Inscrutable Science Update

It’s a good day for people posting about science I don’t understand…

Peter Woit points to the Non-Commutative Geometry blog, at which Alain Connes, the godfather of non-commutative geometry, is posting. It’s not the most polished blog, but if you can understand what they’re talking about, it’s probably interesting.

Scott Aaronson is excited about new results in quantum computing, where somebody has “announced a quantum algorithm for evaluating NAND trees in O(√N) time.” I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about either, but it has something to do with ants, sugar cubes, and teaching computers to play chess even better than they do now. Given that I haven’t been able to beat a computer chess program since about 1988, I’m not sure what the point is, but I’m not really the target audience.

Finally, Steinn talks about string theory and The Trouble With Physics.

Any other suggestions of physics-related posts to make me feel a little slow this morning?