Monthly Archives: May 2007

Even More Stuff Than Usual

Here are various things of interest that accumulated while I was away: Last week there was a conference in Florence on the early history of string theory, some of the talks are available here. Lots of blogging activity among Fields … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

Proof of the abc Conjecture?

While I was traveling this past week, there was a conference held here entitled L-functions and Automorphic Forms, which was a celebration of the 60th birthday of my math department colleague Dorian Goldfeld. From all I’ve heard the conference was … Continue reading

Posted in abc Conjecture | 19 Comments

The Empire Strikes Back

After last month’s posting at Cosmic Variance about how String Theory is Losing the Public Debate, Sean Carroll seems to have decided to go on the offensive (or defensive…), with a piece in New Scientist entitled String theory: it’s not … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 129 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Still traveling, but will be back soon. This week’s bogus “test of string theory” is described in a NASA press release about three satellite-based experiments that would look for violations of the equivalence principle. From the press release: …it [a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

All LHC, all the Time

The LHC media blitz is in full swing, with last week’s long New Yorker article now followed by an unusually long and detailed New York Times piece titled A Giant Takes On Physics’ Biggest Questions. Dennis Overbye does an excellent … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 71 Comments

New Blogs and Other Stuff

Here’s a few new blogs I’ve run across recently: The FQXi organization now has a blog called FQXi Community. Rantings of an Angry Physicist is not another Not Even Wrong, but an interesting blog so far devoted to explaining what … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Crash Course

This week’s New Yorker has a quite good article on the LHC and the state of particle physics with the title Crash Course. One of the main themes of the article is that of the rivalry between experimentalists and theorists. … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Witten on 2+1 Dimensional Gravity

The high point of Friday’s string cosmology workshop here in New York was Witten’s lecture on his new ideas about 2+1 dimensional quantum gravity. I’ll try and reproduce here what I understood from the lecture, but this (2+1 d quantum … Continue reading

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 29 Comments

All Sorts of Stuff

For up-to-the-minute news about the Higgs, far better informed than any media source could ever be (and thus a great example of why blogs are changing the way the media works), your best bet is Tommaso Dorigo’s blog. His latest … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Princeton Physicists Connect String Theory With Established Physics

The latest press release hyping a string theory paper in a misleading way comes from my alma mater Princeton, which I find quite depressing. According to yesterday’s press release, entitled Princeton physicists connect string theory with established physics: String theory, … Continue reading

Posted in This Week's Hype | 29 Comments