Matteo Smerlak

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I'm a theoretical physicist, with interests ranging from general relativity to quantum mechanics and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. I'd say the common theme in my research projects is "relativity"—the realization that something is actually much more observer-dependent that I had imagined. I find this idea enormously beautiful, and tend to look for it everywhere. Did you know that your red T-shirt will be blue to me if I run into your arms?

A couple of random ideas:

- One interesting connection between physics and evolution I've come across is the "fluctuation theorem". This mathematical property of stochastic processes turns out to provide a common explanation to the second law of thermodynamics (increase of entropy) and Darwinian evolution (increase of fitness). I've blogged about this on John Baez's "Azimuth" [1]. I'd love to know how you react to this surprising connection, and what outlook you see.

- The result which really got me excited about complex systems is West's and Bettencourt's "scaling law of cities" [2]. As far as I can tell, it's really the first "law of cities". Does it tell us whether cities—like animals—have a maximal size?