Author Archives: woit

Various and Sundry

Posted on July 31, 2024 by woit

A few items of different kinds: The Harvard Math department website has a wonderful profile of Dick Gross. The second International Congress of Basic Science ended a few days ago in Beijing. A huge number of interesting talks, video and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

The Harvard Swampland Initiative

Posted on July 12, 2024 by woit

The past few years I’ve been noticing more and more claims like this one, supposedly finding a way to “connect string theory to experiment”. When you look into such claims you don’t find anything at all like a conventional experiment/theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland | 14 Comments

A Few Items

Posted on July 2, 2024 by woit

A few items, all involving Peter Scholze in one way or another: A seminar in Bonn on Scholze’s geometrization of real local Langlands is finishing up next week. This is working out details of ideas that Scholze presented at the … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture, Langlands | 14 Comments

Physical Intuition vs. “Math”

Posted on June 29, 2024 by woit

A common theme in discussions online of the problems of fundamental theoretical physics is that the subject has gotten “lost in math”, losing touch with “physical intuition”. In such discussions, when people refer to “math” it’s hard to figure out … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Latest Breakthrough From String Theory

Posted on June 19, 2024 by woit

PRL has just published this paper (preprint here), with associated press release here. The press release explains that the authors have discovered how to use string theory to provide “an easier way to extract pi from calculations involved in deciphering … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 23 Comments

The Mystery of Spin

Posted on June 13, 2024 by woit

The following makes no claims to originality or any physical significance on its own. For a better explanation of some of the math and the physical significance of the use of quaternions here, see this lecture by John Baez. I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Strings 2024

Posted on June 4, 2024 by woit

There’s been very little blogging here the past month or so. For part of the time I was on vacation, but another reason is that there just hasn’t been very much to write about. Today I thought I’d start looking … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 31 Comments

Wormholes, Part Deux

Posted on May 27, 2024 by woit

I had thought that the universally negative reaction to the fall 2022 wormhole publicity stunt meant that we’d never hear more about this, with even the editors of Quanta magazine having understood that they’d been had. While away on vacation … Continue reading →

Posted in Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 4 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on April 28, 2024 by woit

The semester here is coming to a close. I’m way behind writing up notes for the lectures I’ve been giving, which are ending with covering the details of the Standard Model. This summer I’ll try to finish the notes and … Continue reading →

Posted in Euclidean Twistor Unification, Langlands | 14 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on April 23, 2024 by woit

Until about a year and a half ago, the way to get funding in physics was to somehow associate yourself to the hot trend of quantum computing and quantum information theory. Large parts of the string theory and quantum gravity … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 23 Comments