Goddard (1998), Peter , and Stephen Hawking, Abraham Pais, Maurice Jacob, David Olive, and Michael Atiyah , Paul Dirac, The Man and His work, Cambridge University Press 1998 Jacket: ' Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was one of the founders of quantum theory and the aithor of many of its most important subsequent developments. He is numbered alongside Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Rutherford as one of the greatest physicists of all time. This volume contains four lectures celebrating Dirac's life and work and the text of an address given by Stephen Hawking, which were given on 13 November 1995 on the occasion of the dedication of a plaque to him in Westminster Abbey. In the first lecture, Abraham Pais describes from personal knowledge Dirac's character and his approach to his work. In the second lecture, Maurice Jacob explains not only how and why Dirac was led to introduce the concept of antimatter, but also its central role in modern particle physics and cosmology. In the third lecture, David Olive gives an account of Dirac's work on magnetic monopoles and shows how it has had a profound influence in the development of fundamental physics down to the present day. In the fourth lecture, Sir Michael Atiyah explains the widespread significance of the Dirac equation in mathematics, its roots in algebra and its implications for geometry and topology.' 
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Hobson (2006), M. P., and G. P. Efstathiou, A. N. Lasenby, General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Cambridge University Press 2006 'After reviewing the basic concept of general relativity, this introduction discusses its mathematical background, including the necessary tools of tensor calculus and differential geometry. These tools are used to develop the topic of special relativity and to discuss electromagnetism in Minkowski spacetime. Gravitation as spacetime curvature is introduced and the field equations of general relativity derived. After applying the theory to a wide range of physical situations, the book concludes with a brief discussion of classical field theory and the derivation of general relativity from a variational principle.'  
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Khinchin (1957), Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
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Piketty (2022), Thomas, A Brief History of Equality, Harvard UP 2022 ' The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations.' 
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't Hooft (2005), Gerardus, 50 Years of Yang Mills Theory, World Scientific 2005 ' On the 50th anniversary of Yang-Mills theory, this invaluable volume looks back at the developments and achievements in elementary particle physics that ensued from that beautiful idea.During the last five decades, Yang-Mills theory, which is undeniably the most important cornerstone of theoretical physics, has expanded widely. It has been investigated from many perspectives, and many new and unexpected features have been uncovered from this theory. In recent decades, apart from high energy physics, the theory has been actively applied in other branches of physics, such as statistical physics, condensed matter physics, nonlinear systems, etc. This makes the theory an indispensable topic for all who are involved in physics.An international team of experts, each of whom has left his mark on the developments of this remarkable theory, contribute essays or more detailed technical accounts to this volume.' 
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Baryon asymmetry - Wikipedia, Baryon asymmetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physical cosmology, the baryon asymmetry problem, also known as the matter asymmetry problem or the matter–antimatter asymmetry problem, is the observed imbalance in baryonic matter (the type of matter experienced in everyday life) and antibaryonic matter in the observable universe. Neither the standard model of particle physics, nor the theory of general relativity provides a known explanation for why this should be so, and it is a natural assumption that the universe is neutral with all conserved charges. The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Since this does not seem to have been the case, it is likely some physical laws must have acted differently or did not exist for matter and antimatter. Several competing hypotheses exist to explain the imbalance of matter and antimatter that resulted in baryogenesis. However, there is as of yet no consensus theory to explain the phenomenon, which has been described as "one of the great mysteries in physics".' back

Brian Y. S. Wong, Three steps China must take to remain attractive to investors, ' First, too much focus on security does not help attract and retain foreign businesses and expatriate workers. National security is a prerequisite for stability and social order, but securitisation of the social and business spheres can only be to the detriment of economic stability. . . .. Second, China’s data regulations must be more comprehensible and streamlined. A recent poll by the European Union Chamber of Commerce revealed that 81 per cent of companies wanted further clarification on what “important data” meant when it comes to cross-border data transfers. . . .. Third, China should aim to minimise the sense of policy and institutional uncertainty that has caused foreign businesses and financiers to become reticent to commit to any particular sector. . . .. Reining in the excesses of businesses is a noble task, but it would be more effective with an explicit and measured road map. That way, investors could determine when to enter or exit the market. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong has a crucial role to play here.' back

Chris Oakley, The search for a quantum field theory, ' I would argue that acceptance of renormalization was the crucial compromising of scientific standards, and the one that eventually opened this door to pseudoscience.' back

Chris Oakley, Renormalization, and the log jam in modern quantum field theory, ' Renormalization (NB: also spelled "Renormalisation") is a mathematical inconsistency in quantum field theory that is so well established that one is forced to either accept it without question or to use it as an excuse for avoiding the study of interacting quantum field theory altogether. Renormalization can be summarised as follows: developing quantum field theory from first principles involves applying a process known as "quantization" to classical field theory. This prescription, suitably adapted, gives a full dynamical theory which is to classical field theory what quantum mechanics is to classical mechanics, but it does not quite work. Things look fine on the surface, but the more questions one asks the more the cracks start to appear. Perturbation theory, which works so well in ordinary quantum mechanics, throws up some higher-order terms which are infinite, and cannot be made to go away. This was known about as early as 1928, and was the reason why Paul Dirac, who (along with Wolfgang Pauli) was the first to seriously investigate quantum electrodynamics, almost gave up on field theory. The problem remains unsolved to this day.' back

Christine Anu, My Island Home 2000, back

Claude Shannon (1949), Communication in the Presence of Noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE, vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. . . . IA coder or encoder encodes a data stream or a signal for transmission or storage, possibly in encrypted form, and the decoder function reverses the encoding for playback or editing. Codecs are used in videoconferencing, streaming media, and video editing applications. In the mid-20th century, a codec was a device that coded analog signals into digital form using pulse-code modulation (PCM). Later, the name was also applied to software for converting between digital signal formats, including companding functions. ' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992), An essay on the divinity of money , ' The rise of science questioned revelation and the churches as sources of truth, but they have remained in existence because science still lacks the power to ask or answer the fundamental questions of life and death that concern theology. Here I outline a new scientific theology whose model of god derives not from ancient text but from the mathematical theory of text and communication itself. I propose that this model describes the universe of our experience, which is therefore fittingly called god. I then interpret this model using elements of current physical theory. These ideas are then applied to money. The movement of money is an abstract representation of the the activity of society as a whole, just as the flow of momentum in space-time is an abstract representation of the physical universe. My hypothesis is that proper understanding and political control of public cashflows is necessary and sufficient to obtain peaceful civilisation.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992a), An essay on value, ' 1 We must kill to live. The question before is is whether or not to kill some fraction of the old growth forest (OGF) in the Wingham management area (WMA) in order to keep the sawmilling operation at Mt George alive. Religion 2 Although the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as we have it, is a document based largely on resource, commercial and employment considerations, I believe the Commission is facing a religious issue, and will have no peace until it realizes that fact. 3 Matters of life and death are questions of religion. For those who have power over life and death, deciding what to kill is a question of value. The value system of any organism is determined by the history of its survival. 4 If the decision is good, the benefit from killing will exceed the value of what is destroyed, yielding a profit and enhanced probability of survival. A wrong judgment of value leads to the opposite result.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2023), Principle 3: Symmetry with respect to complexity, The historical origin of this principle lies in Werner Heisenberg's visit to Helgoland while he was studying with Bohr. There he first conceived the idea of ignoring the electronic mechanism of the atom proposed by Bohr and concentrating on just the observables, the frequencies and line weights of the measured atomic spectrum. His idea was developed with Born and Jordan into matrix mechanics and led to the expansion of the concept of observable from single real number in classical physics to a set (possibly infinite) of numbers corresponding to the eigenvalues of a matrix. These values could, for instance, refer to all the individual lines in an atomic spectrum. back

Loretta Lohberger, Catholic Education Tasmania head takes issue with mandatory consent education, ' In a recently published article on the Archdiocese of Hobart's website, Gerard Gaskin took issue with mandatory consent education programs. "Consent is proposed as the only standard we should use to judge whether a sexual act is right or wrong, legal or illegal," Dr Gaskin wrote. "In Catholic morality, consent is necessary, but not sufficient, to make the sexual act right or wrong. It is the long-held teaching of Christ that sexual activity is only legitimately expressed within the loving relationship between husband and wife". . . . Dr Gaskin said the "sexual and moral formation" of a child was the "exclusive right of parents". "Yet, the federal and state governments appear to have decided that such highly sensitive, amoral and potentially harmful information must now be provided by teachers and that it must start in the first years of schooling. "This places an unreasonable and unacceptable demand on our teachers. "Needless to say, Catholic Education Tasmania reserves the right to question and challenge any educational prescriptions that would impose such an anti-family and secular ideology on our schools, students and families".'' back

Matt Murphy (ed), US vetoes UN Security Council vote on Gaza ceasefire, ' The representative for the State of Palestine, which has permanent observer status, says the failure of the resolution is "beyond regrettable". "This is the moment of truth," he says. "This is a turning point in history." Palestine's representative adds that the security council has failed to uphold its responsibility in the face of what he calls "a grave crisis". "Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance. Every single one of them is sacred, worth saving." He says that Israel conducts its war "through atrocities," and that "hundreds of people will be killed by this time tomorrow." "Children will be killed, orphaned, wounded, disabled for life," he says. "Not by mistake, but by design, because the killers have no regard whatsoever for Palestinian life, from the cradle to the grave and beyond." . . . Palestine became an observer state at the UN in 2012. Hamas officials in Gaza say Israel has killed more than 17,177 people in its retaliatory campaign, including about 7,000 children back

Mitch Waldrop (2017), Why the FBI Kept a 1,400-Page File on Einstein, ' Albert Einstein was already a world-famous physicist when the FBI started keeping a secret dossier on him in December 1932. He and his wife Elsa had just moved to the United States from their native Germany, and Einstein had been very vocal about the social issues of his time, arguing publicly against racism and nationalism. By the time of Einstein’s death on April 18, 1955, that FBI file would be 1,427 pages long. Agency director J. Edgar Hoover was deeply suspicious of Einstein’s activism; the man was quite possibly a communist, according to Hoover, and was certainly “an extreme radical".' . . .. The rising Nazi party was soon denouncing relativity as “a Jewish perversion”—the 1920s equivalent of using “fake news” as an all-purpose put-down—and Einstein was receiving so many anonymous death threats that he tried to avoid walking alone. . . .. We can only guess what Einstein would have said about today’s political atmosphere. But we do know his reaction to an earlier era of government crackdowns: the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. “Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify,” Einstein declared in 1953, referring to the congressional investigations that were intimidating and ruining the careers of many innocent people. That statement earned him outraged editorials in newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post and New York Times. But he wore their condemnation proudly.' back

Mitch Waldrop (2017), Why the FBI Kept a 1,400-Page File on Einstein, ' Albert Einstein was already a world-famous physicist when the FBI started keeping a secret dossier on him in December 1932. He and his wife Elsa had just moved to the United States from their native Germany, and Einstein had been very vocal about the social issues of his time, arguing publicly against racism and nationalism. By the time of Einstein’s death on April 18, 1955, that FBI file would be 1,427 pages long. Agency director J. Edgar Hoover was deeply suspicious of Einstein’s activism; the man was quite possibly a communist, according to Hoover, and was certainly “an extreme radical".' . . .. The rising Nazi party was soon denouncing relativity as “a Jewish perversion”—the 1920s equivalent of using “fake news” as an all-purpose put-down—and Einstein was receiving so many anonymous death threats that he tried to avoid walking alone. . . .. We can only guess what Einstein would have said about today’s political atmosphere. But we do know his reaction to an earlier era of government crackdowns: the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. “Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify,” Einstein declared in 1953, referring to the congressional investigations that were intimidating and ruining the careers of many innocent people. That statement earned him outraged editorials in newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post and New York Times. But he wore their condemnation proudly.' back

Paul Dirac (1963), The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature, ' In this article I should like to discuss the development of general physical theory: how it developed in the past and how one may expect it to develop in the future. One can look on this continual development as a process of evolution, a process that has been going on for several centuries. . . ... The renormalization theory bas removed some of these Class Two difficulties, if one can accept the illogical character of discarding infinities, but it does not remove all of them. There are a good many problems left over concerning particles other than those that come into electrodynamics: the new particles—mesons of various kinds and neutrinos. There the theory is still in a primitive stage. It is fairly certain that there will have to be drastic changes in our fundamental ideas before these problems can be solved.' back

Unitarity (physics) - Wikipedia, Unitarity (physics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In quantum physics, unitarity means that the sum of probabilities of all possible outcome of any event is always 1. This is necessary for the theory to be consistent. This implies that the operator which describes the progress of a physical system in time must be a unitary operator. This operator is e ^iHt where H is the Hamiltonian of the system and t is [an increasing number, not necessarily time since we are in Hilbert space where there is no space-time].' back

Warumpi Band, My Island Home (2015 Remaster), Six years I've been in the city
And every night, I dream of the sea
They say home is where you find it
Will this place ever satisfy me?
For I come from the saltwater people
We've always lived by the sea
Now I'm out here west of Alice Springs
With a wife and a family

And my island home
My island home
My island home
Is waitin' for me

In the evening the dry wind blows
From the hills
And across the plain
I close my eyes and I'm standing
In a boat
On the sea again
And I'm holding that long turtle spear
And I feel I'm close now
To where it must be
My island home, is waitin' for me

For I come from the saltwater people
We've always lived by the sea
Now I'm out here west of Alice Springs
With a wife and a family

And my island home
My island home
My island home
Is waitin' for me

In the evening the dry wind blows
From the hills
And across the plain
I close my eyes and I'm standing
In a boat
On the sea again
And I'm holding a long turtle spear
And I feel I'm close now
To where it must be
My island home, is waitin' for me

My island home
My island home
My island home
Is waitin' for me

My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home
My island home

A very famous song from a brilliant group. Sometimes it is forgotten that the Warumpis wrote the alternative Australian Anthem "My Island Home", although it is actually about Elcho, a small island in Arnhem Land, Australia. Original lineup was: George Burarrwanga (known in life as George Rrurrambu & George Djilangya), the Butcher brothers and Neil Murray. Sadly George died of lung cancer in 2006. I do not claim any particular rights to this. My sincere thanks to the rights holders for allowing these to be shown. back

Werner Heisenberg (1925), Quantum-theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations , 'The present paper seeks to establish a basis for theoretical quantum mechanics founded exclusively upon relationships between quantities which in principle are observable.' [From Sources of Quantum Mechanics, edited by B. L. van der Waerden (Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1967)] back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back