Author Archives: woit

Neutrinos to Give High-Frequency Traders the Millisecond Edge

Posted on May 1, 2012 by woit

Recently US plans for the LBNE next-generation neutrino experiment have run into trouble finding room in projected HEP budgets. Today (via Emanuel Derman’s twitter feed), I learn of a promising new source of funding. A Forbes columnist reports here on … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 18 Comments

A Prediction About a Prediction

Posted on May 1, 2012 by woit

In the years leading up to the LHC, string phenomenologists were vocal about their hopes to use string theory to make predictions about what the LHC would see, despite a history of a quarter-century of failure on the prediction front. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Much Ado About Nothing

Posted on April 27, 2012 by woit

I suppose I’m posting too much about this, but the ongoing fight over nothing between prominent physicists and philosophers strikes me as perhaps marking some kind of end-point in the multiverse-mania-driven decline of part of theoretical physics from a difficult, … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania | 60 Comments

Something and Nothing

Posted on April 23, 2012 by woit

In the something of interest category, last week at Columbia there was a panel discussion held as part of the World Leader’s Forum, introduced by our president Lee Bollinger, on the topic What If We Find the Higgs Particle and … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 34 Comments

Weinberg on the Crisis of Big Science

Posted on April 21, 2012 by woit

Steven Weinberg has a new article in The New York Review of Books on The Crisis of Big Science, which is based on a talk he gave this past January at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin (for some … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments

Spring in the Virgin Islands

Posted on April 19, 2012 by woit

One thing that a career in math or physics research can get you, courtesy of financial industry wealth, is a nice trip to the Virgin Islands. A couple current possibilities are: The Simons Foundation funds week-long Simons Symposia, at Caneel … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Adventures in Peer Review

Posted on April 18, 2012 by woit

Yesterday’s New York Times had an article by Carl Zimmer about increasing numbers of retracted papers in the biological sciences. Physics and Mathematics weren’t part of the story and I don’t know of any evidence of retractions increasing in these … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Quantum Gravity at Scientific American

Posted on April 17, 2012 by woit

Scientific American is doing a good job this month of putting out stories related to quantum gravity that actually make sense, steering clear of the multiverse and other pseudo-science. This month’s magazine has a very nice article by Steven Carlip … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Short Items

Posted on April 13, 2012 by woit

The LHC is back in business, with the experiments collecting data at 4 TeV/beam, marginally higher than last year’s 3.5 TeV/beam. They are ramping up the number of bunches in each beam, already this afternoon achieving a higher initial luminosity … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania | 9 Comments

Testing the Holographic Principle

Posted on April 12, 2012 by woit

Adrian Cho at Science magazine this week has an article about Craig Hogan’s project to build a “holometer” and somehow test the “holographic principle”. Since this promises some sort of experimental test of fashionable ideas about quantum gravity, it has … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments