Nanded & Bidar - A Sikh Pilgrimage
9 years ago
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Greatest Movie ever made
The year: 1972. The scene: Afternoon tea in Fuld Hall at the Institute for Advanced Study. The camera pans around the Common Room, passing by several Princetonians in tweeds and corduroys, then zooms in on Hugh Montgomery, boyish Midwestern number theorist with sideburns. He has just been introduced to Freeman Dyson, dapper British physicist. 
Dyson: Extraordinary! Do you realize that's the pair-correlation function for the eigenvalues of a random Hermitian matrix? It's also a model of the energy levels in a heavy nucleus—say U-238.
Dyson: So tell me, Montgomery, what have you been up to?
Montgomery: Well, lately I've been looking into the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function.
Dyson: Yes? And?
Montgomery: It seems the two-point correlations go as.... (turning to write on a nearby blackboard):
Dyson: Extraordinary! Do you realize that's the pair-correlation function for the eigenvalues of a random Hermitian matrix? It's also a model of the energy levels in a heavy nucleus—say U-238.I present this anecdote in cinematic form because I expect to see it on the big screen someday, now that mathematicians outgun cowboys and secret agents at the box office. Besides, the screenplay genre gives me license to dramatize and embellish a little. By the time the movie opens at your local multiplex, the script doctors will have taken further liberties with the facts. For example, the equation for nuclear energy levels will have become the secret formula of the atomic bomb.
Random Matrix Theory Rules!
(Courtesy:American Scientist)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Some Reviews
It's 6:30 pm and I have nothing to do.
This isn't a normal holiday, and I find myself into my second week in Ahmedabad, interning in PRL. More on that later.
Just to keep the blog ball rolling, i'm reviewing two albums by two lesser known bands that have realy impressed me.
The first is Amorphis's Am Universum. While die-hard fans of the band's conventional Finnish Death Metal Style would disagree with me, I think this (and to a lesser extent, Tuonela, their previous album, from which this is like a step forward) is their best ever, simply because this stands out from all the other albums of the genre released by them. This is probably the closest metal has come to being psychedelic. The moody atmosphere created by the keyboards and the mellowed down guitars (but still heavy at the right places), and most importantly, the clean, soulful vocals and the occasional sax solo instantly went down well with me. Sadly, the band returned to a heavier, metal-oriented sound after this album. A semi-experimental album, it is a solid block of music and the listener can go from song to song without losing anything of the general mood of the album.
The second album is Pagan's Mind's Enigmatic Calling. This progressive metal band from Norway, with its science and fantasy themed music has often been called an old Dream Theater clone. While that is debatable, that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying their music. Filled with catchy heavy riffs and attractive keyboard interludes, it is indeed worth enjoying. While the riffs are undoubtedly heavy, that word can't be used to characterise their music. Progressive would be the most apt, with a touch of studio-introduced processing and a clearly discernable scandinavian quality to it, that sets it apart from DT. The vocals, though raw at places, clearly has an epic quality to it, and the solos are just fantastic. Indeed, though the average song length might be around 7 to 8 minutes, their songs just don't drag on and on. And no over the top guitar antics that sometimes turns you off. All said and done, a great album to own
Enough said.
Sid \m/
This isn't a normal holiday, and I find myself into my second week in Ahmedabad, interning in PRL. More on that later.
Just to keep the blog ball rolling, i'm reviewing two albums by two lesser known bands that have realy impressed me.
The first is Amorphis's Am Universum. While die-hard fans of the band's conventional Finnish Death Metal Style would disagree with me, I think this (and to a lesser extent, Tuonela, their previous album, from which this is like a step forward) is their best ever, simply because this stands out from all the other albums of the genre released by them. This is probably the closest metal has come to being psychedelic. The moody atmosphere created by the keyboards and the mellowed down guitars (but still heavy at the right places), and most importantly, the clean, soulful vocals and the occasional sax solo instantly went down well with me. Sadly, the band returned to a heavier, metal-oriented sound after this album. A semi-experimental album, it is a solid block of music and the listener can go from song to song without losing anything of the general mood of the album.
The second album is Pagan's Mind's Enigmatic Calling. This progressive metal band from Norway, with its science and fantasy themed music has often been called an old Dream Theater clone. While that is debatable, that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying their music. Filled with catchy heavy riffs and attractive keyboard interludes, it is indeed worth enjoying. While the riffs are undoubtedly heavy, that word can't be used to characterise their music. Progressive would be the most apt, with a touch of studio-introduced processing and a clearly discernable scandinavian quality to it, that sets it apart from DT. The vocals, though raw at places, clearly has an epic quality to it, and the solos are just fantastic. Indeed, though the average song length might be around 7 to 8 minutes, their songs just don't drag on and on. And no over the top guitar antics that sometimes turns you off. All said and done, a great album to own
Enough said.
Sid \m/
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