Author Archives: woit

Time Reborn

Posted on April 23, 2013 by woit

Lee Smolin’s new book, Time Reborn, is out today. For more about the ideas in the book, see video of a talk here, and an interview here. While I mostly vehemently agreed with what Smolin had to say in his … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 83 Comments

Anderson on Anderson-Higgs

Posted on April 16, 2013 by woit

Philip Anderson was here at Columbia yesterday, and gave a very interesting talk, mostly discussing what was going on in the late 50s and early 60s at the intersection of condensed matter and particle physics. This has attracted a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments

To Mars and Beyond

Posted on April 14, 2013 by woit

I’m not sure either of these stories from the past week is particularly important in and of itself, but since I try and keep up on trends in theoretical physics, and two is a trend, here’s some news from two … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 45 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on April 3, 2013 by woit

The award for this week’s hype goes to the people at CERN, who normally are pretty good about this, but somehow thought it was a good idea to spin the AMS-02 results in a way that makes it sound as … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 22 Comments

Various Links

Posted on April 2, 2013 by woit

The AMS-02 experiment results will be announced tomorrow, 1700 CERN local time, webcast here. The normally reliable Jester says rumor is no dark matter. For this kind of astrophysics news, you should find a site with an expert to interpret … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Strange connections to strange metals

Posted on April 2, 2013 by woit

In recent years much of the attention of string theorists has turned to applications of string theory (via AdS/CFT) to heavy-ion physics and condensed matter physics. Since I’m no expert on either topic, I’ve been curious to hear what experts … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Grothendieck News

Posted on March 30, 2013 by woit

On Thursday someone pointed out to me that it was Alexander Grothendieck’s 85th birthday. Hopefully he is well and celebrating appropriately. Coincidentally I just heard the following rumor. Supposedly a couple months ago the librarian at the IHES got a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Are they wrong? US research funding

Posted on March 28, 2013 by woit

It seems to be part of the job description of anyone in the sciences to periodically complain that scientific research funding is insufficient, with the situation going from bad to worse. For some recent examples, see this from Bruce Alberts, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 49 Comments

The Existence of Nothing

Posted on March 22, 2013 by woit

The sold-out “debate” held Wednesday night here in New York is now available for viewing online, see here. I just watched most of it, and one of many things I couldn’t figure out is what if any propositions were being … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 34 Comments

Planck Results

Posted on March 21, 2013 by woit

The long awaited CMB results from the Planck satellite are now out, see here. A NASA press conference is about to start here. You really should be reading about this somewhere else, from a much better informed blogger, someone expert … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments