New Era of Relevant Science

After a stay of 8 months at CME, I am back in Theoretical Work.

Recently Stephen W. Hawking published a fundamental paper.

"Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes".

I have worked on these ideas since 1973. At this, and other blogs, I have written a few things about Information. In this note I connect to the Hawking's work, delivered this Summer at the Kavli Institute of my alma mater, UCSB. The note linked above is from that talk.

The unifying theme is Information Engine.

Before I go there, some history is relevant.

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.

I believe that human needs made the development of Thermodynamics, unavoidable. It was the generation of Willard Gibbs, in the US, and Sadi Carnot in France, among others, which made it possible. Human needs, drive scientific progress.

When I was a young man in Mexico City, I went to soccer training every other day, and every time I passed by the IBM office on Insurgentes Avenue, I wistfully hoped to one day, work on one of those information engines. I did feel that these engines, needed a new Thermodynamics. In 1968 I set myself to do just that. I switched from Electrical Engineering, to Physics.

I trained as a Theoretical Physics at UCSB, under the direction of Professor Robert L. Sugar on Quantum Electrodynamics. All along though, I had my eyes set to the Information Theory, of Claude Shannon. I felt in my gut that Information Engines would lead to a New Theory of Physics.

The paper of Hawking, is the beginning of this New Kind of Science, so aptly named by Stephen Wolfram.