Selected by IBS as one of the Korean students who will participate in ASC 2015, I took a flight to Thailand on August 2, 8:00 a.m. full of expectationns. After five hours, the plane arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. From there, I took about an hour long bus ride to the Sirindhorn Science Home, one of the ASC venues located inside the Thailand Science Park. Later, while enjoying a welcome dinner held at the building, I met student participants from various Asian countries.
The students were grouped according to their mojor or fields of interest. I was placed in Class D, which consisted of those who were or would be majoring in physics and/ or mathematics. Each student’s self-introduction was unique, relection their ambitions as future scientists. A student from Israel shook hands with me and said, “I’m very interested in cosmology, and I’m looking forward to Professor Murayama’s lecture on dark matter tomorrow. I want to know more about the WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) model, which is a well-known theory to explain dark matter. I hope that the professor will cover a lot about WIMPs tomorrow.” I was very excited at the thought of spending a week exchanging scientific knowledge and ideas with friends from various countries.

Discussing cosmology with Professor Murayama

The second day of the ASC 2015 started with a welcome speech by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. I was deeply impressed with her speech because I could feel her patriotic aspiration for the prosperity of her country through the development of science and technology. Right after the speech, Professor Hitoshi Murayama’s “Introduction to Cosmology” lecture session began.
Before taking up the main subject, Professor Murayama raised three questions regarding all life forms: how did the universe start; what is the destiny of the universe; and where and what did we come from? Then, he presented a photo and mentioned the theory of evolution, which, he said, was one possible answer to the third question from a biological point of view. However, the professor said that during the session, he would like to introduce different viewpoints on the origin of life. He explained that life did not originate from a cell nor a primitive organism, but form the universe; that the universe began with the Big Bang; and that we still did not know much about what had happened after the Big Bang and how the universe had been shaped into what it is today.

Korean students at the ASC 2015

Emphasizing the importance of dark matter, which is considered one of the most mysterious substances that we know of, Professor Murayama introduced to us evidence that dark matter does exist throughout the universe. Discovered while examining a collision between two galaxies, the evidence strongly supports the argument of some astronomers in the late 1970s that several galaxies, including our galaxy, could not be kept stable with the gravity generated by their visible matter only. A research team found that a theoretical calculation of the center of the mass of a new galaxy, which had been created by the collision of two galaxies a million years ago, did not match the center of the mass calculated experimentally through the real observation of the galaxy. Consequently, the research team inferred the existence of dark matter particles that do not carry any electric charge nor interact with one another on any significant level. Throughout his lecture, Professor Murayama lit up the entire classroom with his humor, charisma, and systematic delivery of content regarding cosmology, which is a very complicated scientific field.
Because I have been very interested in not only mathematics but topics in physics such as the universe and particles, I had many questions to ask after his lecture and actively participated in the subsequent “camp” session.
During the camp session, Professor Murayama explained in detail what is known about dark matter and dark energy, and introduced three scenarios regarding the ultimate fate of the universe. After that, the students were allowed to ask questions. The following Q&A with Professor Murayama will remain one of the best experiences I ever had:

Q “During the plenary session, you told us that WIMPs are one of the strongest candidates for dark matter. Then, can strongly interacting particles be a candidate as well? If so, they would be capable of interacting, unlike WIMPs, with the rest of the matter and the energy in the universe. If this is the case, what are the implications for the universe as a whole?

A: “Actually, that question is an excellent one because I have just published a paper about WIMPs last week! So, let me elaborate a little more about that. Currently, there are a lot of different suspected models for dark matter including WIMPs and so on. The reason for this is that we can only observe the upper limit of the strength of dark matter’s interactive forces within the galaxy at this point. Thus, we consider any model of dark matter valid as long as it does not exceed the upper limit of that strength or energy. In conclusion, we are quite open to many theories of dark matter as its properties remain quite unknown to us.”

Q: “Currently, physicists are viewing the universe at the microscopic level such as conducting experiments to prove the existence of the Higgs boson or the validity of superstring theories. But can’t we view the universe rather macroscopically? For example, I thought that we could determine the topological structure of the universe by extending William Thurston’s ‘classification of three-dimensional manifolds’ to the classification of four-dimensional manifolds. To elaborate a little more, I think that if wormholes do exist, we could say that the structure of the universe is isomorphic to a four-dimensional torus.”

A: “Some physicists are working on that problem too, but those hypotheses are mostly based on hyperbolic geometry, in which the sum of all of the inner angles of a triangle may not be equal to 180 degrees. We determine a manifold’s topological structure by calculating the sum of the inner angles of a triangle drawn on that manifold and verifying whether it is bigger or smaller than 180 degrees. So, physicists designate three different places in the universe and make a triangle so that they can compute the sum of the inner angles and go through the same process I have just mentioned. But I think your idea is a great one too, because the process that today’s physicists are working on can only determine the structure of a tiny part of the universe while yours could determine the structure of the universe as a whole.”

Inspired by the visions of great scientists and mathematicians

Our group’s poster submitted for the poster presentation

During the ASC 2005, a series of keynote lectures, camp sessions, and dialogue sessions were conducted, among which the time spent with Professor Yongyuth Yuthavong and Professor Vladimir Voevodsky, a Fields Medalist, were most memorable.
has become fascinated with the foundations of mathematics, as well as his scientific orientation and prospects for the future of science. His career as a mathematician started during his childhood, when he had pneumonia and was forced to do almost nothing but lie in bed most of the time. One day, a friend lent him a Rubik’s Cube and he spent entire days trying to solve the puzzle. In doing so, he discovered a talent and a passion for mathematics within himself and decided to become a mathematician. Thereafter, he majored in mathematics and spent a lot of time attempting to prove various mathematical theorems and conjectures. After he published a proof of Grothendieck’s theorem, he found an error in the proof and had to correct it. This experience served as a momentum for him to adopt a more skeptical attitude towards his own research. He began viewpoints to provide a clue to the secret of life. Besides that, we prepared a message regarding the need to seek sustainable lifestyle choices in order to respect and preserve all life forms that have been created through complicated processes. Our poster was praised by the committee for its originality in suggesting interdisciplinary convergence, and we received the Bronze Award. I still remember the moment in which I cheered loudly with my team members.

On the fourth day of the ASC 2015, we took an excursion to the Ayutthaya Historical Park, where I could learn about the history of Thailand and experience the country’s unique food, clothing, and shelter. At a farewell party on the last day, participating students introduced the culture of their respective countries. I was filled with emotion because I could exchange friendship with many Asian students and perceive them as colleagues.
The ASC 2015 was a very valuable experience for me. I was able to gain academic knowledge from some of the great scholars of our time, learn about the attributes of a good scientist, and confirm my vision of becoming a worldclass mathematician and scientist. I will cherish my precious memory of the camp. Finally, there is one quotation, from Professor Ada Yonath’s lecture, that I would like to always keep in my mind: “I do not consider myself a ‘woman scientist,’ but a ‘scientist.’”

Written by Su-Min Yu | 2nd grade student at the Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies