Author Archives: woit

Warning: There’s not much science in this posting, just mostly people behaving badly. You would be well advised to skip this one, unless you find this kind of thing entertaining… Long ago, as a public service, I set up a … Continue reading →

I recently noticed that, around the same time I was preparing my slides for a talk about Is String Theory Testable?, Michael Douglas was doing something similar, preparing a talk on Are There Testable Predictions of String Theory? There’s a … Continue reading →

The LHC is the cover story on this week’s issue of Science magazine, with three articles on the topic here, here and here. Also in this week’s Science is an article about the “spin puzzle”, the fact that accelerator experiments … Continue reading →

This seems to be the month for string theory debates, with two a couple weeks ago in the UK involving Lee Smolin, and another featuring Lawrence Krauss and Brian Greene scheduled for next week in Washington D.C. The Washington Times … Continue reading →

Last Friday night when I was in Rome I received e-mails in quick succession from two science journalists asking what I thought about a new mathematical result, the “mapping of E8” that was going to be announced at a press … Continue reading →

I’ve been traveling in Italy for the past ten days, and gave talks in Rome and Pisa, on the topic “Is String Theory Testable?”. The slides from my talks are here (I’ll fix a few minor things about them in … Continue reading →

John Horgan keeps moving his blogging activities to different locations, the latest one is here. For a truly sad and distressing story about what has happened to Billy Cottrell (who was mentioned snarkily by me long ago here), see this … Continue reading →

There’s a short memoir out this evening on the arXiv by Peter Freund about the algebraist Irving Kaplansky, universally known as “Kap”, who died last year at the age of 89. Freund worked with Kaplansky at Chicago during the mid-seventies … Continue reading →

Many string theorists seem to have decided to react to the criticisms of string theory that have recently been getting a lot of attention by going to the press with claims to have experimental tests of string theory that can … Continue reading →

The March issue of Physics Today is now available. It contains a piece by Steven Weinberg based on a banquet talk he gave to a group of postdocs. He describes his own memories of his time as a postdoc, writing … Continue reading →