Thermonuclear Korean EMP may send America back to the Stone Age

North Korea is a rogue country but whether you like it or not, it's also a country that has achieved certain things and it could be extremely unwise to overlook, deny, or mock these achievements.

Last January, when I wrote the blog post North Korea goes thermonuclear, we weren't actually sure whether the latest explosion was due to a Hydrogen bomb.



Well, yesterday's Magnitude 6.3 earthquake wasn't too natural. Because the estimated power is more than an order of magnitude above the previous one, I guess that this time, the explosion was almost certainly thermonuclear.

I can't say "welcome to the club" because Czechia hasn't managed to build even the most ordinary nuclear weapons. So maybe "welcome, our new overlords". ;-)

Caring about math of equations and math of solutions

A reader of the Tetragraviton blog named nueww highlighted an interesting footnote on page 126 of Polchinski's memories (arXiv):

Morrison came to UCSB from Duke about ten years ago, with a joint position in math and physics. He plays a unique role in tying these subjects together. He and I have an ongoing friendly dispute about whether I know much math (I claim not). I think that the difference goes back to Susskind’s distinction between the mathematics of the equations and the mathematics of the solutions, where I care only about the former.

David Morrison is a very smart string theorist who was trained as a mathematician. Well, he – and others – weren't just trained as mathematicians. I think that they were born and hardwired to think as mathematicians. The memes in the quote above – invented and promoted by Susskind and Polchinski – seem to crisply demystify the difference between the psychology of a mathematician and the psychology of a theoretical physicist.

Lidl supermarket chain desecrated churches† in Greece

Last time when I talked about the Lidl discount supermarket chain – which should be opening its first shops in the U.S. now – it was about the Czechs' legitimate preference of models that look like us.†



Well, it's a Greek Week in Lidl right now. The next week is the Bombshell Prices Week. See the Lidl fliers. I like these events so among other things, I bought four frozen packages of Eridanous food. It's a brand that belongs to Lidl, the products are made in Germany, but otherwise they're supposed to look perfectly Greek.†

Joe Polchinski's memories

While Joseph Polchinski was dealing with a brain injury – this phrase [which is probably a misspelled "surgery"] sounds much nicer than the ugly C-word – he found it an order of magnitude more difficult to work. Steve Shenker and Derek Westen have noticed that Joe's writing was crisp and excellent so he could do what a string theorist may always do even when he's temporarily reduced to 10% of his mental capacity – to become a writer.

Polchinski just published these

Memories of a Theoretical Physicist

I sincerely wish that with hindsight, the timing of these memories will be considered utterly non-essential!



If you start to read the memories, you will realize that you have already heard about the beginning. Joe Joe left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some Californian grass.

An anti-quantum crackpot article in Quanta Magazine

The Quanta Magazine hasn't been hijacked by anti-quantum zealots for some time but this hiatus was compensated yesterday when

Quantum Theory Rebuilt From Simple Physical Principles

written by Philip Ball was released. Well, yes, even though crackpots generally find this simple point hard to understand, quantum theory is built on simple physical principles – they are known as the universal postulates of quantum mechanics.

Brian Greene's man-made hurricanes

Amazing Orwell: Have you recently tried to search for a white couple on Google Images? Hat tip: Mark Collett, Pavel Ryska. Update: more amazing queries here.

Most of you remember the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It has killed almost 4,000 people (Katrina was the main contributor), caused almost $160 billion in damages, and led climate fearmongers to say that every single year would bring the same or increasing number of hurricanes to America.

Well, it just turned out that the following 11 seasons saw mostly below-the average storm activity. Even more strikingly, the United States of America have experienced a record-breaking 11.8 years without a major hurricane landfall – since Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. Those predictions about the strengthening hurricanes haven't worked at all, have they? Has someone been arrested or at least fired because of these bogus forecasts? I don't think so.

Now, a regular and average major hurricane, Category 4 Hurricane Harvey, has visited the U.S. again. The casualties are around 20 so far – negligible relatively to Katrina – and the losses are estimated between $10 billion and $50 billion dollars which are significantly smaller than those in 2005, too. Condolences to those who have been affected – and I wish good luck to those who are making decisions.

I don't think that Harvey is a globally important event and I am not really following it. A hurricane like that is expected to materialize a few times a year and arrive to the U.S. every other year or so.

Palermo moves from Sicily to Czechia

When a billionaire is a finance minister, you may be worried about a clash of interests. What does he do with a guy who owns a part of the same hall as the minister's chemical company and whose wagon blocks the minister's view?



Well, the video above – especially the events from 1:00 – approximately show the events. Comrade Andrej Babiš, a former top-tier communist and a secret police snitch, has bragged about his power many times. He has also publicly complained about our country's being like Sicily – except that he forgot to tell us he was the only big gangster around.

(BTW La Piovra, the series about the Italian mafia, was aired on Czechoslovak TVs in the 1980s during communism – I guess that this was one of the films that have gotten the permission from the communist bosses more quickly than others because the Italian society isn't pictured too flatteringly.)

On Sunday, the Twitter Skupina_Suman (The Julius Šuman Group, his critic[s] – whose identity is still eluding the current intelligence – funnily nicknamed after Babiš's commander at the communist secret police) has released about the fifth secret recording with Babiš's voice and it may be the most dramatic one yet.

Founder of Czechoslovakia was a royal bastard of the last major Austrian emperor

The evidence backing the yummy theory seems very strong to me

I have previously heard about the theory but only yesterday, I was reading the evidence systematically, thinking about the chronology, and the theory looks persuasive to me.



OK, it's all about these two men. The right one is Francis Joseph I of Austria, an Austrian emperor. He was born in August 1830 and his reign lasted almost 68 years, from December 1848 to November 1916 (his death). For the last two years of the war, Austria-Hungary was ruled by Charles I of Austria.

OK, Francis Joseph I – nicknamed Old Procházka [=Walk, #6 most frequent Czech surname] in the Czech lands because of one of two stories – was our beloved emperor. But the monarchy became an anachronism, nation states were guaranteed to be born on its ruins in 1918, and the most important new country that was created was Czechoslovakia, with the capital of Prague, the "third capital" of Austria-Hungary. And Thomas Garrigue Masaryk [the middle name was taken from his U.S. wife Charlotte Masaryk] was Czechoslovakia's key founder and the first president (for almost 20 years).

Velvet divorce: 25 years later, it's a reason for pride

Exactly 25 years ago, on August 26th, 1992, Czech and Slovak prime ministers Václav Klaus and Vladimír Mečiar, the winners of the elections, reached the agreement that they would peacefully dissolve Czechoslovakia.



On that day, pictures such as this one by the well-known adventurous photographer Mr Jef Kratochvíl of Brno were (mostly illegally) taken in the garden of Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Moravia, one of the pioneering gems of Europe's modern functionalist architecture (which I find just a little bit prettier than the similar communist concrete-block architecture of the late 20th century but let me avoid criticisms here).

At that time, most Czechs would probably prefer the continuation of Czechoslovakia that they identified with. Most Slovaks either wanted some independent state or a much looser union, a confederacy of a sort, that was considered a messy third way by the elected Czech political elite. At any rate, as Václav Klaus mentioned today, they had the unusual window of opportunity to do something that wouldn't be possible today – because the European Union would try to "ban it" with all possible tools.

Germany had lots of its problems after the unification, there was a war in Yugoslavia, tension in Russia etc., so everyone was willing to give Czechs and Slovaks lots of room to rearrange their statehood. And as we know today, it was a clear success.

Trump had moral duty to pardon political prisoner Arpaio

The Trump presidency that most of the American voters celebrated after the 2016 election is dead, Steve Bannon said. Well, parts of it look dead but thankfully, there are other parts the look alive and kicking to me.



Joe Arpaio is 85-year-old, has served America at least since the Korean War, and became famous for his effective fight against the illegal immigration when he was a sheriff in Arizona, the true men's zona. ;-) In his campaign against the illegal immigration, he assumed that

if it looks like an illegal immigrant, walks like an illegal immigrant, quacks like an illegal immigrant, lacks the official documentation just like the illegal immigrants do, it's probably an illegal immigrant.

My understanding is that he has never tangibly hurt or restricted someone who wasn't an illegal immigrant. But just like Europe, America is filled with organized activists who find the illegal immigration desirable. So they're telling you: You aren't allowed to look whether someone looks like an illegal immigrant, listen whether he quacks like an illegal immigrant, and you're not even allowed to take his lack of documentation into account.

And some judges have issued verdicts with these ludicrous statements, too.

Even after the November 2016 election won by those who are largely convinced that Arpaio was doing the right thing, some posthumous children of the Obama presidency among the judges were working hard to make life complicated for Mr Arpaio. He was charged with "contempt of court" – a typical type of crime that is easily abused by politically motivated fake trials (the name of the crime surely sounds like "the judge doesn't like you") – and he was expected to be sentenced to 6 months in prison plus fines.

Czech Catholic leader: we're in the state of war

Dominik Duka is the Archbishop of Prague and the Primate of Bohemia. His boss Francis in the Vatican recently said that countries should make the life comfortable for illegal immigrants even if it means the self-destruction of the European country. Well, not every official in the Catholic Church is a perfidious man in this sense. Here's an interview with Duka translated from a Czech business day.



Terrorism is the state of war but we're unwilling to admit it. Political correctness has morphed into a lie, Cardinal Duka says
Interview by Mr Petr Honzejk, Mr Tomáš Pergler

• Political correctness has morphed into an outright lie. Conservatively thinking people are at risk of a lynch by the media, Dominik Duka says
• According to the head of the Czech Catholics, people don't have a genuine will to solve problems posed by terrorism and admit that we are in the state of war
• He claims that foster parentship is a form of slavery

Cardinal Duka doesn't mince the words. When he talks about foster parents, he says that they're essentially slave owners. Conservative people are at risk of a modern form of the Inquisition which is why they prefer to escape from the public debate.

On the contrary, he has a favorable attitude to President Zeman. Zeman's critics inside the Church should act with the appreciation of Zeman's being the head of state.

LIGO/Virgo may have detected a merger of neutron stars

On August 18th, a Texan astronomer started a wave of speculation by this tweet:

New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!

— J Craig Wheeler (@ast309) August 18, 2017

And as far as I can say, this tweet – along with somewhat more specific tweets by astronomer Peter Yoachim hours later – may be the only "original" reason for the speculations so far. Nevertheless, Ethan Siegel at Forbes wrote the following two days ago:

Beyond Black Holes: Could LIGO Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars For The First Time?

And other sources that promoted the rumor include: The Daily Mail, Nude Socialist, Telescoper, Starts With A Bang, Wired, National Geographic, Quanta Magazine, The Independent, Science Alert, Nature, SciAm, NY Post, others.



That would really be cool.

How to create objects inside black holes by outside operators

An anonymous reader has encouraged me to write this short review that I wanted to write for a few days.



Schrödinger's cat is jumping to a black hole. Will it be reincarnated as Heisenberg's German shepherd?

Recall that Kyriakos Papadodimas of CERN – whom I remember as a very bright Harvard grad student – is one of the folks who have, in my humble opinion, understood the lessons from the last two decades of the research of string theory and quantum gravity and their implications for the black hole interior and its (incomplete) independence from the exterior world. In particular, he and Suvrat Raju have written papers analyzing how the local field operators seem to be approximately embedded into Hilbert spaces including finitely many black hole microstates. One of the surprising lessons was that the local operators, especially those inside the black holes, must be embedded in a space-dependent way.

Days ago, Kyriakos submitted his new, 56-page-long paper:

A class of non-equilibrium states and the black hole interior.

He is proposing a simple Ansatz for states of a black hole that don't quite look like a black hole with the empty interior. Instead, some objects are created inside the black hole. And he can create these objects just with the help of some operators that are naturally outside the black hole – specifically, using operators that have a simple enough form in the CFT description of the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Quanta Magazine's dirty political propaganda

Based on my experience with similar left-wing activist websites, I believe there is a high probability that my comment under a disgusting Quanta Magazine article

A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right

by Juan Cristóbal Cobo will be censored. So I am going to post a copy here.

This article is a despicable pile of trash.

Before 1989, we were exposed to the communist propaganda. Folks like Václav Havel were periodically presented as "the same" as the Nazis, some links of Havel's relatives to the fascist regime were totally invented, others were blown out of any proportion. All of this stuff was driven by the ideological agenda.