Author Archives: woit

The Entropy Decade

Posted on January 11, 2010 by woit

We’re only a week and a half into the new decade, but already I’m seeing a trend… A few days ago Sean Carroll’s book From Eternity to Here came out, promoting the idea that understanding time and cosmology is all … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 30 Comments

Simons Foundation News

Posted on January 8, 2010 by woit

The latest AMS notices has the news that the Simons Foundation is now spending about $40 million/year in mathematics and related theoretical fields. This is being done under a program being run by David Eisenbud at Berkeley, and the first … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Untangling String Theory

Posted on January 7, 2010 by woit

The Times of London recently sent one of its reporters out to a pub to learn about string theory from Michael Green, with results available on-line here.  Green does a good job of trying to explain some physics over a … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 20 Comments

Two Books by Bloggers

Posted on January 3, 2010 by woit

The holidays are coming to an end, so expect a return soon to the usual somewhat irregular posting frequency. Over the past week or two, one thing that I did was get a chance to read new books by two … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 34 Comments

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

No. The CDMS experiment today reported the observation of two events, with an expected background of .8 events (I gather this is a 1.5 sigma result, but there is no arXiv preprint yet). Based on this, the Guardian reports that … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 44 Comments

2010 LHC Schedule

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

The LHC shut down yesterday for an end-of-year break after a very successful initial period of beam commissioning at beam energies of 450 GeV and 1.18 TeV. Tomorrow at CERN there will be public reports about the state of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 6 Comments

Life in the Multiverse

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

The latest Scientific American features a cover story on Life in the Multiverse: Could the strange physics of other worlds breed life? The magazine earlier this year fired a third of its staff and replaced its editor (the new editor … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 4 Comments

String Theory and Heaven

Posted on December 16, 2009 by woit

I hadn’t heard much about Dinesh D’Souza since the Reagan era when for some mysterious reason his views were widely promoted in the media. He has continued since then to play the role (supposedly according to the New York Times … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on December 13, 2009 by woit

The proof of the fundamental lemma by Ngo has made it onto Time magazine’s list of the top ten scientific discoveries of 2009. Ngo will be visiting Columbia in the near future, and I might even end up understanding what … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

News From the LHC

Posted on December 8, 2009 by woit

Just saw this from Tommaso Dorigo, which made me realize that I should get to work and write a blog posting before the CERN press office people wake up. The big news today is that the first collisions at a … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 9 Comments