Author Archives: woit

The Emperor’s Last Clothes?

Posted on July 21, 2008 by woit

Bert Schellekens has posted on the arXiv an extended 87 page argument for the anthropic string theory landscape, entitled The Emperor’s Last Clothes? While most string theorists find the existence of the landscape and the corresponding inability to get any … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 25 Comments

Awaiting a Messenger From the Multiverse

Posted on July 17, 2008 by woit

As particle physicists eagerly await results from the LHC, many theorists are already promoting interpretations of what they hope it will find. This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has a cover story on the LHC entitled The Machine at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 28 Comments

Hawking to Perimeter?

Posted on July 16, 2008 by woit

The Canadian press today is putting out the story that Stephen Hawking may be abandoning Cambridge to move permanently to the Perimeter Institute, where he would join recently appointed director Neil Turok, as well as Lenny Susskind. From the stories … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Surfing the Universe

Posted on July 14, 2008 by woit

This week’s New Yorker has a quite good article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells entitled “Surfing the Universe” about Garrett Lisi and the controversy generated last year by his paper An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything (which I wrote about here). Unfortunately … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 71 Comments

This and That

Posted on July 8, 2008 by woit

Some quick links: The Clay Mathematics Institute is now making available for free online the books whose publication it has sponsored. These include the Morgan-Tian exposition of the proof of the Poincare conjecture. Surveys in Non-commutative geometry, which contains two … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Back to the Future

Posted on July 7, 2008 by woit

Several things have come up recently that brought up the year 1985, the year the film “Back to the Future” came out. This summer the IAS will be running a two-week program at the IAS on Strings and Phenomenology, designed … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments

LHC Update

Posted on July 7, 2008 by woit

Latest press release from CERN about the LHC says first beams “currently scheduled for August”. According to a presentation at the July 2 meeting of the LHC Technical Committee, the latest news is that “circulating beam not before September” (the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 1 Comment

Interview With Atle Selberg

Posted on July 4, 2008 by woit

Sticking with the theme of the Riemann Hypothesis, the AMS has recently posted some articles to appear in an upcoming issue of the AMS Bulletin, one of which contains a long interview with Atle Selberg, who died last summer at … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis?

Posted on July 2, 2008 by woit

Last night a preprint by Xian-Jin Li appeared on the arXiv, claiming a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. Preprints claiming such a proof have been pretty common, and always wrong. Most of them are obviously implausible, invoking a few pages … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Physics Nobel Laureates at Lindau

Posted on July 1, 2008 by woit

This week there’s a Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, devoted to physics. Many of the talks can be viewed on-line. From 3-5pm today (Lindau time) there will be a session devoted to a panel discussion of expectations for the LHC. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments