Author Archives: woit

Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics

Posted on April 15, 2014 by woit

The May issue of Scientific American has a very good cover story by Joe Lykken and Maria Spiropulu, entitled Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics (the article is now behind their subscriber paywall, but for those with access to Nature, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Ten Years of Not Even Wrong

Posted on April 11, 2014 by woit

This blog was started a little bit over ten years ago, and I’ve been intending for a while to write something marking the occasion and commenting on what has changed over the past ten years. I’ve found this mostly a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 55 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on April 5, 2014 by woit

Just time at the moment for some quick links. I’ll start with some math news, since there hasn’t been much of that here recently: Matt Baker has the sad news here of the death of Berkeley mathematician Robert Coleman recently, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Sheldon Gives Up On String Theory

Posted on April 1, 2014 by woit

Ten years ago I wrote here about the news that Witten had finally given up on string theory. Today I just heard a similar but even more dramatic rumor: next week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory features string theorist … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

A Brief History of String Theory

Posted on March 26, 2014 by woit

On the long plane flight to Italy I had the chance to read the recently published A Brief History of String Theory: From Dual Models to M-theory by philosopher of science Dean Rickles. The book deals with the history of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 11 Comments

B-mode News

Posted on March 25, 2014 by woit

While I was away on vacation, the big news in physics was the BICEP2 result on B-modes in the CMB. Maybe it’s just as well I wasn’t available to blog about this, since inflation and cosmology aren’t at all my … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 47 Comments

Rainy Day Posting

Posted on March 23, 2014 by woit

My spring break vacation is not quite over but, after 10 days of spectacularly beautiful weather, it’s now raining hard here today and I’ve got some time indoors to write something. First some quick links to things I’ve seen in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Spring Break

Posted on March 11, 2014 by woit

I’m leaving for a spring break vacation in Northern Italy tomorrow afternoon, and will shut down comments while I’m away. Back in two weeks. Some events that will occur while I’m away that might be of interest: The 2014 Templeton … Continue reading →

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Multiverse Mania at Wikipedia

Posted on March 9, 2014 by woit

The quality of Wikipedia entries about mathematics is often quite good, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for their entries about physics. I happened to take a look today at the Wikipedia entry for Multiverse, which is an outrageously … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 43 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on March 5, 2014 by woit

It seems to be too early for April Fool’s day, and yet the arXiv has Dark Matter as a Trigger for Periodic Comet Impacts by Lisa Randall and Matt Reece, a preprint described as “Accepted by Physical Review Letters, 4 … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 25 Comments