Symmetry factor

I actually don’t know how to become famous, it’s just a catchy title… anyways, besides other things, I wanted to share an encounter that my collaborators and I had with the popular press after we wrote this paper. I got a phone call the next day after the paper appeared on arXive from this journalist, who wanted to talk about it. Since I’m on sabbatical, I only got an e-mail from him a day later asking for the interview and phone number of my postdoc, Cosimo Bambi, who eventually talked to him and quite successfully (he was named a head of our little collaboration — excellent publicity for him, I’m quite happy about that)! So, at the end, this article appeared in New Scientist… and then got reprinted here and here, and here and …. (interestingly, Russian versions are a bit better in the description).

Another thing I wanted share is this. Being in Michigan, one feels the problems of US automobile industry almost firsthand. One thing that I heard on the radio yesterday is that General Motors had one of the worst years in their history loosing 38 billion dollars last year. That’s $38,000,000,000! In one year. And still going! Now, International Linear Collider will cost about 15 billion dollars. With approximately only 1/2 paid by the country who’ll be hosting it. And spread over at least 10 years. And might not happen if funding is not secured. My message is that $15B is a big number for an average person, but not so big for a company, let alone a country (or several countries)…