Masanori Hanada is giving two talks this week on the topic of “Confinement/deconfinement transition in the D0-brane matrix model — A signature of M-theory?” The talks are based on a paper of the same title uploaded to the arXiv on 4 October 2021 (link here). The screenshot below shows the top of the front page of the arXiv paper. The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) talk is on Tuesday 26 October and the Standford University talk is on Thursday 28 October. Some background on the talks is as follows. More than 20 years ago, it was proposed that the D0-brane matrix model can give a nonperturbative formulation of type IIA superstring theory and M-theory via holographic duality. Starting in 2007, Hanada and his collaborators developed numerical simulation techniques, and now they have overwhelming evidence that type IIA superstring theory is described indeed. However M-theory was out of reach until recently, Hanada and collaborators believed that huge computational cost, which is not available now, is needed. But recent theoretical developments (a series of papers leading up to the above paper) suggested that there is a hitherto unknown phase — confined phase — in the D0-brane matrix model, which can be rather easily studied numerically, and it is a smoking gun of the M-theory emerging from matrix model. Hanada and collaborators found that phase in the paper flagged up below!