Category Archives: Uncategorized

Since string theory first became popular in 1984-5, attempts to connect it to particle physics have suffered from various problems. One of the most severe of these goes under the name of “moduli stabilization”. Six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds come in … Continue reading →

Bert Schroer has a new version of his paper that was discussed here earlier this year, now with the amended title String theory and the crisis in particle physics (a Samizdat on particle physics). He claims that the version reflects … Continue reading →

Penny Smith, a mathematician at Lehigh University, has posted a paper on the arXiv that purports to solve one of the Clay Foundation Millenium problems, the one about the Navier-Stokes Equation. The paper is here, and Christina Sormani has set … Continue reading →

There’s almost too much to keep track of the last couple days on the string theory controversy front: Burton Richter of SLAC has a Reference Frame piece in the latest Physics Today entitled Theory in particle physics: Theological speculation versus … Continue reading →

Back in April a paper appeared on the arXiv from string theorist Jacques Distler and collaborators that made a rather outrageously overhyped claim to have found a way to “falsify string theory”. The paper was entitled Falsifying String Theory Through … Continue reading →

Last week at the KITP, Keith Dienes gave a talk on A Statistical Study of the Heterotic Landscape. He gave a good idea of the state of the art of the investigation of the Landscape, focusing on one special type … Continue reading →

Fewer and fewer science writers these days are credulous enough to keep promoting string theory, but there still are some around willing to keep writing overhyped stories about how theorists have finally found a way to get some sort of … Continue reading →

No, I don’t have any idea who will win this year, but the announcement will be a week from today, on Tuesday October 3. After my initial success in Nobel Prize prognostication, I’ve now retired from that game, but encourage … Continue reading →

Well, no, I’m not going to start putting up here the really interesting gossip that people tell me. If I did so they’d stop telling me such things. The Theoretical Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill has moved yet again. First … Continue reading →

John Baez is encouraging people to join in a campaign to “save New Scientist” from itself, i.e. to get them to stop publishing so much scientific nonsense. This seems to me like a worthwhile goal; maybe if they stop writing … Continue reading →