Maldacena, a distinguished genius

Alfredo Leuco’s editorial on Radio Miter.

December 17, 2021 21:58

First the news. Physicist Juan Martín Maldacena, a graduate of the Balseiro Institute, was distinguished with the highest award given by the Chamber of Deputies.

Remotely and through a video conference, Juan Bautista Alberdi received the Honorable Mention. The initiative came from a radical San Luis deputy named José Luis Riccardo, who is also a physicist.

This news has a story. I have been following the career of Maldacena. And I never tire of repeating his wonderful story.

I want to share with you another great news: it is possible to travel to the future. But that is not all. The author of this wonderful find is the Argentine scientist Juan Martín Maldacena who is one step away from being a Nobel Prize winner. You can travel to the future. Can you imagine?

I want to tell you this story because it is the other side of the dark decadence that we are going through. This government pushes us all the time to the past and fights the merit.

Such a reactionary attitude is incomprehensible. And on top of that they say progressives and a government of scientists. They are regressive or reactionary and it is a mediocre government. For this reason, I believe that this experience will enlighten us. So as not to lose hope. Neither in the future, nor in the merit that drives upward social mobility.

The work of Maldacena It seems like a science fiction story, but it is the purest reality. It ensures that it is possible that we will very soon find a wormhole that can transport us through our galaxy without the need for a ship.

A wormhole is two black holes connected to each other by tunnels that are 10 thousand kilometers wide, more or less, the diameter of the earth. These cosmic objects from quantum physics connect two very distant places in the universe.

They can be thousands of light years away. He says Maldacena that traveling to the future is possible without violating the laws of physics.

Whom Maldacena? In Italy, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics awarded him the Galileo Galilei medal. Experts say that at age 50 he has already received all the highest distinctions. Only the Nobel is missing. Telephone for Sweden …

Maldacena He is honest, hard-working, caring and a genius that we don’t quite recognize. Ask your child’s school if anyone knows Maldacena and many will ask what soccer team he plays for. So it goes.

It is very good that Lionel Messi and his magic dribbles fill us with pride. But we also have to get excited and turn the Messi of science into idols or social heroes, role models.

Juan Maldacena It should lift our spirits and not allow the Lazars or the Christines to win. Juan Martín Maldacena was the first Latin American to receive the “Lorentz Medal” awarded by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands.

Everyone says it is the prelude to the Nobel Prize. And they provide a numerical argument: of the 21 scientists who received that medal, then 11 made it to the Nobel.

Maldacena it is a giant of neurons and gray matter. I have been following him since June 1999. 22 years ago I wrote the first column about Maldacena playing with the title “El Einstein de Caballito”. Half jokingly and half seriously I said that the new Albert Einstein lived right around my house.

You are going to think that I am crazy, that I was shot by a chip. But I am telling you the truth and nothing but the truth. What’s more, I’ll repeat it in case you didn’t hear it: the new Einstein lived just around the corner from my house.

He does not belive me? Do you want me to give you more information? Maldacena he is barely 53 years old. He was born in Caballito and knew how to be on the cover of various newspapers around the world because he won the Yuri Milner, which is a prize for fundamental physics that consists of three million dollars.

Did you hear well? Three million dollars. I give you a piece of information to compare. The Nobel Prize awards just one million two hundred thousand dollars.

Another exciting fact: a large part of that award became a generous donation for the Balseiro Institute, where it always returns to train students. But this is not all.

At the age of 30, Juan, received in Budapest one of the greatest recognitions that exist in the field of science and was the cover of the New York Times. What do you tell me? We could make a movie titled: “Juan, de Caballito a Budapest”.

Or rather, to Harvard, because there at Harvard, this former neighbor of the Caballito neighborhood moves at the top of educational excellence. He is the youngest life professor in Harvard history.

To Juan Martin Maldacena we should take him to the top of the podium and award him a giant gold medal. On merit, of course. Too bad he is despite the Fernández who attack the merit.

Maldacena He is the creator of a revolutionary theory that made him the darling of modern physics and one of the most popular and influential scientists on the planet.

Many scientific publications wonder if we are not in the presence of a new Albert Einstein. It is precisely that his great discovery has to do with that universal emblem of knowledge.

Juan formulated a new theory that better explains how the universe is formed and how it works. A paw, right? I repeat: how the universe is formed and how it works. And many times I cannot program the remote control of the TV.

This theory was baptized “The Maldacena conjecture” and managed to unify works that seemed irreconcilable: Einstein’s theory of relativity and that of quantum mechanics. That is why I tell you that the new Einstein was born just around the corner from my house in Caballito.

And because he is a professor at the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the same one where Einstein worked and died.

Until the age of 15 he lived in Avenida La Plata and Guayaquil. Juan is the product of the upward social mobility of a typical middle-class family that was able to send his son to university.

Luis, an engineer and Carmen, an English translator, Juan’s parents were able to give their other two daughters a higher education as well.

From that dream of “My son the doctor” by Florencio Sánchez to that utopia of progress that is that our children are better and happier than us.

Juan studied two years in Exact Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. And then in our scientific mecca of the Balseiro Institute of Bariloche. It’s like a way of saying that we can. If we ever could, we can. As the motto of the wonderful Argentine expedition of Atlantis says: “Let man know that man can”.

It is exciting to remember when he received the “Javed Husain” award in Hungary before 2,000 scientists, one more bocho than the other.

I was 30 years old. And the largest scientific centers in the world wanted to sign him on their campus. It is enough to say that last name and among the most prominent intellectuals they know that Argentina is being talked about.

CNN and Time magazine bet on him as the future leader. And when did the Olympic turn? I try to explain it in simple words as I understood that I am a humble and ignorant mortal.

My former neighbor of Caballito related and unified the “Theory of Relativity” that describes the functioning of objects as large as stars, galaxies or the universe itself with the theory of quantum mechanics that analyzes the behavior of infinitesimal worlds such as electrons or the Quarks. That’s how far I go and I don’t continue because my brain explodes.

Juan is a practicing Catholic and was decorated by John Paul II like the late Steven Hawking, with whom he also worked and years ago became a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

It lives among complex equations, molecules, the cosmos, and black holes. He works in a 5-dimensional space called hyperbolic. She writes everything down on paper and pencil and the computer leaves her alone to answer emails and surf the internet.

But Juan misses the mountains of Bariloche that he used to climb, and our folk music, with guitar and bass drum. With his neurons, Juan knew how to generate unusual things.

At a very important convention of these superior minds, one from the University of Chicago changed the letter from “Macarena” to “Maldacena”.

He remembers? “Give joy to your body Maldacena” and all joined the chorus of the most popular song in contemporary history in the United States and that was the basis of Bill Clinton’s electoral campaign.

Give joy to your theory Maldacenathe boys sang. Give joy to Argentina, Maldacena, we could sing ourselves in these times of anger.

Although some disbeliever says: that he will sing well Maldacena if you live around the corner from home. He is a celestial and white Einstein. Those who award the Nobel already know that they can travel to the future.