Category Archives: Uncategorized

GR=QM?

Posted on August 10, 2017 by woit

In recent years a hot topic in some theoretical physics circles has been the 2013 “ER=EPR” conjecture first discussed by Maldacena and Susskind here. Every so often I try and read something explaining what this is about, but all such … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 31 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on August 4, 2017 by woit

For representation theory aficionados, George Lusztig has put on the arXiv a long document with comments on his papers (for a bit more about him, see this). For a new idea exemplifying the potential grand unification of mathematics and physics, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

A Few Items

Posted on July 25, 2017 by woit

Just a few items: The Simons Foundation has announced a new Origins of the Universe initiative, which will fund efforts to “develop testable predictions about string theory, quantum gravity and a cosmological ‘Big Bounce.’” I don’t think even all of … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

What the Hell is Going On?

Posted on July 22, 2017 by woit

I’ve looked at the talks from a few of the HEP experiment and phenomenology summer conferences. If anyone can point me to anything interesting that I’ve missed, please do so. The lack of new physics beyond the Higgs at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

Summer Conferences: Physical Mathematics

Posted on July 21, 2017 by woit

I’ve finally found some time to look around the web to see what has been happening at conferences this summer. In this blog post I’ll point to a few on the math/physics interface featuring interesting talks. This area now (I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Various Links

Posted on July 6, 2017 by woit

Some links to things that may be of interest: There’s an excellent article at FiveThirtyEight about the issue of publicizing math research, taking as example the Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations project (which will soon be having a workshop). … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

The Dangerous Irrelevance of String Theory

Posted on June 12, 2017 by woit

Eva Silverstein has a new preprint out, entitled The Dangerous Irrelevance of String Theory. The title is I guess intended to be playful, not referring to its accurate description of the current state of string theory, but to the possibility … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

2018 US HEP Budget

Posted on June 6, 2017 by woit

HEPAP has been meeting the past couple days, with presentations available here. Much of the discussion is about the President’s 2018 budget proposal recently submitted to Congress, which contains drastic cuts to all sorts of programs, including for support of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

A Few Quick Items

Posted on May 31, 2017 by woit

I’ve had little time for blogging, and coincidentally, there seems to be little to blog about recently. Here though are a few quick items: Several people had asked me about this paper about the CC, and I had to tell … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

GAMBIT

Posted on May 23, 2017 by woit

The LHCP 2017 conference was held this past week in Shanghai, and among the results announced there were new negative results about SUSY from ATLAS with both ATLAS and CMS now reporting for instance limits on gluino masses of around … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments