Phymaths podcast # 40 || Dr. John Donoghue

Dr. John Donoghue is a theoretical physicist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is well known for his work on effective field theories of gravity. He has also co-authored two books (links given below). Some links 1) Dynamics of the standard model: https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Standard-Cambridge-Monographs-Cosmology/dp/0521476526 2) A prelude to Quantum Field Theory: https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-Quantum-Field-Theory/dp/0691223483 3) List of Dr. Donoghue's works: https://inspirehep.net/authors/1011544 4) Link to the high energy physics resources page on my website: https://hassaansaleem.com/graduate-level-theoretical-physics-resources-in-progress/ Contact Info My website: hassaansaleem.com Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hassaan.3142/ Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hassaan_PHY Time stamps (0:00) Coming Up (0:20) Intro (0:36) Introduction of the guest (0:56) His 'prelude to QFT' book (6:06) What made him do the 1994 calculation? (10:34) Influence of the 'thooft-Veltman paper (14:15) Using the (+ - - -) metric (15:55) His work on avoiding singularity and its inconclusiveness (20:09) Is the BGV theorem valid in modified gravity? (21:46) Why people are still working on asymptotic safety? (27:49) Is the fixed point a CFT? (29:01) Won't the field theory description break down? (31:12) (People's question) Using machine learning in QFT (33:16) (People's question) Measuring the corrections to Einstein's equation (38:17) (People's question) Why quantize gravity? (42:28) (People's question) Gravity without spacetime (43:36) (People's question) Tackling hard problems in Ph.D. (49:31) (People's question) How to select Ph.D. students? (52:31) (People's question) What problems he wants solved? (55:26) (People's question) Using holography for EFTs (56:45) (People's question) Nonuniversality of lightcones (59:23) (People's question) Probing black holes using EFTs (1:01:37) Goodbye