Arcadian Functor

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out exactly what it is we see. Biologists would like very much to get a better view of complex molecules. How well can we see things at the atomic scale? Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon here is a picture of a GaAs surface taken with a Scanning Tunnelling microscope. These microscopes use a needle probe with a single atom at its tip.

Atomic force microscopy has been used to do surface biology. It is a useful technique for looking at real-time processes involving DNA. Pictures of DNA look just like knotted circles, such as the picture shown.

But can we look closer at these molecules? And what do we really see on the largest scales? Make sure you take a look at the new graphs by the cosmologist Louise Riofrio.

Both Connes and Barrett have new papers out on NCG and the Standard Model.

Connes mentions Barrett’s paper in his paper. He appears to have ironed out a few flaws in the SM picture, but does not claim to explain things such as the number of generations (which we all know comes from orbifold Euler characteristics) or precise particle masses.

Barrett similarly acknowledges the independence of Connes’ work in his paper. Both papers claim to have reached some understanding of neutrino mass generation, based on Connes’ SM. They conclude that one must consider an internal space of signature 6 (mod 8) rather than 0.

Connes considers hopeful possibilities in the conclusion: … or even that the fundamental theory has selected a preferred scale and is a fully unified theory at the operator theoretic level (ie. a kind of spectral random matrix theory where the operator D varies in the symplectic ensemble).