Interview with Jarmo Mäkelä, the FQXI winner.

Top prize of $10,000 and FQXi Membership goes to ...

Jarmo Mäkelä from Vaasa University of Applied Sciences in Vaasa, Finland, for his essay "Is Reality Digital or Analog" recording a late-night conversation with Isaac Newton. In his essay, Jarmo reports that Newton decidedly told him "Digital, of course".

In Vasabladet today is an article about the FQXI-winner, Jarmo Mäkelä, after a hint from me.


'Physicistwinner likes blackholes' is the title. A scanned picture from the newspaper.

He works as a teacher, sinse 10 years, in math and physics at Vaasa Technical Highschool educating engineers (information and data). He says he enjoys his work. Most of the students comes from abroad, and the teaching language is english. His research is mainly theoretic, as a hobby. He looks at gravitation and blackholes. This prize has no practical influence for his future, but is seen mostly in his CV.

Jarmo is 47 years old, from Seinäjoki (about 50 km's from my work), did his thesis at Jyväskylä University. He has a wife and two kids. Interests: physical exercise, skiing, classic music and history.

Quite scare information.

A search gave these:
From wikipedia:
Jarmo Mäkelä (2010). "Notes Concerning "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton" by E. Verlinde (arXiv:1001.0785)". arXiv:1001.3808
We point out that certain equations which, in a very recent paper written by E. Verlinde, are postulated as a starting point for a thermodynamical derivation of classical gravity, are actually consequences of a specific microscopic model of spacetime, which has been published earlier.
E.P. Verlinde. "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton". JHEP 04, 29 (2011). doi:10.1007/JHEP04(2011)029

On arxive he has 24 publications. Alone or with collaborators, many published in journals.
On Distance and Area 1011.2052
Partition Function of Spacetime 0810.4910
A Simple Quantum-Mechanical Model of Spacetime II: Thermodynamics of Spacetime 0805.3955
- I: Microscopic Properties of Spacetime 0805.3952
Pioneer Effect: An Interesting Numerical Coincidence 0710.5460
Quantum-Mechanical Model of Spacetime gr-qc/0701128
Gravitation and Thermodynamics: The Einstein Equation of State Revisited gr-qc/0612078
Area and Entropy: A New Perspective gr-qc/0605098
Radiation of the Inner Horizon of the Reissner-Nordström Black Hole gr-qc/0508095
Accelerating Observers, Area and Entropy gr-qc/0506087
Entropy of Spacelike Two-Surfaces of Spacetime gr-qc/0406032
Spacetime Foam Model of the Schwarzschild Horizon gr-qc/0307025
Thermodynamical Properties of Horizons gr-qc/0205128
Microscopic Properties of Horizons gr-qc/0108037
Quantum-mechanical model of the Kerr-Newman black hole gr-qc/0012055
Constraints on Area Variables in Regge Calculus gr-qc/0011006
Microscopic Black Hole Pairs in Highly-Excited States gr-qc/0006070
How to interpret black hole entropy? gr-qc/9812075
Variation of Area Variables in Regge Calculus gr-qc/9801022
A Quantum Mechanical Model of the Reissner-Nordstrom Black Hole gr-qc/9708029
Black Hole Spectrum: Continuous or Discrete? gr-qc/9609001
Area spectrum of the Schwarzschild black hole gr-qc/9605058
Schroedinger Equation of the Schwarzschild Black Hole gr-qc/9602008

and...
If it pleases the court, so to speak, I too have a series of hypothesis that have to do with the vacuum energy behavior of Jarmo Makela's simply-connected quantized space-time models, but I don't go around shitting up the boards with Lubos Motl-style ex-string theorist borderline crankiness, mostly because no one asked or cares much around here about the Verlinde Hypothesis.

I guess I like him...