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47-685: The Cornell Theory Center (CTC) was established in 1985 under the direction of Cornell Physics Professor and Nobel Laureate Kenneth G. Wilson . In 1984, the National Science Foundation began work on establishing five new supercomputer centers, including the CTC, to provide high-speed computing resources for research within the United States. In 1985, a team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications began

94-549: A luminiferous aether . Conversely, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect , previously an experimental result lacking a theoretical formulation. A physical theory is a model of physical events. It is judged by the extent to which its predictions agree with empirical observations. The quality of a physical theory is also judged on its ability to make new predictions which can be verified by new observations. A physical theory differs from

141-504: A mathematical theorem in that while both are based on some form of axioms , judgment of mathematical applicability is not based on agreement with any experimental results. A physical theory similarly differs from a mathematical theory , in the sense that the word "theory" has a different meaning in mathematical terms. R i c = k g {\displaystyle \mathrm {Ric} =kg} The equations for an Einstein manifold , used in general relativity to describe

188-404: A certain economy and elegance (compare to mathematical beauty ), a notion sometimes called " Occam's razor " after the 13th-century English philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham), in which the simpler of two theories that describe the same matter just as adequately is preferred (but conceptual simplicity may mean mathematical complexity). They are also more likely to be accepted if they connect

235-500: A form of protoscience and others are a form of pseudoscience . The falsification of the original theory sometimes leads to reformulation of the theory. "Thought" experiments are situations created in one's mind, asking a question akin to "suppose you are in this situation, assuming such is true, what would follow?". They are usually created to investigate phenomena that are not readily experienced in every-day situations. Famous examples of such thought experiments are Schrödinger's cat ,

282-674: A junior faculty member, becoming a full professor in 1970. He also did research at SLAC during this period. In 1974, he became the James A. Weeks Professor of Physics at Cornell. In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on critical phenomena using the renormalization group . He was a co-winner of the Wolf Prize in physics in 1980, together with Michael E. Fisher and Leo Kadanoff . His other awards include

329-489: A lattice, he further shed light on chiral symmetry , a crucial feature of elementary particle interactions. Theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena . This is in contrast to experimental physics , which uses experimental tools to probe these phenomena. The advancement of science generally depends on

376-431: A narrow, triangular site between Hoy Road and Cascadilla Gorge. In 1989, blueprints and material samples were used to simulate new areas of the building before it was complete. Images of the building's stair tower were computed with a ray tracer using soft shadowing techniques. Kenneth G. Wilson Kenneth Geddes " Ken " Wilson (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) was an American theoretical physicist and

423-498: A new branch of mathematics: infinite, orthogonal series . Modern theoretical physics attempts to unify theories and explain phenomena in further attempts to understand the Universe , from the cosmological to the elementary particle scale. Where experimentation cannot be done, theoretical physics still tries to advance through the use of mathematical models. Mainstream theories (sometimes referred to as central theories ) are

470-465: A physical system might be modeled; e.g., the notion, due to Riemann and others, that space itself might be curved. Theoretical problems that need computational investigation are often the concern of computational physics . Theoretical advances may consist in setting aside old, incorrect paradigms (e.g., aether theory of light propagation, caloric theory of heat, burning consisting of evolving phlogiston , or astronomical bodies revolving around

517-486: A pioneer in using computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase transitions —illuminating the subtle essence of phenomena like melting ice and emerging magnetism. It was embodied in his fundamental work on the renormalization group . Wilson was born on June 8, 1936, in Waltham, Massachusetts, the oldest child of Emily Buckingham Wilson and E. Bright Wilson ,

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564-531: A prominent chemist at Harvard University, who did important work on microwave emissions. His mother also trained as a physicist. He attended several schools, including Magdalen College School, Oxford , England, ending up at the George School in eastern Pennsylvania. He went on to Harvard College at age 16, majoring in Mathematics and, on two occasions, in 1954 and 1956, ranked among the top five in

611-566: A system vary depending on the scale over which they are measured. He devised a universal "divide-and-conquer" strategy for calculating how phase transitions occur, by considering each scale separately and then abstracting the connection between contiguous ones, in a novel appreciation of renormalization group theory. This provided profound insights into the field of critical phenomena and phase transitions in statistical physics enabling precise calculations. One example of an important problem in solid-state physics he solved using renormalization

658-469: A wide range of phenomena. Testing the consequences of a theory is part of the scientific method . Physical theories can be grouped into three categories: mainstream theories , proposed theories and fringe theories . Theoretical physics began at least 2,300 years ago, under the Pre-socratic philosophy , and continued by Plato and Aristotle , whose views held sway for a millennium. During

705-540: Is in quantitatively describing the Kondo effect . He extended these insights on scaling to answer fundamental questions on the nature of quantum field theory and the operator product expansion and the physical meaning of the renormalization group. He also pioneered the understanding of the confinement of quarks inside hadrons, utilizing lattice gauge theory , and initiating an approach permitting formerly foreboding strong-coupling calculations on computers. On such

752-740: The Cornell Theory Center ), one of five national supercomputer centers created by the National Science Foundation . In 1988, Wilson joined the faculty at Ohio State University . Wilson moved to Gray, Maine in 1995. He continued his association with Ohio State University until he retired in 2008. Prior to his death, he was actively involved in research on physics education and was an early proponent of "active involvement" (i.e. Science by Inquiry) of K-12 students in science and math. Some of his PhD students include H. R. Krishnamurthy , Roman Jackiw , Michael Peskin , Serge Rudaz , Paul Ginsparg , and Steven R. White . Wilson's brother David

799-539: The EPR thought experiment , simple illustrations of time dilation , and so on. These usually lead to real experiments designed to verify that the conclusion (and therefore the assumptions) of the thought experiments are correct. The EPR thought experiment led to the Bell inequalities , which were then tested to various degrees of rigor , leading to the acceptance of the current formulation of quantum mechanics and probabilism as

846-699: The International Data Corporation 's What the Exascale Era Can Provide report. CAC was an early implementer of cloud computing with the deployment of Red Cloud. CAC also designed and deployed a federated cloud called Aristotle and builds cloud images and containerizes applications for efficiency and portability. Under the Office of the Vice Provost for Research , CAC provides Cornell faculty, staff, and students,

893-572: The Scientific Revolution gathered pace, the concepts of matter , energy, space, time and causality slowly began to acquire the form we know today, and other sciences spun off from the rubric of natural philosophy . Thus began the modern era of theory with the Copernican paradigm shift in astronomy, soon followed by Johannes Kepler 's expressions for planetary orbits, which summarized the meticulous observations of Tycho Brahe ;

940-721: The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition . He was also a star on the athletics track, representing Harvard in the Mile. During his summer holidays he worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . He earned his PhD from Caltech in 1961, studying under Murray Gell-Mann . He did post-doc work at Harvard and CERN. He joined Cornell University in 1963 in the Department of Physics as

987-603: The quantum mechanical idea that ( action and) energy are not continuously variable. Theoretical physics consists of several different approaches. In this regard, theoretical particle physics forms a good example. For instance: " phenomenologists " might employ ( semi- ) empirical formulas and heuristics to agree with experimental results, often without deep physical understanding . "Modelers" (also called "model-builders") often appear much like phenomenologists, but try to model speculative theories that have certain desirable features (rather than on experimental data), or apply

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1034-461: The two-fluid theory of electricity are two cases in this point. However, an exception to all the above is the wave–particle duality , a theory combining aspects of different, opposing models via the Bohr complementarity principle . Physical theories become accepted if they are able to make correct predictions and no (or few) incorrect ones. The theory should have, at least as a secondary objective,

1081-429: The 19th century. Another important event in the 19th century was the discovery of electromagnetic theory , unifying the previously separate phenomena of electricity, magnetism and light. The pillars of modern physics , and perhaps the most revolutionary theories in the history of physics, have been relativity theory and quantum mechanics . Newtonian mechanics was subsumed under special relativity and Newton's gravity

1128-967: The A.C. Eringen Medal, the Franklin Medal, the Boltzmann Medal, and the Dannie Heinemann Prize. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Science and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, both in 1975, and also was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984. In 1985, he was appointed as Cornell's Director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (now known as

1175-608: The Cornell Theory Center, deployed the first IBM Scalable POWERparallel System SP2 supercomputer and first Dell supercomputer , and established a financial solutions center for supercomputing. Today, CAC is a partner on the National Science Foundation XSEDE project, a collection of integrated digital resources and services enabling open science research. CAC is also developing training for TACC's Frontera supercomputer, serving as

1222-476: The Dutchmen Snell and Huygens. In the 18th and 19th centuries Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Leonhard Euler and William Rowan Hamilton would extend the theory of classical mechanics considerably. They picked up the interactive intertwining of mathematics and physics begun two millennia earlier by Pythagoras. Among the great conceptual achievements of the 19th and 20th centuries were the consolidation of

1269-587: The Earth ) or may be an alternative model that provides answers that are more accurate or that can be more widely applied. In the latter case, a correspondence principle will be required to recover the previously known result . Sometimes though, advances may proceed along different paths. For example, an essentially correct theory may need some conceptual or factual revisions; atomic theory , first postulated millennia ago (by several thinkers in Greece and India ) and

1316-419: The applications of relativity to problems in astronomy and cosmology respectively . All of these achievements depended on the theoretical physics as a moving force both to suggest experiments and to consolidate results — often by ingenious application of existing mathematics, or, as in the case of Descartes and Newton (with Leibniz ), by inventing new mathematics. Fourier's studies of heat conduction led to

1363-514: The body of knowledge of both factual and scientific views and possess a usual scientific quality of the tests of repeatability, consistency with existing well-established science and experimentation. There do exist mainstream theories that are generally accepted theories based solely upon their effects explaining a wide variety of data, although the detection, explanation, and possible composition are subjects of debate. The proposed theories of physics are usually relatively new theories which deal with

1410-441: The curvature of spacetime A physical theory involves one or more relationships between various measurable quantities. Archimedes realized that a ship floats by displacing its mass of water, Pythagoras understood the relation between the length of a vibrating string and the musical tone it produces. Other examples include entropy as a measure of the uncertainty regarding the positions and motions of unseen particles and

1457-580: The development of NSFNet , a TCP/IP -based computer network that could connect to the ARPANET at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign . This high-speed network, unrestricted to academic users, became a backbone to which regional networks would be connected. Initially a 56- kbit/s network, traffic on the network grew exponentially; the links were upgraded to 1.5- Mbit/s T1s in 1988 and to 45 Mbit/s in 1991. The NSFNet

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1504-416: The highest order, writing Principia Mathematica . In it contained a grand synthesis of the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler; as well as Newton's theories of mechanics and gravitation, which held sway as worldviews until the early 20th century. Simultaneously, progress was also made in optics (in particular colour theory and the ancient science of geometrical optics ), courtesy of Newton, Descartes and

1551-455: The idea of energy (as well as its global conservation) by the inclusion of heat , electricity and magnetism , and then light . The laws of thermodynamics , and most importantly the introduction of the singular concept of entropy began to provide a macroscopic explanation for the properties of matter. Statistical mechanics (followed by statistical physics and Quantum statistical mechanics ) emerged as an offshoot of thermodynamics late in

1598-570: The interplay between experimental studies and theory . In some cases, theoretical physics adheres to standards of mathematical rigour while giving little weight to experiments and observations. For example, while developing special relativity , Albert Einstein was concerned with the Lorentz transformation which left Maxwell's equations invariant, but was apparently uninterested in the Michelson–Morley experiment on Earth 's drift through

1645-675: The late 1920s. In the aftermath of World War 2, more progress brought much renewed interest in QFT, which had since the early efforts, stagnated. The same period also saw fresh attacks on the problems of superconductivity and phase transitions, as well as the first applications of QFT in the area of theoretical condensed matter. The 1960s and 70s saw the formulation of the Standard model of particle physics using QFT and progress in condensed matter physics (theoretical foundations of superconductivity and critical phenomena , among others ), in parallel to

1692-482: The national research community, and industry with a range of high performance computing and consulting services. Organizations that have participated in CAC's Partner Program include Boeing, Corning, Dell, Ford, HypoVereinsbank, Intel, Microsoft, Pfizer, and start-ups whose technologies have been acquired. The Center is under the direction of David Lifka and Richard Knepper . Rhodes Hall is an eight-story building occupying

1739-419: The process of becoming established and some proposed theories. It can include speculative sciences. This includes physics fields and physical theories presented in accordance with known evidence, and a body of associated predictions have been made according to that theory. Some fringe theories go on to become a widely accepted part of physics. Other fringe theories end up being disproven. Some fringe theories are

1786-607: The rise of medieval universities , the only acknowledged intellectual disciplines were the seven liberal arts of the Trivium like grammar , logic , and rhetoric and of the Quadrivium like arithmetic , geometry , music and astronomy . During the Middle Ages and Renaissance , the concept of experimental science, the counterpoint to theory, began with scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham and Francis Bacon . As

1833-484: The study of physics which include scientific approaches, means for determining the validity of models and new types of reasoning used to arrive at the theory. However, some proposed theories include theories that have been around for decades and have eluded methods of discovery and testing. Proposed theories can include fringe theories in the process of becoming established (and, sometimes, gaining wider acceptance). Proposed theories usually have not been tested. In addition to

1880-704: The technical lead for the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics ( SCiMMA ) project, developing software for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics ( IRIS-HEP ), and designing cyberinfrastructure for the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center . A 175 times faster computation of a CDC hepatitis C model on a CAC MATLAB cloud is noted in

1927-443: The techniques of mathematical modeling to physics problems. Some attempt to create approximate theories, called effective theories , because fully developed theories may be regarded as unsolvable or too complicated . Other theorists may try to unify , formalise, reinterpret or generalise extant theories, or create completely new ones altogether. Sometimes the vision provided by pure mathematical systems can provide clues to how

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1974-472: The theories like those listed below, there are also different interpretations of quantum mechanics , which may or may not be considered different theories since it is debatable whether they yield different predictions for physical experiments, even in principle. For example, AdS/CFT correspondence , Chern–Simons theory , graviton , magnetic monopole , string theory , theory of everything . Fringe theories include any new area of scientific endeavor in

2021-530: The works of these men (alongside Galileo's) can perhaps be considered to constitute the Scientific Revolution. The great push toward the modern concept of explanation started with Galileo , one of the few physicists who was both a consummate theoretician and a great experimentalist . The analytic geometry and mechanics of Descartes were incorporated into the calculus and mechanics of Isaac Newton , another theoretician/experimentalist of

2068-721: Was a major milestone in the development of the Internet and its rapid growth coincided with the development of the World Wide Web . In the early 1990s, in addition to support from the National Science Foundation , the CTC received funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency , the National Institutes of Health , New York State , IBM Corporation, SGI, and members of the center's Corporate Research Institute. The center's focus

2115-470: Was also a professor at Cornell in the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics until his death, and his wife since 1982, Alison Brown, is a prominent computer scientist. He died in Saco, Maine, on June 15, 2013, at the age of 77. He was respectfully remembered by his colleagues. Wilson's work in physics involved formulation of a comprehensive theory of scaling: how fundamental properties and forces of

2162-422: Was given a kinematic explanation by general relativity . Quantum mechanics led to an understanding of blackbody radiation (which indeed, was an original motivation for the theory) and of anomalies in the specific heats of solids — and finally to an understanding of the internal structures of atoms and molecules . Quantum mechanics soon gave way to the formulation of quantum field theory (QFT), begun in

2209-567: Was on developing scalable parallel computing resources for its user community and applying their expertise in parallel algorithm development and optimization to a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. In 1995, the building that houses what was then known as the Cornell Theory Center was named Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall which currently houses the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing. The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing, and its predecessor

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