Author Archives: woit

This and That

Posted on April 16, 2019 by woit

Since you’ve read about the black hole image elsewhere, here are a few other items that might be of interest: I was sorry to hear today of the death on April 11 of Geoffrey Chew. Throughout the 1960s, Chew’s S-matrix/bootstrap … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Why Trust a Theory?

Posted on April 5, 2019 by woit

I noticed today that Cambridge University Press has recently published Why Trust a Theory?, a volume of articles based on a December 2015 conference held in Munich. The book is available online here (if your university is paying for it…), … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 25 Comments

Not Even Wrong 2.0

Posted on March 31, 2019 by woit

This blog has just passed its 15th anniversary, and there hasn’t been a lot of change in format since the first postings in March 2004 (there hasn’t been a lot of change in string theory either, but that’s a different … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 116 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 31, 2019 by woit

This week’s hype comes to us courtesy of Scientific American, which, based on this preprint, tells us: Found: A Quadrillion Ways for String Theory to Make Our Universe. As usual in these things, the only physicists quoted are the authors … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 8 Comments

Some Quick Items

Posted on March 25, 2019 by woit

A few quick items: This past weekend I went to see the new film Out of Blue, which sounded promising: a murder mystery based on a Martin Amis book, set in New Orleans, starring Patricia Clarkson, with a plot involving … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

The Shape of a Life

Posted on March 23, 2019 by woit

I just finished reading The Shape of a Life, which is the great geometer Shing-Tung Yau’s autobiography, co-authored with Steve Nadis. It’s quite fascinating, and an essential read for anyone interested in the history of modern mathematics. Yau has been … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 7 Comments

This Month’s Hype

Posted on March 14, 2019 by woit

Physics Today seems to have decided to deal with Sabine Hossenfelder’s criticism of a future collider by publishing the least credible possible response: a column by Gordon Kane arguing that string theory predicts new particles of just the right mass … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 31 Comments

In it for the Long Haul

Posted on March 8, 2019 by woit

The CERN Courier today has a long interview with the omnipresent Nima Arkani-Hamed, discussing the current state of HEP physics. About the motivations for a next-generation collider project, I’m pretty much in agreement with him: the main argument is for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 5, 2019 by woit

In recent years string theorists have been having trouble getting taken seriously by the media, a problem they’ve been trying to deal with by enlisting the PR departments of their universities to help. Following Princeton and Stanford, today’s the turn … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments

A Few Items

Posted on February 28, 2019 by woit

A few things that may be of interest: The Perimeter Institute has a new director, Rob Myers, succeeding Neil Turok. Myers is very much a mainstream theorist, and Perimeter over the years has been converging with the mainstream, from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, Uncategorized | 3 Comments