Author Archives: woit

My Life With Stephen

Posted on July 23, 2007 by woit

Jane Hawking, Stephen Hawking’s ex-wife, has written a book about her life together with Stephen, which has recently appeared here in the US under the title Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen. At around 400 pages, it’s an abridged … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 30 Comments

Various News

Posted on July 17, 2007 by woit

There’s a potentially important new paper on the arXiv from Terry Tomboulis, entitled Confinement for all values of the coupling in four-dimensional SU(2) gauge theory. Tomboulis claims to prove that SU(2) lattice gauge theory has confining behavior (area law fall … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments

Carroll and Johnson on Bloggingheads

Posted on July 14, 2007 by woit

There’s an interesting exchange today between Sean Carroll and George Johnson on bloggingheads.tv. They cover a range of topics, including the controversy over string theory and the role of blogs. Johnson describes his time last fall at the KITP, telling … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 81 Comments

String Theory: The Fightback

Posted on July 12, 2007 by woit

The public perception of string theory has definitely changed over the last few years, with the latest evidence this week’s cover story in New Scientist, which begins: It’s the theory everyone loves to hate. The article (available fully only to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 31 Comments

Less Stuff Than Usual

Posted on July 10, 2007 by woit

I was on vacation for a while, but haven’t been posting much mostly since there’s not that much to write about. Like every summer, there are huge numbers of string theory conferences going on all over the world, but from … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 57 Comments

Too Much Good Stuff

Posted on June 30, 2007 by woit

I’ve been finding recently that an increasing serious problems with blogs is that there are too many good ones with material worth reading. I’ve learned quite a lot recently from many well-informed blog postings, but the sheer number of these … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Strings 2007

Posted on June 25, 2007 by woit

Strings 2007 is starting today, and already there seem to be a large number of different laptops connecting to this blog from wlan.uam.es. I’m hoping that some of their owners will write in here with news of how the conference … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 80 Comments

Assorted News

Posted on June 22, 2007 by woit

Yesterday Sean Carroll and I appeared on the BBC Radio 4 program The Material World, in a segment on String theory – knot good enough?, about the controversy over string theory. The segment started with a piece from the play … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments

The Triple-Scoop

Posted on June 15, 2007 by woit

Experimenters at the Tevatron have released data showing the existence of a new baryon, built out of a down, strange and bottom quark, and having a mass of 5.774 +/- .019 GeV. It has been given the name “Ξb“. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Random Collection of Stuff

Posted on June 14, 2007 by woit

Pretty much everybody in the math community seems to be getting a blog. Many of the new bloggers are quite good research mathematicians (including even some Fields Medalists). Two very new ones are: Secret Blogging Seminar: Named after a “Secret … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments