GUEST SPEAKER
Rotary members welcomed guest speaker Elie Wolfe, a post-doctoral research fellow from our community's prestigious Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo. The Institute was founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis.
As an introductory "Wow" factor, Elie stated that while the Perimeter Institute houses 5% of the world's leading physicists, these applied mathematicians are the origin of about80% of the world's "big ideas".
The Institute itself is designed to encourage deep thinking 24/7 with walls of blackboard complemented by dining room tables covered in paper with ample supplies of chalk and pencils to immediately capture ideas as they occur. Even the chimney on a wood-burning fireplace has a blackboard and conversations resulting in collaborative questions and theories are enthusiastically cheered.... an environment encouraging consideration of the laws of science is built into the facility!
All meeting rooms have high tech capabilities and when lectures/seminars are hosted, the entire world is invited and encouraged to tune in during in real time live via the internet.
Elie's presentation theme focused on "quantum physics" and the impact on the importance of encryption in the world - for uses such as banking, election results, finance, military etc.
Encryption requires a high level of security and secrecy enabled by the very laws of physics pertaining to "binary sequences" of zeroes and ones and the absolute need for randomness. That arbitrary sequence of 01100010110 etc. is the necessary component and being able to quantify that randomness for both the sender and the receiver is crucial (and obviously very complicated in order to maintain security).
A few quotes from "Quantum Physics" presentation:
- "If it does, it does; if it doesn't, it doesn't"
- "The only real machine in our environment is the coffee maker than can switch coffee into theories"
and a couple acronyms:
- GPR - Guaranteed Prepared Randomness
- CIC - Closing Imperfect Correlation
and lastly some personal common sense theories:
- "Laws are made to be broken"
- "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"
EDITOR'S OBSERVATIONS
- In the middle of the presentation, I was looking for Sheldon, Howard, Leonard and Raj as I felt that I was in the middle of a TV episode of "The Big Bang Theory"
- Rotary Kitchener Westmount can only half solve passages of encryption as our club membership includes a "Bob" (Kieswetter) but unfortunately we don't have an"Alice" (you had to be at luncheon to understand this observation)
- Final thought - personally, I attended the EinsteinFest Week in 2005 at the Perimeter Institute, and I admit I had the stereotypical opinion that all physicists look like an aging Albert Einstein.... however, the guys at the Institute were much younger, and when I read the notices of meetings and lectures on the bulletin board in the physicists' lounge, I saw a memorable, handwritten message that gave me a new perspective about the physicists. The notice simply stated:
"PARKING LOT TONIGHT"
Be there at 7:00 pm for Road Hockey!
