Author Archives: woit

Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies and the Multiverse

Posted on August 22, 2015 by woit

This past week the large biennial “Lepton-Photon” (International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies) conference has been taking place in Ljubljana. These have been going on since 1965, now alternating years with the ICHEP (“Rochester”) conference. It’s been … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania | 17 Comments

Genius at Play

Posted on August 15, 2015 by woit

A month or two ago I read the new biography of John Conway, Genius at Play, by Siobhan Roberts (whose book about Coxeter I reviewed here). Since then, writing about it has been on my to-do list, but I wasn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 30 Comments

Short Items

Posted on August 12, 2015 by woit

A few short items: The New Yorker has its own coverage here of the NSA GenCyber summer camp program for children that was discussed here. The LHC is about to start doing physics again at 13 TeV, with beam intensity … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 21 Comments

Multiverses: Science or Science Fiction?

Posted on August 3, 2015 by woit

The September issue of Astronomy magazine is now out, with a cover story on Multiverses: Science or Science Fiction? The author Bob Berman does a good job of explaining both the arguments for various Multiverses, as well as the reasons … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 59 Comments

Math and Physics Summer Camps

Posted on August 1, 2015 by woit

With the kids shipped off to NSA summer camp, now is the time for mathematicians and physicists to head off to their own summer camp experiences. Some of these have websites where the rest of us can participate a bit … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on July 28, 2015 by woit

Symmetry, the FNAL/SLAC run online magazine funded by the DOE, today is running a piece of multiverse mania entitled Is this the only universe?. It’s a rather standard example of the pseudo-scientific hype that has flooded the popular scientific media … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 16 Comments

A Beautiful Question

Posted on July 24, 2015 by woit

Frank Wilczek’s new book, A Beautiful Question, is now out and if you’re at all interested in issues about beauty and the deep structure of reality, you should find a copy and spend some time with it. As he explains … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 37 Comments

Random Notes

Posted on July 21, 2015 by woit

The LHC has now finished the first part of its physics run at 13 TeV, with intensity ramping up more slowly than hoped. Total luminosity/experiment so far is about .1 inverse fb (see here), about a tenth of some earlier … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

GenCyber

Posted on July 18, 2015 by woit

Over the years the NSF has financed various summer camps for high school students, designed to get them interested in mathematics or other areas of science. This summer they’ve teamed up with the NSA to deal with the problem of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 39 Comments

My Summer Vacation

Posted on July 15, 2015 by woit

When I was young, I recall that a standard assignment when restarting school was an essay on “what I did on my summer vacation”. Now that I’m back in the office after a vacation, here’s a version of that, covering … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments