Author Archives: woit

What is Real?

Posted on March 22, 2018 by woit

There’s a new popular book out this week about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, Adam Becker’s What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. Ever since my high school days, the topic of quantum mechanics and … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Quantum Mechanics | 74 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 20, 2018 by woit

Many thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder for her efforts to debunk the attempt to use Hawking’s death as a platform for multiverse hype. See her posting at Backreaction for a good explanation of what is going on here. To summarize the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 7 Comments

Abel Prize to Langlands

Posted on March 20, 2018 by woit

The 2018 Abel Prize has been awarded to Robert Langlands, an excellent choice. The so-called “Langlands program” has been a huge influence on modern mathematics, providing deep insight into the structure of number theory while linking together disparate fields of … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 6 Comments

Stephen Hawking 1942-2018

Posted on March 14, 2018 by woit

Front-page on every news source today is the sad report that Stephen Hawking died yesterday at the age of 76. For the best description of his scientific accomplishments, I recommend the obituary in the Guardian written by his sometime collaborator … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 13 Comments

Recent Developments in Constructive Field Theory

Posted on March 13, 2018 by woit

This week there’s a mini-workshop here at Columbia organized by the probabilists, on Recent Developments in Constructive Field Theory. I’ll be attending some of the talks, will write more here if I can come up with something constructive to say. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Presumptuous Blogging

Posted on March 12, 2018 by woit

John Horgan at Scientific American today has an interview with Martin Rees in which Rees says: It’s presumptuous (as some people like Woit and Smolin have done) to deride the way some manifestly brilliant people choose to dedicate their scientific … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 28 Comments

Rochester Colloquium Talk

Posted on March 6, 2018 by woit

I’m heading up to Rochester this evening, will give a colloquium talk there in the physics department on Wednesday at 3:45. I’ll put up a link to the slides after the talk, for now, here’s the abstract: Particle theory: a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Applied Group Theory

Posted on February 26, 2018 by woit

I just noticed that Greg Moore has been teaching a wonderful course in recent years with the misleadingly bland title of Applied Group Theory. His choice of the topics he wants to cover given here is an excellent one and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on February 9, 2018 by woit

I recently spent some time looking at old postings on this blog, partly because of writing this blog entry, partly because Gil Kalai got me a copy of his book Gina Says. For a moment I thought this would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Muon g-2 Anomaly Gone?

Posted on February 1, 2018 by woit

I just learned some interesting news from Tommaso Dorigo’s blog. Go there for more details, but the news is the claim in these three papers that, accounting for GR effects on the precision measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments