Author Archives: woit

Surfing the Universe

Posted on July 14, 2008 by woit

This week’s New Yorker has a quite good article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells entitled “Surfing the Universe” about Garrett Lisi and the controversy generated last year by his paper An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything (which I wrote about here). Unfortunately … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 71 Comments

This and That

Posted on July 8, 2008 by woit

Some quick links: The Clay Mathematics Institute is now making available for free online the books whose publication it has sponsored. These include the Morgan-Tian exposition of the proof of the Poincare conjecture. Surveys in Non-commutative geometry, which contains two … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Back to the Future

Posted on July 7, 2008 by woit

Several things have come up recently that brought up the year 1985, the year the film “Back to the Future” came out. This summer the IAS will be running a two-week program at the IAS on Strings and Phenomenology, designed … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments

LHC Update

Posted on July 7, 2008 by woit

Latest press release from CERN about the LHC says first beams “currently scheduled for August”. According to a presentation at the July 2 meeting of the LHC Technical Committee, the latest news is that “circulating beam not before September” (the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 1 Comment

Interview With Atle Selberg

Posted on July 4, 2008 by woit

Sticking with the theme of the Riemann Hypothesis, the AMS has recently posted some articles to appear in an upcoming issue of the AMS Bulletin, one of which contains a long interview with Atle Selberg, who died last summer at … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis?

Posted on July 2, 2008 by woit

Last night a preprint by Xian-Jin Li appeared on the arXiv, claiming a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. Preprints claiming such a proof have been pretty common, and always wrong. Most of them are obviously implausible, invoking a few pages … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Physics Nobel Laureates at Lindau

Posted on July 1, 2008 by woit

This week there’s a Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, devoted to physics. Many of the talks can be viewed on-line. From 3-5pm today (Lindau time) there will be a session devoted to a panel discussion of expectations for the LHC. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Wonders of Gauge Theory and Supergravity

Posted on June 27, 2008 by woit

A workshop in Paris/Saclay is taking place this week entitled Wonders of Gauge Theory and Supergravity and the talks are now online. They show that some exciting new things have been happening in the study of gauge theory and supergravity … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 57 Comments

Supplemental US Science Funding

Posted on June 27, 2008 by woit

The Senate last night agreed to the House version of a bill that adds some supplemental science funding for FY2008, as part of a large “emergency” bill used to fund the the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The DOE Office of … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 2 Comments

The Black Hole War

Posted on June 23, 2008 by woit

Leonard Susskind has a new book that’s now out in the bookstores, entitled The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. It’s about the black hole information paradox, structured around his … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 33 Comments