Author Archives: woit

Differential Cohomology at the Simons Center

Posted on January 11, 2011 by woit

This week the Simons Center is hosting a workshop on Differential Cohomology and its applications in physics. I won’t try and give an explanation of what differential cohomology is here, with a little luck the videos of the talks will … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

What the M Stands For

Posted on January 3, 2011 by woit

There’s an explanation at the latest Abstruse Goose. To recycle some of my own writing, from page 107 of NEW, the book: When I was a graduate student at Princeton, one day I was leaving the library perhaps thirty feet … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Ancient History

Posted on December 31, 2010 by woit

Sometime around now is the tenth anniversary of my first foray into the business of public criticism of string theory. I wrote something up over the end-of-year holiday in 2000, and circulated it by e-mail to a list of prominent … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 50 Comments

Short Items

Posted on December 21, 2010 by woit

The Tevatron last week passed the milestone of 10 inverse femtobarns of luminosity delivered to the experiments. That’s about 1.5 quadrillion collisions. Presentations from the Simons Center Inaugural Conference, discussed here, are now on-line. Luis Alvarez-Gaume and John Ellis discuss … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

HEP News

Posted on December 17, 2010 by woit

Besides the dramatic new CMS results mentioned in the last two postings, there’s other news from the high-energy frontier as it moves from Illinois to Geneva. Earlier this week the MCTP hosted a workshop on LHC First Data. Today at … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 10 Comments

String Theory Fails Another Test, the “Supertest”

Posted on December 17, 2010 by woit

Wednesday’s CMS result finding no black holes in early LHC data has led to internet headlines such as String Theory Fails First Major Experimental Test (for what this really means, see here). At a talk today at CERN, yet another … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 35 Comments

Physicists Finally Find a Way to Test Superstring Theory

Posted on December 15, 2010 by woit

More than ten years ago, the New York Times ran a story explaining that Physicists Finally Find a Way to Test Superstring Theory. At the time, the test was scheduled to start in 2005-6: In fact, it might be possible … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 27 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on December 11, 2010 by woit

This week’s contribution to the long tradition of universities issuing press releases hyping non-existent “experimental tests of string theory” by their employees is from Duke University, which advertises “String Theory in a Lab“. This is based on a paper that … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 30 Comments

Math Research Institute, Art, Politics, Transgressive Sex and Geometric Langlands

Posted on December 4, 2010 by woit

I learned from a colleague last night about recent events bringing together the topics of the title of this posting, something that one wouldn’t have thought was possible. Last Wednesday there was a showing in Berkeley of Edward Frenkel’s short … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

The BMO Financial Group Isaac Newton Chair in Theoretical Physics

Posted on November 29, 2010 by woit

I learned this morning from Matin Durrani’s blog that the Perimeter Institute has announced today the first of what they expect to be five very well-funded Perimeter Research Chairs in theoretical physics. The next four will be named after Maxwell, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments