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Quantum Theory, Groups and Representations
Not Even Wrong: The Book
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- Various and Sundry 19
James Smith, Peter Shor, Shantanu, Oisin McGuinness, David Roberts, David Roberts [...] - Quantum Supremacy 29
former mathematician, Peter Woit, Giovanni Ronchi, Peter Woit, Mark Hillery, Mike [...] - From Quantum Mechanics to Number Theory via the Oscillator Representation 1
Jim Golden - string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard 60
Curious Mayhem, SRP, Marion Delgado, Frank Wilhoit, Peter Woit, JE [...] - Kontsevich on the Hodge and Tate conjectures 8
Topological twist, Peter Woit, Simon Pepin Lehalleur, jsm, Peter Woit, Mike [...]
- Various and Sundry 19
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
From Quantum Mechanics to Number Theory via the Oscillator Representation
This past semester I taught our graduate class on Lie groups and representations, and spent part of the course on the Heisenberg group and the oscillator representation. Since the end of the semester I’ve been trying to clean up and … Continue reading
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1 Comment
Various and Sundry
A few unrelated items: I’ve been hearing from several people about their plans to travel to China this summer, just realized that they’re all going there for the same reason, to participate in the First International Congress of Basic Science. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
19 Comments
string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard
I want to make up for linking to something featuring Michio Kaku yesterday by today linking to the exact opposite, an insightful explanation of the history of string theory, discussing the implications of how it was sold to the public. … Continue reading
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60 Comments
Kontsevich on the Hodge and Tate conjectures
Yesterday afternoon there was an event at CUNY featuring a panel discussion on Chern-Simons terms. Nothing new there, although it was interesting to hear first-hand from Witten the story of how he came up with the Chern-Simons-Witten theory. One piece … Continue reading
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8 Comments
Reality is a Paradox
Lex Fridman’s latest podcast features a nearly four hour long conversation with Edward Frenkel, under the title Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love. Normally I’m fairly allergic to hearing mathematicians or physicists publicly sharing their wisdom … Continue reading
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13 Comments
Who was “Not Even Wrong” first?
I recently heard from John Minkowski, whose father Jan Minkowksi was a student of Pauli’s in the late 1940s. He asked if I knew what the specific context of Pauli’s “Not Even Wrong” comment was, and I told him I … Continue reading
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17 Comments
A Muon Collider?
The US particle physics community has been going through a multi-year process designed to lead up this fall to a 10 year strategic plan to be presented to the DOE and the NSF. In particular, this will generate a prioritized … Continue reading
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11 Comments
Physics With Witten
I just noticed that last semester Edward Witten was teaching Physics 539 at Princeton, a graduate topics course. Since he’s now past the age of 70, at the IAS he is officially retired and an emeritus professor (the IAS is … Continue reading
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6 Comments
Some Interviews
Some interviews that readers of this blog may find of interest: David Zierler at the AIP interviews Lee Smolin (April 1, 2021). David Zierler at the AIP interviews Stephon Alexander (June 7, 2021). Alexis Papazoglou at IAI News interviews me … Continue reading
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9 Comments
The Trouble With Path Integrals, Part II
This posting is about the problems with the idea that you can simply formulate quantum mechanical systems by picking a configuration space, an action functional S on paths in this space, and evaluating path integrals of the form $$\int_{\text{paths}}e^{iS[\text{path}]}$$ Necessity … Continue reading
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30 Comments