Author Archives: woit

Leaving Town

Posted on July 19, 2018 by woit

About to head out on vacation tonight, back in a couple weeks. On the hot topics in fundamental physics, two items are: Concerning the “no dS string vacua” conjecture, a new preprint begins by explaining why the existence or non-existence … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Leaving Town

abc News

Posted on July 17, 2018 by woit

[For those not up to speed on this story, see blog posts here and here from last December, as well as comments to those posts.] The last couple months I’ve heard reports from several people claiming that arithmetic geometers Peter … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture | 24 Comments

Various Links

Posted on July 5, 2018 by woit

A random assortment of possibly interesting links: New videos from the IHES include new interviews, and talks from the recent Ofer Gabber conference. If you want to know more about prisms than what you can get from the video here, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Strings 2018 Panel Discussion

Posted on June 30, 2018 by woit

A panel discussion at the Strings 2018 conference ended by addressing audience questions, and this seemed to me to give some insight into where string theory is now. I noticed that the Youtube video comes with an auto-generated transcript, so … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX, Swampland | 18 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on June 27, 2018 by woit

New Scientist today has a feature article headlined How to think about… The multiverse The idea of an infinite multitude of universes is forced on us by physics. It starts off quoting Sean Carroll: “One of the most common misconceptions … Continue reading →

Posted in Fake Physics, Multiverse Mania, Strings 2XXX, Swampland | 17 Comments

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

Posted on June 21, 2018 by woit

I’ve been thinking about what to write about this essay by Ben Allanach, which gives his take on the current state of HEP theory. Allanach is a specialist on the phenomenology of SUSY models, but here he announces that he’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

The Multiverse Falsified

Posted on June 19, 2018 by woit

The July 1 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society includes an article evaluating the standard multiverse prediction of the cosmological constant, with result: The predicted (median) value is 50–60 times larger than the observed value. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 15 Comments

Lost in Math

Posted on June 7, 2018 by woit

Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book Lost in Math should be starting to appear in bookstores around now. It’s very good and you should get a copy. I hope that the book will receive a lot of attention, but suspect that much … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 61 Comments

Back at Work

Posted on June 7, 2018 by woit

Now back from a week away, mostly spent in Cambridge. Among the accumulated items of interest: Inference has a review of my book, Woit’s Way, by Andrew Jordan. I like the way it starts out: Quantum Theory, Groups and Representations … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Heinz-Dieter Zeh 1932-2018

Posted on June 6, 2018 by woit

I was sorry to learn today of the death on April 15th of H. Dieter Zeh, one of the major figures responsible for improving our understanding of the physics involved in the measurement problem and related interpretational issues in quantum … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 1 Comment