Author Archives: woit

Peter Goddard on the Birth of String Theory

Last spring there was a conference held in Florence which brought together many of those who worked on dual models and string theory during the late sixties and early seventies. Slides from the talks are here, and many of the … Continue reading →

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Quick Links

There seems to be a political scandal going on in Italy revolving around the GIM mechanism, with Antonino Zichichi somehow involved. Definitely a higher level of scandal than we have here in the US. An Oral History Project at Princeton … Continue reading →

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US HEP Demography

Late last week there was a meeting of HEPAP in Washington, presentations available here. Several dealt with the current budget situation, which is basically that the current FY2008 budget is a disaster, and the Bush administration has proposed huge compensatory … Continue reading →

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LHC Startup News

I’m a bit confused about the situation with the LHC start-up schedule, maybe someone well-informed can help. Here’s what I’ve seen recently: At the AAAS meeting last Friday, there was a session on “Big Science”, which included discussion of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 2 Comments

Late Night HEP TV

Particle physics is enjoying a wave of popularity on the late night talk shows this week. On Friday, MIT experimentalist Peter Fisher appeared on the Conan O’Brien show, helping O’Brien see how long he could keep his wedding ring spinning … Continue reading →

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Quantum Field Theory, As Seen By Mathematicians

In recent years, interest in quantum field theory among mathematicians has gone through ups and downs, in a sub-field dependent manner, as ideas rooted in quantum field theory have turned out to be mathematically useful in a variety of contexts. … Continue reading →

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Is Big Physics peddling science pornography?

There’s a new round of nonsense about theoretical physics making its way through the media, especially the British tabloids. The original source is a preprint from a few months ago by Aref’eva and Volovich entitled Time Machine at the LHC … Continue reading →

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Worth Reading

The latest issue of the Cern Courier contains a wonderful article entitled From BCS to the LHC by Steven Weinberg. It is based on a talk he gave at a recent conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the BCS theory … Continue reading →

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This Week’s Hype

This week’s media hype promoting a new observational test of extra dimensions is based on the recent arXiv preprint Transient Pulses from Exploding Primordial Black Holes as a Signature of an Extra Dimension. Stories about it have appeared already in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 6 Comments

Microsoft Research New England

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 →

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