Adding feathers to the e-lecture series started by PSS, the second talk was delivered by Dr. Abhinav Pratap Singh, Assistant Professor department of Physics at NIT Jalandhar, on the topic "Nobel Prize in Physics, 2021: Dealing with chaos in nature". This time it was conducted in dual mode (online/offline). The lecture started with the main idea that universe cannot be reconstructed if you know all the fundamental laws. He referred that the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded "for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems". Then he introduced us with the chaotic systems. He explained their characteristics by taking simple example of population dynamics and listed the characteristics of chaotic systems. He emphasized that how even the slightest change in the initial conditions will change the future prediction drastically when the complex systems are concerned. He provided simple definition of chaos and made us aware about the concept of fractals in complex systems. He emphasized that the normal regions are embedded in chaos and vice-versa. There was another concept of 1/f(pink) noise that illustrated that large events are more rare. He stated that weather is a chaotic system and there is a 1/f noise in weather as well. He further discussed the misconception that temperature is increasing not due to human deeds but due to it's inherence was removed by Manabe and Hasselmann. He also highlighted the keywords "radiative convective equilibrium of the atmosphere" in the work of Manabe that got him the Nobel Prize and also that the convective model was developed by Manabe. He said if we double the concentration of Carbon dioxide then it will lead to an increase of 2.36°C in earth's temperature. He introduced the work of Hasselmann who worked on "Stochaistic climate models". He said that weather can not be predicted so Hasselmann assumed that future weather to be random and he used this concept mathematically to predict long term climate changes. He showed the forensic report provided by Hasselmann. He had drawn conclusions from the contributions of Manabe and Hasselmann. He introduced us the work of Giorgio Parisi and it's topic was "The order parameter for spin glasses: A function on the interval 0-1".He explained Parisi's work by beginning with symmetry breaking where he emphasized that order parameters characterize symmetry breaking. He said that the system of glasses is difficult to study so Parisi studied spin glasses and the problem at hand was that J ( the exchange operator) is known but r is random. So he made us aware of the Edwards-Anderson model which removed the space position disorder and distributed the value of J randomly to solve the problem at hand. He claimed that Parisi corrected the EA model by modifying the order parameter given earlier which followed Parisi's contributions. There is much more he discussed that showed how complex systems, Parisi's work and spin glasses are connected with each other.

-Story by ADITYA TARAR


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