
There didn’t really seem to be any sound solution to my quandary, so I went and met with academics in the strings group and discussed various potential projects in areas such as stringy cosmology and brane worlds, but my inner eco-warrior was still nagging at me. And then, lo, with a little digging around, looking at some of the research interests of members of the other departments, the answer came in the form of topological fluid dynamics.
Well, sort of. This esoteric branch of fluid dynamics isn’t going to be solving the big geophysical problems of the day any time soon, but topological methods provide a powerful way of dealing with stuff like chaotic dynamical systems…like the processes present in climate systems? OK, so it’s a bit tenuous but a step in the right direction.
Besides the potential geophysical applications, the subject is of particular interest as not only do fluid equations pop up everywhere (the Schrödinger equation can be derived from the Navier-Stokes equation for example) but this topological flavour of fluid dynamics shares a lot of the same deep mathematics that I have been utilising to deal with quantum fields and strings – ah, the unity of physics.

The precise form of the project is as yet to take shape, as this is a pretty involved subject I have a relaxing summer ahead, reacquainting myself with fluid dynamics and becoming fluent in the languages of differential geometry, manifolds and group theory before I can look for applications. I will keep you posted…