Author Archives: woit

Various Math and Physics News

Posted on October 4, 2021 by woit

First some items on the mathematics side: The latest AMS Notices has some memorial pieces about Vaughan Jones and Robert Hermann. I contributed a piece to the Hermann memorial, for more about him, see here. If you read French you … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Visit to Brown

Posted on September 24, 2021 by woit

I spent yesterday up in Providence, visiting the Theoretical Physics Center at Brown, and giving a talk there (slides are available here, newer version of a paper here), At some point a recording of the talk should appear online. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Euclidean Twistor Unification | 7 Comments

Euclidean Twistor Unification, version 2.0

Posted on September 10, 2021 by woit

I’ve completely re-organized and largely rewritten my paper from earlier this year on Euclidean Spinors and Twistor Unification. Soon I’ll upload this as a revision to the arXiv, for now it’s available here. This new version starts from a very … Continue reading →

Posted in Euclidean Twistor Unification | 28 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 8, 2021 by woit

Today Quanta has One Lab’s Quest to Build Space-Time Out of Quantum Particles. No, this kind of experiment is not going to “Build Space-Time”, now or ever. This kind of obfuscation about quantum gravity advances neither fundamental physics nor the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 17 Comments

Conversations on Quantum Gravity

Posted on August 26, 2021 by woit

Things for many years now have been going badly for string theory on the public relations front. Today the Economist has Physics seeks the future: Bye, bye, little Susy, where one finds out that: But, no Susy, no string theory. … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 42 Comments

Some Math Items

Posted on July 30, 2021 by woit

Some math items that may be of interest: Zentralblatt Math has a review of Mochizuki’s IUT papers, by Peter Scholze. Scholze explains the problem with the proof claimed in these papers. For more details, see his manuscript with Stix, or … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

More of the Same (Physics, Math and Unification)

Posted on July 29, 2021 by woit

I was going to just provide the following links with a some comments, but decided it would be a good idea to put them into what seems to me the larger context of where we are in fundamental physics and … Continue reading →

Posted in Euclidean Twistor Unification, Langlands | Comments Off on More of the Same (Physics, Math and Unification)

Steven Weinberg 1933-2021

Posted on July 24, 2021 by woit

I heard this morning the news that Steven Weinberg passed away yesterday at the age of 88.  He was arguably the dominant figure in theoretical particle physics during its period of great success from the late sixties to the early … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 18 Comments

The Problem of Quantization

Posted on July 12, 2021 by woit

I’ve been watching Witten’s ongoing talks about geometric Langlands mentioned here, and wanted to recommend to everyone, mathematician or physicist, the first of them, on The Problem of Quantization (pdf here, video here, the question session is very worthwhile). For … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Theory: The Book, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Deterioration of the World’s Thinking About the Deepest Stringy Ideas

Posted on July 12, 2021 by woit

For quite a few years now, I’ve been mystified about what is going on in string theory, as the subject has become dominated by AdS/CFT inspired work which has nothing to do with either strings or any visible idea about … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 9 Comments