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The Berkeley Math department has TWO seminars on NCG this semester. One is run by graduate students on their own. I went to it Monday. It was good. I'm too cheap to buy the book they are using. Alain Connes has his book called "Noncommutative Geometry" free online at his website. I might be able to follow a few more. tomorrow I'll try the faculty-run seminar.
It's hot. Everybody knows this. The graduate students are looking to do their research in it. Last year both John Barrett and Alain Connes got the Standard Model out of NCG plus some predictions.
There are people here like Alejandro who have studied NCG for years and were at Cambridge Newton Institute listening when Connes was there last year.
It would be nice if some people with NCG savvy would explain some things to the rest of us.
Why I'm especially anxious to learn some in a hurry is this: Jasper Grimstrup and Hans Aastrup have found a way to mate NCG with a new version of LQG that they are working out.
I have seen only their preliminary 2005 and 2006 papers. If things happen as I expect there will be some 2007 papers and some kind of NCG+LQG crossbreed will be a quantum theory of gravity that gives you the Standard Model.
Smolin has been working on another way of doing this (as Carl Brannan and others have discussed here at PF) just since 2005.
Garrett Lisi has a way of doing it which he described at Loops 07.
all this is happening very fast. But Alain Connes approach is longstanding, it goes back to a 1996 paper (or maybe Alejandro knows some earlier). All these other approaches may turn out to work and may be really extraordinary and elegant eventually, while Connes with the help of Grimstrup has the air of working NOW.
It's hot. Everybody knows this. The graduate students are looking to do their research in it. Last year both John Barrett and Alain Connes got the Standard Model out of NCG plus some predictions.
There are people here like Alejandro who have studied NCG for years and were at Cambridge Newton Institute listening when Connes was there last year.
It would be nice if some people with NCG savvy would explain some things to the rest of us.
Why I'm especially anxious to learn some in a hurry is this: Jasper Grimstrup and Hans Aastrup have found a way to mate NCG with a new version of LQG that they are working out.
I have seen only their preliminary 2005 and 2006 papers. If things happen as I expect there will be some 2007 papers and some kind of NCG+LQG crossbreed will be a quantum theory of gravity that gives you the Standard Model.
Smolin has been working on another way of doing this (as Carl Brannan and others have discussed here at PF) just since 2005.
Garrett Lisi has a way of doing it which he described at Loops 07.
all this is happening very fast. But Alain Connes approach is longstanding, it goes back to a 1996 paper (or maybe Alejandro knows some earlier). All these other approaches may turn out to work and may be really extraordinary and elegant eventually, while Connes with the help of Grimstrup has the air of working NOW.