Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some Quick Items

Posted on March 25, 2019 by woit

A few quick items: This past weekend I went to see the new film Out of Blue, which sounded promising: a murder mystery based on a Martin Amis book, set in New Orleans, starring Patricia Clarkson, with a plot involving … Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

In it for the Long Haul

Posted on March 8, 2019 by woit

The CERN Courier today has a long interview with the omnipresent Nima Arkani-Hamed, discussing the current state of HEP physics. About the motivations for a next-generation collider project, I’m pretty much in agreement with him: the main argument is for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

A Few Items

Posted on February 28, 2019 by woit

A few things that may be of interest: The Perimeter Institute has a new director, Rob Myers, succeeding Neil Turok. Myers is very much a mainstream theorist, and Perimeter over the years has been converging with the mainstream, from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Mathematical Question From Which All Answers Flow

Posted on February 19, 2019 by woit

I’m beginning to suspect that there are actually (at least) two different theoretical HEP physicists named Nima Arkani-Hamed out there. One of them (who I’ll call Nima1) believes the way to understand the fundamental nature of physical reality involves extremely … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on February 15, 2019 by woit

First a couple of items from Paris: Fields medalist Cédric Villani is campaigning for the position of Mayor of Paris. This Sunday there will be a campaign event/book launch for his new book, Immersion: De la science au Parlement. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Where in the World are SUSY and WIMPs?

Posted on February 10, 2019 by woit

Back in 2017, after it had already become clear that negative LHC results about SUSY and WIMPs had falsified theorist’s most popular scenarios for how to extend the Standard Model, Nima Arkani-Hamed gave a summer school talk to students with … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

On Inference

Posted on February 2, 2019 by woit

The first issue of the magazine Inference appeared online back in 2014. At the time, it was surrounded by a significant amount of mystery: who were the editors, what were they trying to do, and who was funding it? I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 50 Comments

This Week’s Hype (and a couple other things)

Posted on December 28, 2018 by woit

For today’s university press release designed to mislead the public with hype about string theory, Uppsala University has Our Universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension. It’s the Swampland variant of string theory hype, based on this preprint, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Chronic Incompleteness of String Theory

Posted on December 19, 2018 by woit

Ex-string theorist turned philosopher Richard Dawid has become known over the years for his arguments that string theory is a theory to be evaluated not by the conventional scientific method, in which experiment plays a role, but by “post-empirical theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Notes on Current Affairs

Posted on December 8, 2018 by woit

Blogging has been light recently, partly due to quite a bit of traveling. This included a brief trip the week before last to Los Angeles, where I met up with, among others, Sabine Hossenfelder. This past week I was in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments