Talks

Seen to be at the vanguard of the STEM to STEAM movement, Science Gallery is the world’s first university-linked network dedicated to public engagement with science and art with galleries in Atlanta, Dublin, London, Melbourne, and Monterrary. Science Gallery Bengaluru is the first such gallery of the network in Asia with the mandate to deliver a global mission. In this talk, Jahnavi Phalkey will introduce the form and structure of the new institution, and explore with us the ideas that inform the shape of Science Gallery Bengaluru through her journey to answer one question: what does it mean to go beyond science communication towards an engagement with science, and what does history of science have to do with it?

I discuss how quantum mechanical effects prevent violations of causality in low energy processes, even when faster-than-light propagation is possible. At the classical level, faster-than-light propagation can be used to build "time-machine" configurations that violate causality. However, low-energy quantum excitations propagating on these backgrounds lead to divergent backreaction through loop effects. These divergences fully probe the UV dynamics of the system, making it impossible to prepare and describe causality violating configurations in the regime of validity of effective field theory. In light of these results, I conclude that effective field theories with negative Wilson coefficients or Galileon-symmetric interactions are not in tension with causality, despite leading to faster-than-light propagation.