Math Is Hard said:
... what is meant by "posters" and "poster sessions"?
An "oral session" means that people who happen to be unlucky enough to be in that room while you're talking will be partly bored stiff and partly amazed that the organizers let such a nut into the building.
A "poster session" means that they can ignore you much more easily. There will be something like 100+ poster sessions running simultaneously over about a 2.5 hour period, if I recall.
The abstract I sent in is this:
"ABSTRACT
Eschewing Einstein's version of gravitation, some quantum gravitation theorists are now exploring Euclidean versions of gravitation. An example is S. W. Hawking's latest paper hep-th/0507171 on quantum mechanics and black holes.
Euclidean relativity poses both a challenge and an opportunity for particle theorists. Traditional particle theory has been restricted by perfect Lorentz symmetry, but it has also been very successful. The strongest restriction is the Coleman-Mandula theorems, which prevent the internal particle symmetries from being written in terms of external geometry. How can we loosen this restriction on the internal symmetries of particles, without losing perfect Lorentz symmetry for their kinematics?
In Hestenes' Geometric Algebra (GA), the tangent vectors of a space-time manifold are associated with the basis vectors of a Clifford Algebra (CA). This provides an algebra that automatically obeys Lorentz symmetry. We will loosen the association by allowing the tangent vectors of the manifold to be associated with arbitrary elements of the CA, provided that the elements we choose satisfy the same commutation relations that the basis vectors satisfy. The resulting algebra is called the ``Particle Internal Symmetry Algebra'' or PISA.
For any spinor, the PISA and the GA will be indistinguishable as they are subalgebras of the same CA. Where there are differences is in how distinct subalgebras, which we can associate with different particles, are related to each other. The natural relations are exponential in form and will produce the sort of symmetry breaking needed to distinguish between different fermions.
For several choices of the space-time manifold, including several varieties of Euclidean relativity, we will obtain parameterizations for converting back and forth between GA and PISA calculations."
Some of the above is somewhat inaccurate. I'll correct before I get there.
Of course I'm really happy to be going. They haven't listed the participants yet or the parallel speakers, but there's one guy that I went to college with who will be there, running a parallel (oral) session. I haven't seen him since oh, 1984 maybe, though we've exchanged emails more recently. When they turned me down for a parallel talk I figured I wouldn't be going. Since I am not affiliated with an institution of higher learning, I expect to be turned down when I apply to physics conferences.
I really can't imagine a more pleasant way to spend four days then to spend it talking about physics with the professionals. I went to two conferences last year, but those were conferences where you didn't have to be "invited" to give a parallel talk.
Carl
