Operator?

As I was breaking my fast this morning with eggs, Nutella-toast, and coffee, I found myself sitting at my workstation reading a series of articles from Quanta Magazine relating to “The Unravelling of Space Time.” It’s wild stuff. And, quite frankly, despite being translated out of high theory, it is still conceptually difficult at times. The topic fascinates me, however, and as I am interested (and somewhat versed) in both math and physics, I pressed on.

Indeed, when I encoutered the concept of “operator algebras,” I grew curious and tried to discover more about them. As you might expect, given the context in which they are being used (understanding fundamental features of the universe), they are not exactly walk-on maths. And that’s okay for me. I don’t mind having my mind blown at the start of a new investigation.

Funnily enough, one of the papers I encoutered that was introducing the topic began with a quote from Norbert Weiener that found apt to my present situation and generally motivating and important to remember, so I am sharing it here as a fun Friday treat:

“It is not essential for the value of an education that every idea be understood at the time of its accession. Any person with a genuine intellectual interest and a wealth of intellectual content acquires much that he only gradually comes to understand fully in the light of its correlation with other related ideas. . . . Scholarship is a progressive process, and it is the art of so connecting and recombining individual items of learning by the force of one’s whole character and experience that nothing is left in isolation, and each idea becomes a commentary on many others.” — Norbert Wiener