Author Archives: woit

LHC Update

Posted on June 11, 2010 by woit

See here for a new status report on the state of beam commissioning at the LHC. About two weeks ago a peak luminosity of about 2 x 1029cm-2s-1 was reached, using beams with 13 bunches, but each bunch relatively low … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 3 Comments

Not In Our Lifetimes

Posted on June 9, 2010 by woit

A report from one of last Saturday’s events at the World Science Festival has string theorists Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru admitting that they’d be surprised to see experimental evidence for string theory in their lifetimes: John Hockenberry, the panel’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman

Posted on June 9, 2010 by woit

The Science Channel is starting up yet another show on physics tonight, with Michio Kaku’s Sci-Fi Science and Into the Universe with Steven Hawking being joined by Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. The topics being covered by Freeman are … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments

Prerequisites

Posted on June 9, 2010 by woit

The Abstruse Goose recently provided an excellent summary of how to go about learning string theory. It starts with “String Theory for Dummies”, here. Tommaso Dorigo’s latest say of the week is somehow relevant.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Where Do They Go?

Posted on June 6, 2010 by woit

HEPAP has had a Demographics Committee since about 1999, charged with gathering data on what happens to young people in the US who enter the field of High Energy Physics (both theory and experiment). The latest report from the committee … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on June 3, 2010 by woit

Several blogs have now pointed out the wonderful snarXiv site, which automatically produces random plausible-sounding hep-th entries. It’s something along the same lines as the famous Postmodernism Generator. For entertainment, you can try playing snarXiv vs. arXiv. HEPAP is meeting … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

More Quantum Information Theory From String Theory

Posted on May 27, 2010 by woit

Claims made recently in the CERN Courier that string theory can be applied to Quantum Information Theory (see here) are being followed up with a new paper entitled Four-qubit entanglement from string theory which appears to claim that, despite what … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments

Short Items

Posted on May 25, 2010 by woit

Beam intensity at the LHC continues to increase with successful collision this morning of beams containing 13 bunches of protons, producing an initial luminosity of about 1.5 x 1029cm-2s-1. This is about a factor of 1000 below the goal for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Applying String Theory to Quantum Information Theory

Posted on May 10, 2010 by woit

There’s a remarkable article by Mike Duff in this month’s CERN Courier, arguing the case that string theory does too have important applications: in Quantum Information Theory. The claim seems to be that since the same algebraic structures appear in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 38 Comments

LHC Update: Bing Bang Machine Could Confirm or Disprove String Theory

Posted on May 5, 2010 by woit

Today’s CERN LHCC meeting had a wide-range of reports about how the machine is doing (1 nb-1 now, 10 nb-1 over the next 5 weeks), what the experiments are seeing (charm, Ws), and what physics might be possible with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, This Week's Hype | 16 Comments