Author Archives: woit

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything?

Posted on November 9, 2007 by woit

It’s been unusually long since my last posting, with the main reasons being that Not much has been happening on the math/physics front… I’ve been busy learning more about geometric Langlands, which is a daunting subject. I keep intending to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 176 Comments

Pressure Mounts to Tie String Theory to the Real World

Posted on October 30, 2007 by woit

Last week David Gross was in New Mexico, giving an “unclassified talk” at Los Alamos, and one on The State of String Theory at the Santa Fe Institute. There’s a report on the Los Alamos talk from the Los Alamos … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 15 Comments

Is Science Near Its Limits?

Posted on October 27, 2007 by woit

The past two days I’ve been at a conference here in Lisbon organized by the Gulbenkian Foundation on the ostensible topic of Is Science Near Its Limits? The Gulbenkian is probably the most well-known and best-funded cultural organization in Portugal, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 61 Comments

Comment on Technicolor/Extended Technicolor Models

Posted on October 26, 2007 by woit

Robert Shrock of Stony Brook sent me the following to post as a response to one of the comments on the latest posting. With his permission I’m putting it here as a separate posting, since I think it’s a valuable … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

String Theory’s Next Top Model

Posted on October 25, 2007 by woit

I’ll write soon about the conference I spoke at today in Lisbon. A few hours ago I participated in an interesting discussion about some of the issues around string theory with two string theorists. One of them was quite vehement … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 11 Comments

Future Linear Colliders

Posted on October 23, 2007 by woit

There are two highly active projects to design a linear collider that would collide electrons and positrons at energies higher than those achieved at LEP. Recently there were workshops discussing the state of the projects. The ILC is the farthest … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 35 Comments

Susskind Joins PI

Posted on October 16, 2007 by woit

I haven’t been able to confirm Lubos Motl’s claims that the Perimeter Institute offered him a job, but yesterday they announced that Lenny Susskind has accepted an offer to join them as an associate member. According to the announcement, this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 36 Comments

Accumulated Links

Posted on October 15, 2007 by woit

Various things that I’ve been wanting to mention: Steven Hawking has a paper out, on his version of the Landscape story, using amplitudes that don’t rely upon string theory or eternal inflation. But just like the string theory Landscape I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride

Posted on October 15, 2007 by woit

More than three years ago Scientific American ran a feature article by Bousso and Polchinski promoting the then new idea of The String Theory Landscape. Now that this pseudo-science has become well-entrenched in the physics community, this month’s issue of … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments

Latest From The LHC

Posted on October 8, 2007 by woit

The LHC web-site contains a wealth of up-to-date information about how things are going there as they are commissioning the machine. In particular, one can follow the latest news about how things are going in each sector here, which may … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 24 Comments