Author Archives: woit

Solvay Centenary

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

The first Solvay conference was in 1911 (at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, where I stayed one night of my recent trip to Belgium, without knowing the history), attended by the great men of the early days of quantum theory, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

A couple people have written to tell me about the new BBC Faster Than the Speed of Light? documentary on superluminal neutrinos which evidently featured trademark hype from string theorist Mike Duff about how string theory could explain this. For … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 13 Comments

String Theory Finds a Bench Mate

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

There’s a nice article this week in Nature about AdS/CMT, entitled String Theory Finds a Bench Mate. According to the article, the whole thing is (partly) my fault: But in 2006, string theory took a public battering in two popular … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Welcome to the Multiverse

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

The October issue of Discover magazine has a new feature, a column by Sean Carroll, whose inaugural effort is now on-line as Welcome to the Multiverse. Sean makes the argument that opposition to multiverse mania is due to people having … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 2 Comments

Weinberg on Symmetry

Posted on October 10, 2011 by woit

The latest New York Review of Books has an article by Steven Weinberg entitled Symmetry: A ‘Key to Nature’s Secrets’. It’s a bit unusual for the NYRB, since it is both scientifically more technical than usual for them (coming from … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

News From Europe

Posted on October 7, 2011 by woit

A few items with a European flavor: The news from Dublin is that Witten will be in town soon to give the Hamilton Lecture, with the Irish Times reporting that Witten’s Hamilton Lecture will abandon string theory, however, in favour … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Uncategorized | 22 Comments

What’s That at the Top of This Page?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by woit

The graphic chosen years ago as the header for this blog is an event display from the UA1 detector in 1982, of historical importance since it was the first event found with a W candidate. To be honest, the reason … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

P-adic Numbers and Cosmology

Posted on October 4, 2011 by woit

The next math department colloquium at Stanford will feature Lenny Susskind lecturing on p-adic numbers and cosmology, here’s the abstract: The biggest conceptual problem of cosmology is called the measure problem. It has to do with the assignment of probabilities … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 18 Comments

Two for Two

Posted on October 4, 2011 by woit

Back in 2004 I made my first venture into Nobel Prize predictions, then decided to retire from that business. This year I came out of retirement with another prediction. After the posting, I consulted with experts who assured me that … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

New Pursuit of Schrodinger’s Cat

Posted on October 3, 2011 by woit

Prospect magazine has an excellent new article by Philip Ball on recent developments in the fundamental problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics: why don’t we see superpositions? Most popular discussions of this seem to me to be stuck back … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments