Author Archives: woit

Notes on Current Affairs

Posted on December 8, 2018 by woit

Blogging has been light recently, partly due to quite a bit of traveling. This included a brief trip the week before last to Los Angeles, where I met up with, among others, Sabine Hossenfelder. This past week I was in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

The End of (one type of) Physics, and the Rise of the Machines

Posted on November 20, 2018 by woit

Way back in 1996 science writer John Horgan published The End of Science, in which he made the argument that various fields of science were running up against obstacles to any further progress of the magnitude they had previously experienced. … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 43 Comments

Langlands/Frenkel and Some Other Things

Posted on November 16, 2018 by woit

The Canadian publication The Walrus today has a wonderful article about Robert Langlands, focusing on his attitude towards the geometric Langlands program and its talented proponent Edward Frenkel. I watched Frenkel’s talk at the ongoing Minnesota conference via streaming video … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands, Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Updates

Posted on November 1, 2018 by woit

Based on this preprint from Banks and Fischler, I added an update to the FAQ entry about why the ever-popular “string theory makes predictions, but only at high energies where they can’t be tested” argument is not true. This preprint … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Updates

Langlands News

Posted on October 30, 2018 by woit

Various Langlands program related news, starting with the man himself: For the latest from Langlands about the geometric theory, best if you read both Russian and Turkish. In that case you can read this and this. For the rest of … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 11 Comments

The End of LHC Run 2 and the Road Ahead

Posted on October 24, 2018 by woit

Some experimental HEP news items: Since 2015 the LHC experiments have been taking data from proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV. This is “Run 2” of the LHC, “Run 1” was at the lower energy of 8 TeV. The proton-proton Run … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 34 Comments

Last Night’s Hype

Posted on October 18, 2018 by woit

If you’re a Friend of the IAS ($1750/year and up), you were invited to a talk last night, at which IAS member Thomas Rudelius promised to explain to you How to Test String Theory. The video of the talk is … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

Breaking News

Posted on October 17, 2018 by woit

Two midday breaking news items: The ACME II experiment is reporting today a new, nearly order of magnitude better, limit on the electric dipole moment of the electron: $$|d_e|\leq 1.1 \times 10^{-29} e\ cm$$ The previous best bound was from … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 15, 2018 by woit

The story of string theory as a theory of everything has settled into a rather bizarre steady-state, with these three recent links providing a look at where we are now: At his podcast site, Sean Carroll has an interview with … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 14 Comments

High Life

Posted on October 3, 2018 by woit

I spent yesterday night at the New York Film Festival, watching Claire Denis’s new film High Life. For a detailed and accurate review of the film, see the one at Variety. This film is about a voyage to a black … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments