Author Archives: woit

Sidney Coleman 1937-2007

Posted on November 19, 2007 by woit

I just learned today the sad news of the death of Sidney Coleman, yesterday at the age of seventy. Coleman had been in quite poor health in recent years. I wrote about him here back in 2005, after attending a … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 25 Comments

Project X and Flavor Physics

Posted on November 18, 2007 by woit

Last week Fermilab hosted two workshops on the so-called Project X proposal for building a linac designed to produce a high-intensity proton beam. The first workshop dealt with issues surrounding the proposed accelerator itself, the second with the physics that … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 35 Comments

Popularizing Science

Posted on November 12, 2007 by woit

While it’s not one of my main goals in life, I’m all in favor of the idea of popularizing science and making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. But sometimes I do wonder about the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 70 Comments

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything?

Posted on November 9, 2007 by woit

It’s been unusually long since my last posting, with the main reasons being that Not much has been happening on the math/physics front… I’ve been busy learning more about geometric Langlands, which is a daunting subject. I keep intending to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 176 Comments

Pressure Mounts to Tie String Theory to the Real World

Posted on October 30, 2007 by woit

Last week David Gross was in New Mexico, giving an “unclassified talk” at Los Alamos, and one on The State of String Theory at the Santa Fe Institute. There’s a report on the Los Alamos talk from the Los Alamos … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 15 Comments

Is Science Near Its Limits?

Posted on October 27, 2007 by woit

The past two days I’ve been at a conference here in Lisbon organized by the Gulbenkian Foundation on the ostensible topic of Is Science Near Its Limits? The Gulbenkian is probably the most well-known and best-funded cultural organization in Portugal, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 61 Comments

Comment on Technicolor/Extended Technicolor Models

Posted on October 26, 2007 by woit

Robert Shrock of Stony Brook sent me the following to post as a response to one of the comments on the latest posting. With his permission I’m putting it here as a separate posting, since I think it’s a valuable … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

String Theory’s Next Top Model

Posted on October 25, 2007 by woit

I’ll write soon about the conference I spoke at today in Lisbon. A few hours ago I participated in an interesting discussion about some of the issues around string theory with two string theorists. One of them was quite vehement … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 11 Comments

Future Linear Colliders

Posted on October 23, 2007 by woit

There are two highly active projects to design a linear collider that would collide electrons and positrons at energies higher than those achieved at LEP. Recently there were workshops discussing the state of the projects. The ILC is the farthest … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 35 Comments

Susskind Joins PI

Posted on October 16, 2007 by woit

I haven’t been able to confirm Lubos Motl’s claims that the Perimeter Institute offered him a job, but yesterday they announced that Lenny Susskind has accepted an offer to join them as an associate member. According to the announcement, this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 36 Comments