Author Archives: woit

News from CERN

Posted on December 5, 2013 by woit

Here’s a roundup of recent CERN-related news: The status of the LHC and the LHC experiments was discussed here yesterday. The LHC shutdown is more or less on track, first beams at 13 TeV total energy Jan. 2015, physics starting … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 5 Comments

Quantum Mechanics and Representation Theory: talk and book progress

Posted on November 27, 2013 by woit

Last week I gave a colloquium talk at the Texas Tech math department, slides are here if you’re interested. One motivation for the talk was to advertise the book project I’m working on, which gives a lot more detail about … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Theory: The Book | 29 Comments

Controversy over Yau-Tian-Donaldson

Posted on November 25, 2013 by woit

The last posting here was about an unusually collaborative effort among mathematicians, whereas this one is about the opposite, an unusually contentious situation surrounding important recent mathematical progress. What’s at issue is the proof of what has become known as … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Progress on Twin Primes

Posted on November 20, 2013 by woit

There’s a new paper out on the arXiv last night, Small gaps between primes, by James Maynard, which brings the bound on the size of gaps between primes down to 600. This uses some new methods, beating out the Polymath8 … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Anderson 90th

Posted on November 17, 2013 by woit

Philip Anderson’s 90th birthday is coming up next month, and Princeton will host a workshop commemorating the event. Witten and Wilczek will give talks on the Anderson-Higgs mechanism, for which Anderson recently was not awarded a Nobel Prize (for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

Various Topics

Posted on November 15, 2013 by woit

Mathematician Sasha Beilinson has a letter to the editor in this month’s AMS Notices calling on the AMS to sever all ties with the NSA (right now it manages NSA grants, and runs ads from the NSA in the Notices). … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Back to the Usual

Posted on November 6, 2013 by woit

I’m now back to regular internet access, in London for a few days after a trip to East Africa, where I managed to see the November 3 total solar eclipse through light clouds from a location in Northern Uganda. From … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 94 Comments

It’s too soon to declare supersymmetry a tragedy

Posted on October 22, 2013 by woit

Well, maybe one more before I leave… Tom Siegfried, last heard from telling us that Belief in multiverse requires exceptional vision, now has two new pieces at Science News (here and here) arguing that the failure of the LHC to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Last Links For a While

Posted on October 20, 2013 by woit

In a few days I’m heading to East Africa for a couple-week long trip, planning to be in Uganda on November 3 for the (short) total solar eclipse that day. This will be followed by a few days in London, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments

Latest From Langlands

Posted on October 11, 2013 by woit

Robert Langlands will be speaking at Yale in a couple weeks at a day-long Mostowfest of lectures in honor of Dan Mostow. His title is “The search for a mathematically satisfying geometric theory of automorphic forms” and he has already … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 2 Comments