Author Archives: woit

The Holy Patron of String Theory and its Holy Grail

Posted on September 14, 2009 by woit

Science News is running a long interview with Murray Gell-Mann, who will be celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow. Gell-Mann was arguably (Feynman is one who would argue..) the most influential figure in theoretical particle physics throughout the 1950s and 1960s. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Bloggingheads Diavlog With Craig Callender

Posted on September 13, 2009 by woit

There’s a new Bloggingheads Diavlog up today, where philosopher of science Craig Callender and I discuss the topic of Philosophy and the String Wars. Regular readers of the blog will just get to see me make the same points as … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Latest From the LHC

Posted on September 11, 2009 by woit

Things seems to have been going well at the LHC recently, with the current schedule expecting injection of beams in a little more than two months from now, on Thursday November 19. After that, the plan is for a week … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 9 Comments

Mathematicians: An Outer View of the Inner World

Posted on September 7, 2009 by woit

A friend recently loaned me a wonderful book, the recently published Mathematicians: An Outer View of the Inner World, which consists mainly of photographs of mathematicians by Mariana Cook, paired with a page of comments from the mathematician being photographed. … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 10 Comments

String Theory Skeptic

Posted on September 2, 2009 by woit

The latest Forbes magazine has an article entitled String Theory Skeptic, which gives me a lot more credit for the problems of string theory than I deserve. The article as I just saw it online appears to have a minor … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

ICM 2010

Posted on August 27, 2009 by woit

The International Congress of Mathematicians is held every four years, and the next iteration, ICM 2010, will be held about a year from now, in Hyderabad, India. These are huge conferences, planned well in advance, with 1465 mathematicians already pre-registered. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments

Percontations

Posted on August 24, 2009 by woit

The Templeton Foundation has recently been sponsoring a series of Bloggingheads diavlogs, under the name Percontations. This week’s episode is Fiddling With the Knobs of the Universe, and it has cosmologist Anthony Aguirre and string theorist Clifford Johnson doing their … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 35 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on August 20, 2009 by woit

Back from a final short summer vacation, with no further travel plans for the indefinite future. Some things I’ve recently come across that might be of interest: Tommaso Dorigo has posted his contribution to a session on “Blogs, big physics … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on August 12, 2009 by woit

From Softpedia this week, the news is of a Universal Theory of the Universe in the Works. According to the article, The theory of quantum mechanics was devised around 1920, and explains all this, but without accounting for gravity. Therefore, … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 15 Comments

25 Years On…

Posted on August 6, 2009 by woit

Five years ago the 20th anniversary of the “First Superstring Revolution” was being celebrated, and I wrote some postings about this history (see here, here and here). This month is the quarter-century anniversary, and I haven’t seen any evidence of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments