Category Archives: Uncategorized

A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with Robinson Erhardt, which has now appeared as String Theory and the Crisis in Physics. We mainly talk about the current situation of string theory in physics and the history of how … Continue reading →

Ted Jacobson has put on the arXiv a transcription of a 1947 Feynman letter about his efforts to better understand the Dirac equation, in order to find a path integral formulation of it. The letter also contains some fascinating comments … Continue reading →

Starting to write a longer, more technical posting, but for now, a few quick links: The film Particle Fever (for more about this, see here) may get made into a musical. With a little luck they’ll skip the nonsense about … Continue reading →

Lawrence Krauss has just put up a long interview with Lenny Susskind. I was listening to it while doing something else, found myself shocked when the discussion got to the current state of string theory to find that I mostly … Continue reading →

A few items of different kinds: The Harvard Math department website has a wonderful profile of Dick Gross. The second International Congress of Basic Science ended a few days ago in Beijing. A huge number of interesting talks, video and … Continue reading →

A common theme in discussions online of the problems of fundamental theoretical physics is that the subject has gotten “lost in math”, losing touch with “physical intuition”. In such discussions, when people refer to “math” it’s hard to figure out … Continue reading →

The following makes no claims to originality or any physical significance on its own. For a better explanation of some of the math and the physical significance of the use of quaternions here, see this lecture by John Baez. I’ve … Continue reading →

This semester the KITP has been running a program asking What is String Theory?, which is winding up next week, and was promising to “arrive at a deeper answer to the question in the title.” It seems though that this … Continue reading →