🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul22.160138.25400@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes...
> 
>Indeed, if you check, plasma research, solid state physics, and
>"chaos theory" (better to say "nonlinear dynamical systems theory") are
>all avid consumers and producers of fairly fancy mathematics.    

Not only that, but it's the same mathematics in many cases that makes 
particle physics seem so obscure to the uninitiated.  Group theory, 
renormalization, Lie algebras, etc., are all just as at home in solid 
state physics as particle physics.  Nonlinear dynamics is just a fact 
of life, which manefests itself in all interesting branches of physics.

The only reason that particle physics gets singled out in this regard, IMHO,
it that it gets more air play in general than, say, solid state physics.
How many laypeople who know about Feynman or Carlo Rubia also know about
Wilson, Migdal, Kadanoff, etc.  These guys just don't do PBS specials.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver