The state that has no right to exist

All students and staff welcome.

Speaker 

Dr Cip Pruteanu, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh. 

Abstract

The very first course you are taught at university about condensed matter (Physics of Fields and Matter) lists David Tabor's 'Gases, Liquids and Solids' textbook as essential reading. In the very beginning of said book the reader is given a warning that “The main characteristics of [the gaseous and solid states] are well understood... By contrast the liquid state, in some ways, has ‘no right to exist’ [and] raises a number of very difficult theoretical problems.” 

In this talk we will look at the psychological difficulties that arise when thinking about liquids and why we insist on doing that, and how we can (intelligently) look at things and describe them even when we don't fully understand why they are the way they are. I will talk about how I ended up doing this in spite of all the red flags, and how liquids can display more than one attribute that 'has no right to exist', and what stumbling upon such attributes teaches us about the fundamental laws governing our world. 

Finally, I will try to convince you that this is not all doom and gloom, and (hopefully) offer some hope for the future, arising mainly from the techno-optimistic view that we now have computing machinery that can perform more calculations in a second than there are seconds in a human lifespan.

Refreshments

Meet us at 16.30 outside the Elm lecture theatre in the Nucleus Building for tea and cakes prior to the talk.