Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Holy Patron of String Theory and its Holy Grail

Posted on September 14, 2009 by woit

Science News is running a long interview with Murray Gell-Mann, who will be celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow. Gell-Mann was arguably (Feynman is one who would argue..) the most influential figure in theoretical particle physics throughout the 1950s and 1960s. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Bloggingheads Diavlog With Craig Callender

Posted on September 13, 2009 by woit

There’s a new Bloggingheads Diavlog up today, where philosopher of science Craig Callender and I discuss the topic of Philosophy and the String Wars. Regular readers of the blog will just get to see me make the same points as … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

String Theory Skeptic

Posted on September 2, 2009 by woit

The latest Forbes magazine has an article entitled String Theory Skeptic, which gives me a lot more credit for the problems of string theory than I deserve. The article as I just saw it online appears to have a minor … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

ICM 2010

Posted on August 27, 2009 by woit

The International Congress of Mathematicians is held every four years, and the next iteration, ICM 2010, will be held about a year from now, in Hyderabad, India. These are huge conferences, planned well in advance, with 1465 mathematicians already pre-registered. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on August 20, 2009 by woit

Back from a final short summer vacation, with no further travel plans for the indefinite future. Some things I’ve recently come across that might be of interest: Tommaso Dorigo has posted his contribution to a session on “Blogs, big physics … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

25 Years On…

Posted on August 6, 2009 by woit

Five years ago the 20th anniversary of the “First Superstring Revolution” was being celebrated, and I wrote some postings about this history (see here, here and here). This month is the quarter-century anniversary, and I haven’t seen any evidence of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Various Items

Posted on August 6, 2009 by woit

CERN just issued a press release announcing the decision about the energy for the initial LHC run: 3.5 TeV/beam. The procedure for the 2009 start-up will be to inject and capture beams in each direction, take collision data for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Back

Posted on August 5, 2009 by woit

I’ve spent most of the last month traveling, first to Latvia and Russia, then to China, finally to Seattle. Back now, looking forward to staying in one time zone and not seeing the interior of a plane for a while. … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Weinberg at CERN

Posted on July 17, 2009 by woit

Steven Weinberg was visiting CERN recently and gave a talk entitled The Quantum Theory of Fields: Effective or Fundamental? He discussed the ups and downs of the “market price” of quantum field theory, showing a decline since a peak in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on July 10, 2009 by woit

For the latest on the status of the LHC, see the July 2 talk of Steve Myers mentioned here earlier, and a July 8 talk (slides, video) that has some more recent news. The question of what to do about … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 18 Comments