ABSTRACT
By that point, I had begun to grasp the big picture of interstellar ecology. The next step was to drill down to the details of how amolecular cloud assembles itself into a star. Bally and Johnstone told me that Shu is renowned among astronomers for his theories on star formation, galactic structure and other topics. I later learned that he is legendary for less conventionally scientific pursuits as well. He’s something of a pool shark, for one thing. And he is said to be as adept at poker as he is at solving complex astrophysical problems. Shu is reported to have skipped out of an astronomy conference in Vegas to spend most of his time at the poker tables.½3
When you think about it, these extra-curricular interests make perfect sense. After all, in poker as in astrophysical theory-making, the player makes predictions about future behavior based on his model of the problem at hand. In astrophysics, the model describes the behavior of nature in terms of mathematical algorithms stored in a computer. In poker, the model is in the gambler’s head-it’s his approach to assessing the probability of certain cards being thrown. In a similar vein, pool is a game of dynamical interactions between spheres. And in many ways, so is the formation of a solar system-a complex
theoretical problem Shu has tackled with characteristic enthusiasm, producing major breakthroughs in understanding.
