Interesting lineup at the Erice school this September

[marcus]

I put an annoucement of this up in Announcements. There are some other links about it there, if you want more informaltion
http://www.ccsem.infn.it/ef/emfcsc2008/pdf/Poster_ISSP2008.pdf

What I want to do here is comment on the lineup of talks. The BALANCE in the theory topics is really interesting
and also the collegial mix of different QG approaches. looks like fraternizing instead of camps, to me. Winds of change.
First off, I should say it looks like a select company with a choice bunch of lecturers
and put together with a creative perspective on what are the hot theory topics

this might be a great school. BTW it runs for a week: August 29 - September 7.
at a city on the Sicilian coast called Erice originally founded by Greeks.

I'd be interested in hearing other people's comments about the choice of topics in the section called hot theoretical topics.
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In the hot theoretical topics section they have six talks scheduled:Lee Smolin on Loop Quantum Gravity
John Schwarz on Superstring/M
Renate Loll on Dynamical Triangulations Gravity
Sergio Ferrara on SUSY
Zvi Bern on SUGRA
Gerard 't Hooft on Crystalline Gravity

This seems like a pretty good selection of topics to me if you only have six theory lecture slots. Would you agree? Do you have other topics in mind that you would suggest?
The school is part of a series called
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SUBNUCLEAR PHYSICS
This September's is the school's 46th Course: Predicted and Totally Unexpected in the Energy Frontier Opened by LHC

How do you see the talks as fitting in with the theme of "Totally Unexpected at the LHC Frontier"?
For more information
http://www.ccsem.infn.it/

 

[MTd2]

It seems crystalline gravity is a theory that is not new, but I think it is largely unknown. t'Hoof became interested on it recently. There is something about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Crystal

Here's some papers:

http://ceram.agh.edu.pl/~icmmagh/artykuly/237 PLANCK CRYSTAL DSL final.pdf

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0307033

http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/172/172.pdf

http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/re.html#B9

Definitely something I never heard about.