Quantum Gravity:

• What is it? There are a variety of sources on web including John Baez's amusing intro to quantum gravity, a short blurb from the Max Planck Institute, and the Wikipedia online encyclopedia entry.
• In the popular press there are a handful of articles on quantum gravity and loop quantum gravity (lQG). The January 2004 Scientific American had an article by Lee Smolin (the author of Three Roads to Quantum Gravity). James Glanz published a NYT profile on Abhay. In 1999 George Johnson of the NYT wrote a "dual profile" of Steve Giddings and Carlo Rovelli. Carlo himself wrote a piece on lQG published in Physics World. On the archives there is an english translation of an article by Rudiger Vaas on lQG published in Bild der Wissenschaft.
• For more technical information on loop quantum gravity (lQG) try the following reviews: Abhay Ashtekar and Jerzy Lewandowski teamed up to write a status report. Some time ago Carlo Rovelli wrote a review of lQG in Living Reviews in Relativity. Now Carlo Rovelli and now have published books! Carlo's Quantum Gravity and Thomas's Modern Canonical Quantum General Relativity. A version of Carlo's is online book! Thomas has a quite accessible set of lecture notes.
• Here is a (somewhat dated) reading guide.

Relativity links:

• The best overall site devoted to web info on special and general relativity is Relativity on the World Wide Web created by Chris Hillman and maintained by John Baez. Among many, many other wonderful things it contains an annotated list of lecture notes and books online at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Places:

• It has been called a quantum gravity observatory (!), the Pierre Auger cosmic ray observatory in the Andes.
• The home page of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at PennState
• Gravitational wave detectors all over the world! In the US, LIGO (Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA). Here's a short introduction by a student at Macalester. In Italy VIGO. In Japan TAMA. In Germany GEO.
• In Vienna, the Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Relativity Group.
• The International lQG Seminar - A research seminar that takes place most Tuesdays at 9am (US Central Time). Audio is distributed via telephone. Slides of the talks and audio are posted.
• Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara.
• Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).
• The NSF Gravitational Physics Program home page
• The Perimeter Institute. Physically located in Waterloo, Canada, PI focuses on foundational issues in quantum theory, quantum gravity, string theory, and cosmology.
• The Syracuse Relativity Group has a fine set of pages.

  Papers

• The online eprint archive papers for many fields of physics and mathematics. In particular, here's gr-qc and the form interface. These archives only contain recent papers (since 1991).
• At SLAC, the SPIRES bibliography search . This contains published papers, too.
• More online mania - a citebase for physics papers.
• Hosted here, there is also a reading guide to the new variables.

  Theoretical Physics:

• t'Hooft's advice for young (of mind) students sparked by theoretical physics.

Spin Network links:

• A link for the Spin Network Primer
• From Greg Egan, an explanation of spin networks. And if you are tickled as some of the rest of us with seeing spin networks and rules for dynamics in a novel, check out Schild's Ladder available from your local net or street bookstore.
• net delights Bar Natan's Rolfsen table of knots

© S. Major 1993-2008 Last modified 14 April 2008