Category Archives: Uncategorized

Congratulations to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, awarded the 2013 physics Nobel prize this morning. Evidently the prize announcement was delayed because they were unable to reach Higgs by phone. Surely he wasn’t unaware that today was a day he … Continue reading →

First a sad piece of news, via commenter Bob Jones. It seems that David Kazhdan, a well-known representation theorist, was hit by a truck Saturday morning while bicycling in Jerusalem. He’s in the hospital, with his condition described as “very … Continue reading →

Normally I avoid writing about the topic headlined here, not because it’s not of interest or not important, but because the usual discussions it attracts seem to me ideologically-driven, containing far more heat than light. The New York Times Magazine … Continue reading →

This week in Madrid there’s a conference going on with the title Why mH= 126 GeV?. It brings together HEP theorists working on “Beyond Standard Model” physics, with the majority of the participants from Western Europe, especially Spain. As part … Continue reading →

The new issue of Nautilus has a wonderful story about Yitang Zhang, called The Twin Prime Hero, which includes a long interview with him. Zhang’s remarkable mathematical career includes several years working at a Subway in Kentucky. His sucessful work … Continue reading →

Today’s Slashdot tells us that Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics, a story that is based on an excellent article, A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics, by Natalie Wolchover at the new Quanta Magazine sponsored by the Simons … Continue reading →

For the latest on quantum gravity, readers might want to look at talks from some events of the last couple weeks. At the new ICTP-SAIFR theoretical physics institute in Sao Paulo, a school on quantum gravity has talks available here, … Continue reading →

The last few days have seen some new revelations about the NSA’s role in compromising NIST standard elliptic curve cryptography algorithms. Evidently this is an old story, going back to 2007, for details see Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor … Continue reading →

Maclean’s has been publishing a very nice series of articles about Perimeter Institute by Paul Wells. These include one about Jacob Barnett, a 15 year-old who is now studying in a master’s level graduate program (Perimeter Scholars International) there. Another … Continue reading →

The big yearly SUSY conference, SUSY 2013 has been going on in Trieste this past week. From the experimentalists, the news is just stronger limits: no hint of SUSY anywhere in the LHC data. From the theorists, the reaction to … Continue reading →