Author Archives: woit

Three-year WMAP Data Now Out

Posted on March 16, 2006 by woit

Data from the second and third year of the WMAP satellite experiment has just been released a few minutes ago. There a press release and other general information page. The scientific paper explaining what this new data tells us about … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

George Mackey 1916-2006

Posted on March 16, 2006 by woit

It was sad to see an announcement today on the Harvard math department web-site of the death earlier this week of emeritus Harvard professor George Mackey. Mackey’s mathematical work is dear to my heart, since its central concern is the … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 9 Comments

Baez and Schroer

Posted on March 15, 2006 by woit

John Baez’s latest This Week’s Finds is out. As in other recent issues, he starts with some of the most fantastic astronomical pictures around. He also links to his recent non-technical talk Fundamental Physics: Where We Stand Today, which also … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Two Years Later

Posted on March 13, 2006 by woit

This week is the second anniversary of this weblog, so perhaps a good moment for some reflections on what has been happening over the past two years. In many ways, the weblog has been successful far beyond my wildest dreams. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 47 Comments

News of the Multiverse

Posted on March 13, 2006 by woit

When I was reading Susskind’s book The Cosmic Landscape, I was paying close attention to the main problem with the whole multiverse/anthropic string landscape idea: is there any sort of experimental prediction that emerges from this that would justify calling … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 42 Comments

WMAP Data Release Imminent?

Posted on March 9, 2006 by woit

Following up on the spectacular first year of data reported by the WMAP experiment in February 2003, results of analysis of the next year’s data were initially planned to be released a year later. The release of this data has … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

Yet More On ArXiv Trackbacks

Posted on March 6, 2006 by woit

Several blogs today have discussions of the arXiv trackback issue, mostly spawned by Sean Carroll’s posting on the topic. Jacques Distler has a posting where he explains that the arXiv has instituted an ill-defined “active researcher” criterion for allowing trackbacks … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 111 Comments

All Sorts of Stuff

Posted on March 3, 2006 by woit

Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur has many new things up on his web-site. These include an expository article on motives (this via David Corfield), and a foreword to a forthcoming popular book called Fearless Symmetry : Exposing the Hidden Patterns of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 36 Comments

Understanding the Landscape

Posted on February 28, 2006 by woit

Michael Douglas has written up his talk at the recent Solvay conference, with the title Understanding the Landscape. For previous postings about this conference, see here, here, and here. Douglas’s article is mainly a series of excuses for why string … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 42 Comments

Exceptional MathReviews

Posted on February 28, 2006 by woit

Mathematical Reviews is a publication of the American Mathematics Society that provides capsule reviews of essentially every mathematics research paper that is published. It has been in operation since 1940, and in recent years the entire database has been on-line, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments