciplinary research institute focused on computational science. The Flatiron Institute hosts centers for computational science in five areas: Funding Areas The foundation makes grants in four program areas: Simons Investigators awardees Among other programs, the Simons Foundation funds the Simons Investigators in MPS program ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gravity
In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong interaction, 1036 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 1029 times weaker than the weak interaction. As a result, it has no significant influence at the level of subatomic particles. However, gravity is the most significant interaction between objects at the macroscopic scale, and it determines the motion of planets, stars, galaxies, and even light. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon's gravity is responsible for sublunar tides in the oceans (the corresponding antipodal tide is caused by the inertia of the Earth and Moon orbiting one another). Gravity also has many important biological functions, helping to guide the growth of plants through the process of gravitropism and influencing the circ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Condensed Matter Physics
Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the subject deals with "condensed" phases of matter: systems of many constituents with strong interactions between them. More exotic condensed phases include the superconducting phase exhibited by certain materials at low temperature, the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on crystal lattices of atoms, and the Bose–Einstein condensate found in ultracold atomic systems. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by experiments to measure various material properties, and by applying the physical laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and other theories to develop mathematical models. The diversity of systems and phenomena available for study makes condensed matter phy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quantum Information Science
Quantum information science is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the analysis, processing, and transmission of information using quantum mechanics principles. It combines the study of Information science with quantum effects in physics. It includes theoretical issues in computational models and more experimental topics in quantum physics, including what can and cannot be done with quantum information. The term quantum information theory is also used, but it fails to encompass experimental research, and can be confused with a subfield of quantum information science that addresses the processing of quantum information. Scientific and engineering studies To understand quantum teleportation, quantum entanglement and the manufacturing of quantum computer hardware requires a thorough understanding of quantum physics and engineering. Since 2010s, there has been remarkable progress in manufacturing quantum computers, with companies like Google and IBM investing heavily ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quantum Gravity
Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics; it deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vicinity of black holes or similar compact astrophysical objects, such as neutron stars. Three of the four fundamental forces of physics are described within the framework of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. The current understanding of the fourth force, gravity, is based on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is formulated within the entirely different framework of classical physics. However, that description is incomplete: describing the gravitational field of a black hole in the general theory of relativity leads physical quantities, such as the spacetime curvature, to diverge at the center of the black hole. This signals the breakdown of the general theory of relativity and the need for a theory that goes b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quantum Foundations
Quantum foundations is a discipline of science that seeks to understand the most counter-intuitive aspects of quantum theory, reformulate it and even propose new generalizations thereof. Contrary to other physical theories, such as general relativity, the defining axioms of quantum theory are quite ad hoc, with no obvious physical intuition. While they lead to the right experimental predictions, they do not come with a mental picture of the world where they fit. There exist different approaches to resolve this conceptual gap: * First, one can put quantum physics in contraposition with classical physics: by identifying scenarios, such as Bell experiments, where quantum theory radically deviates from classical predictions, one hopes to gain physical insights on the structure of quantum physics. * Second, one can attempt to find a re-derivation of the quantum formalism in terms of operational axioms. * Third, one can search for a full correspondence between the mathematical elements ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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String Theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force. Thus, string theory is a theory of quantum gravity. String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has contributed a number of advances to mathematical physics, which have been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and conde ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quantum Field Theory
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and in condensed matter physics to construct models of quasiparticles. QFT treats particles as excited states (also called Quantum, quanta) of their underlying quantum field (physics), fields, which are more fundamental than the particles. The equation of motion of the particle is determined by minimization of the Lagrangian, a functional of fields associated with the particle. Interactions between particles are described by interaction terms in the Lagrangian (field theory), Lagrangian involving their corresponding quantum fields. Each interaction can be visually represented by Feynman diagrams according to perturbation theory (quantum mechanics), perturbation theory in quantum mechanics. History Quantum field theory emerged from the wo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Particle Physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and bosons (force-carrying particles). There are three generations of fermions, but ordinary matter is made only from the first fermion generation. The first generation consists of up and down quarks which form protons and neutrons, and electrons and electron neutrinos. The three fundamental interactions known to be mediated by bosons are electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction. Quarks cannot exist on their own but form hadrons. Hadrons that contain an odd number of quarks are called baryons and those that contain an even number are called mesons. Two baryons, the proton and the neutron, make up most of the mass of ordinary matter. Mesons are unstable and the longest-lived last for only a few hundredths of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mathematical Physics
Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and for the formulation of physical theories". An alternative definition would also include those mathematics that are inspired by physics (also known as physical mathematics). Scope There are several distinct branches of mathematical physics, and these roughly correspond to particular historical periods. Classical mechanics The rigorous, abstract and advanced reformulation of Newtonian mechanics adopting the Lagrangian mechanics and the Hamiltonian mechanics even in the presence of constraints. Both formulations are embodied in analytical mechanics and lead to understanding the deep interplay of the notions of symmetry (physics), symmetry and conservation law, con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |