Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fourier Analysis Notes

Posted on March 23, 2020 by woit

This semester I’ve been teaching a course on Fourier Analysis, which has, like just about everything, been seriously disrupted by the COVID-19 situation. Several class sessions have been canceled, and future ones are supposed to resume online next week. To … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Penrose at The Portal

Posted on March 6, 2020 by woit

Since last summer Eric Weinstein has been running a podcast entitled The Portal, featuring a wide range of unusual and provocative discussions. A couple have had a physics theme, including one with Garrett Lisi back in December. One that I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Why String Theory Is Both A Dream And A Nightmare (as well as a swamp…)

Posted on February 26, 2020 by woit

Ethan Siegel today has a new article at Starts With a Bang, entitled Why String Theory is Both a Dream and a Nightmare. For the nightmare part, he writes: its predictions are all over the map, untestable in practice, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Various

Posted on February 3, 2020 by woit

A few months ago I ended up doing a little history of science research, trying to track down the details of the story of the Physical Review’s 1973 policy discouraging articles on “Foundations”. The results of that research are in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

London Calling with Career Opportunities II

Posted on January 27, 2020 by woit

If you’re a mathematician, you don’t need to go work for Dominic Cummings in order to have dramatically improved career opportunities in the UK. The British government has just announced a huge increase in funding for mathematical research: 60 million … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

This and That

Posted on January 23, 2020 by woit

I was sorry to hear of the death a few months ago of Tony Smith, who had been a frequent commenter on this blog and others. Unfortunately my interactions with him mainly involved trying to discourage him from hijacking the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

Posted on January 13, 2020 by woit

Sabine Hossenfelder has a new piece out, making many of the same arguments she has been making for a while about the state of fundamental theory in physics. These have a lot in common with arguments that Lee Smolin and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

Musings on the Current Status of HEP

Posted on January 4, 2020 by woit

To start the new decade there’s an article very much worth reading by Misha Shifman, entitled Musings on the Current State of HEP. It’s somewhat of an update of something he wrote back in 2012, which I wrote about here. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

London Calling with Career Opportunities

Posted on January 2, 2020 by woit

At some point within the past couple years I noticed that one blog that had Not Even Wrong on its blogroll was the blog of Dominic Cummings, who was often getting credited with masterminding the political campaign that got the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

This and That

Posted on December 2, 2019 by woit

First, a few physics items: Mark Alpert has a new novel out, Saint Joan of New York, a thriller subtitled “A Novel About God and String Theory”, which is an accurate description. It’s published by Springer, so you may be … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 23 Comments