Author Archives: woit

Simons Center Inaugural Conference

Posted on November 5, 2010 by woit

I was out in Stony Brook for the past couple days, to attend festivities surrounding the inauguration of the new building there which will house the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. The Center is funded by Jim Simons, whose … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Recent Hot Topics in Hep-th

Posted on November 4, 2010 by woit

SLAC’s SPIRES database has a link you can use to search for articles heavily cited during 2009 and 2010. Just looking at the hep-th papers, three are review articles of older work on applying AdS/CFT to condensed matter physics, three … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on November 3, 2010 by woit

Way back in 1997, string theorists were already getting rather touchy about people pointing out string theory’s testability problems. At that time, Gordon Kane published an article in Physics Today with the title String Theory is Testable, Even Supertestable in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 33 Comments

Bogdanov Update

Posted on October 18, 2010 by woit

Earlier this year the Bogdanov brothers published Le Visage de Dieu, yet another book dealing with their ideas about the big-bang and pre-big-bang physics. This follows their earlier Avant le Big Bang, and L’équation Bogdanov : Le secret de l’origine … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

The Gathering Storm: Category 5

Posted on October 14, 2010 by woit

Back in 2005 an illustrious group was organized to produce a report addressing the state of science and technology in the United States, resulting in what became known as the “Gathering Storm” report since it was entitled Rising Above the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on October 11, 2010 by woit

Yet another random collection of topics of possible interest: Things have been going well at the LHC recently, and there’s a new dashboard page at which progress can be followed. For the latest from the LHC, see the talks at … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Grading String Theory

Posted on September 30, 2010 by woit

Commenter Shantanu points to this video of a recent colloquium by Andy Strominger at Harvard, which includes some extensive comments on the current state of string theory. Strominger is one of the most prominent string theorists in the business, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 42 Comments

NRC Rankings

Posted on September 27, 2010 by woit

One thing I’ve learned in life is that human beings are creatures very much obsessed with social hierarchy, and academics are even more obsessed with this than most people. So, any public rankings that involve oneself and the institutions one … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

The End of Time

Posted on September 26, 2010 by woit

I’ve been critical of multiverse pseudo-science because it doesn’t make any testable predictions, but it seems that tonight there really is one. According to this new preprint, multiverse arguments guarantee that time will end, with the expected amount of time … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 49 Comments

LHC Update

Posted on September 24, 2010 by woit

There’s been great progress made recently at the LHC, with successful commissioning of “trains” of bunches, allowing significantly higher collision rates. Last night’s fill produced an integrated luminosity of .684 inverse picobarns (or 684 inverse nanobarns), which can be compared … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 8 Comments