Author Archives: woit

A Tear at the Edge of Creation

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

There’s a new book out this week by Marcelo Gleiser, entitled A Tear at the Edge of Creation. Gleiser blogs at the NPR site 13.7, and that site also has a review of the book from his fellow blogger Adam … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 36 Comments

$2 Million For The Nature of Time

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

FQXI has just announced that it will be awarding another series of large grants, of size \$50K-\$100K, totaling about \$2 million. These grants will be targeted at research into “The Nature of Time.” Initial proposals are due June 14, grants … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

Fox News has decided that some recent experimental atomic physics work showing that quantum mechanics works as expected (for a sane discussion of the science, see here) proves that parallel universes exist and that time travel may be feasible. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 5 Comments

Solar

Posted on April 5, 2010 by woit

Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar is now out, with a plot featuring Michael Beard, an aging theoretical physicist. Beard won a Nobel prize early in his career for the “Beard-Einstein Conflation”, which supposedly involves some unexpected coherent behavior in QED, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 9 Comments

Short Items

Posted on April 2, 2010 by woit

Planning on getting back to writing some longer postings, but for today, here’s a collection of quick news and links: I hear from number theorists that Princeton’s Manjul Bhargava has some breakthrough results on the ranks of elliptic curves. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

First High Energy Collisions at the LHC

Posted on March 29, 2010 by woit

Current schedule is for first 7 TeV center of mass collisions tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9:17 am Geneva time. Injection of the beams will take place after 2 am, ramp up to 3.5 TeV/beam from 3-4 am. For more details of … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 14 Comments

More Prizes

Posted on March 26, 2010 by woit

As far as I can tell, it’s still unclear if Perelman will accept the $1 million Millennium prize awarded to him last week. This week brings news of two more million dollar prizes: John Tate is this year’s winner of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

High Energy Beams at the LHC

Posted on March 19, 2010 by woit

At 5:23 am in Geneva this morning, for the first time the two LHC beams were ramped up to high energy, the 3.5 TeV/beam that they plan to run at for the next two years. These are the highest energy … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 10 Comments

Millennium Prize to Perelman

Posted on March 18, 2010 by woit

The Clay Mathematics Institute announced today the award of the Millennium Prize to Perelman for the proof of the Poincare Conjecture. The award was made based on the rules set up when the prize was created: a Special Advisory Board … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 38 Comments

HEPAP Meeting

Posted on March 12, 2010 by woit

HEPAP is now meeting in Washington, presentations available here. Like the rest of science, HEP has been doing very well in the federal budget, including a temporary increase due to the stimulus program. Excluding stimulus money, the president’s FY2011 request … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 15 Comments