She also worried about the strong personalities she had to deal with in the aerospace industry. “I was always worried that something bad would happen and the private equity guys would kill the industry,” she says. “You have to really want to do business with those types of customers,” she says, referring to the billionaires who currently dominate the world of rocketry and spaceflight.
However, Dr. Pastelski still needed to decide what to pursue as a career. She realized that people she admired thought physics was interesting. “Sometimes I go into a field not because I think it’s cool, but because I think people who think I’m cool are cool,” she said with a smile. She joined Perimeter in 2021 after receiving her PhD at Harvard University and serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.
Perimeter Institute is different from many other organizations. It is not a university or government run institute (which will have its own rules and regulations). Instead, it is an independent nonprofit organization focused on theoretical physics research, training, and support.
“Some universities have really great string theory groups, but you’re never really prioritized,” she says. “Especially when there are so many other areas that are actually relevant, such as industry connections. People want to understand the basic laws of nature, but that’s not a priority.”
“The Perimeter Institute is all about theoretical physics,” she says. “Essentially, they’re in a place where they look after the workflow and the whole thing, including interactions with the public and training.”
This helped Dr. Pastelski expand his thinking about the universe and questions about holography of astronomical objects.
Practical effects of the celestial holography concept
For Dr. Pastelski, the value of the celestial holography initiative lies not only in physics. It’s about connecting different fields. “In our field, that can sometimes be underestimated because we just want to do something new all the time,” she said. “And the problem with doing something new is that no one understands you. You end up going down this rabbit hole of being able to understand the language that you’re talking about.”
This is not only the beauty of the Celestial Holography Initiative at Perimeter; Collaboration with Simmons on celestial holography (A larger and more recent international collaboration, with Dr. Pastelski serving as deputy director). This initiative will enable people from different theoretical fields (from string theory to quantum gravity to mathematical physics) to communicate and collaborate. “There are a lot of people working together looking at the same symmetry from different perspectives. It’s a very natural collaboration, but it’s also very nice because we’re not trained in the same background,” she says. says.
That’s the key for Dr. Pastelski. “When you try to actually explain physics, it gets complicated very quickly,” she admits. “What I’m interested in is the connections between different disciplines, because I think whenever we do mathematics, that’s what we’re actually doing.”
