Category Archives: Uncategorized

The University of Birmingham has put out a press release today about new research by their computer scientists, on the topic of the spread of gossip about the Higgs via Twitter. This is all based on an arXiv paper, The … Continue reading →

Back from vacation today, so regular blogging likely to resume. Will start with something quick, a link to material that was posted today. The Edge web-site annual question feature is out today, with this year’s question What *Should* We Be … Continue reading →

Back when I was a student I remember learning that there were two possible sign conventions to use for the Minkowski space metric: the “East coast” one, mostly + signs, favored by relativists and Steven Weinberg, and the “West coast” … Continue reading →

This week there’s a conference in Oxford I’d have loved to have been at. Slides from some of the talks are already posted here. The conference is in honor of Graeme Segal’s 70th birthday. Happy Birthday Graeme! Physics Today has … Continue reading →

Classes are over for the semester, and I’ve put together the lecture notes for my undergraduate “Quantum Mechanics for Mathematicians” course, which are available here. The idea for the course was to try and explain the basics of quantum mechanics, … Continue reading →

For the latest SUSY enthusiast take on the implications of what the LHC has been (not) seeing, your best bet might be yesterday’s talk at the KITP by Nima Arkani-Hamed on Naturalness. An hour and 40 minutes, no slides, nothing … Continue reading →

The New York Times is reporting that tomorrow Yuri Milner will be announcing the award of a new set of prizes for fundamental physics work, this time including some experimentalists as recipients. The awards are $3 million for the experimental … Continue reading →

The journal Foundations of Physics has been promising a special issue on “Forty Years of String Theory: Reflecting on the Foundations” for quite a while now, with a contribution first appearing back when it really was 40 years since the … Continue reading →

Paul Frampton has been found guilty on drug charges in Buenos Aires, looks like he will be able to serve out his sentence under house arrest, get released sometime in 2014. It’s unclear at this point how the University of … Continue reading →

Normally I do my best to ignore claims to have figured out the vacuum energy problem. There’s an endless number of them, mostly looking pretty dubious, and the world is full of people much more expert on the subject than … Continue reading →