Author Archives: woit

Microsoft Research New England

Posted on February 4, 2008 by woit

Microsoft announced today that they’ll be opening a new research lab, in Cambridge, which will be called Microsoft Research New England. The director of the lab will be mathematical physicist Jennifer Chayes, with deputy director her husband Christian Borgs, who … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Steinhardt: The Anthropic Landscape Has Run Its Course

Posted on February 3, 2008 by woit

Over at John Horgan’s blog, he quotes an e-mail from Princeton cosmologist Paul Steinhardt, who corrects Horgan’s account of a recent conversation between them, writing I said that I thought that the idea of a string landscape and the notion … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

US HEP News

Posted on February 1, 2008 by woit

Today and yesterday at Fermilab there is an HEPAP meeting designed to gather information necessary to prioritize decisions on how to spend the US HEP budget over the next few years. Many of the talks there are on-line and give … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 5 Comments

Today’s Hype

Posted on January 31, 2008 by woit

The rate of appearance of press releases hyping string theory has now passed the the one-per-week mark. Today’s example is from the press office of the University of Wisconsin, and again is based on the appearance of a paper in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 5 Comments

Last Week’s Hype

Posted on January 30, 2008 by woit

I was concerned that my “this week’s hype” headlines might be less than accurate, counting only 3 separate over-hyped string theory stories during the past month rather than four. Turns out that I missed one (although a commenter here didn’t), … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on January 28, 2008 by woit

This week’s press release trumpeting a bogus “test of string theory” comes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is headlined Scientists propose test of string theory based on neutral hydrogen absorption, and informs us that Ancient light absorbed … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 65 Comments

2007: Year of the Unparticle

Posted on January 25, 2008 by woit

One can get some idea of what progress there might have been in particle theory during 2007 by querying the SPIRES database for 2007 papers that already have lots of citations. Doing find topcite 50+ and date 2007 turns up … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 31 Comments

Science, and a Bit of Religion

Posted on January 22, 2008 by woit

Some things I’ve run across in the last few days: This month’s Scientific American is devoted to The Future of Physics, a special report made up of three excellent articles on the LHC machine, the standard model and its discontents, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Updates

Posted on January 16, 2008 by woit

On the HEP budget problem front, Adrian Cho has an interview with Ray Orbach of the DOE. Orbach is not very encouraging on the prospects for a supplemental FY 2008 appropriation: … my assumption is that the last thing that … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, This Week's Hype | 21 Comments

Have Cosmologists Lost Their Brains?

Posted on January 15, 2008 by woit

There’s a peculiar long article in the New York Times science section today by Dennis Overbye, entitled Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? It’s about the debate raging among a small number of cosmologists about “Boltzmann Brains”, and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 24 Comments