Category Archives: Favorite Old Posts

The West Coast Metric is the Wrong One

Posted on June 5, 2015 by woit

I’m trying to get back to blogging about quantum mechanics slogans, this one is about relativistic quantum mechanics. I’m hoping it will stir up more trouble than my last East vs. West one. If you’re doing calculations in relativistic quantum … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts | 61 Comments

The NSA, NIST and the AMS, Part II

Posted on January 19, 2015 by woit

Last summer I wrote here about an article in the AMS Notices which appeared to make misleading claims about the NSA’s involvement in putting a backdoor in an NIST cryptography standard known as DUAL_EC_DRBG. The article by Richard George, a … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Use the Moment Map, not Noether’s Theorem

Posted on August 28, 2014 by woit

For a fourth provocative slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Use the moment map, not Noether’s Theorem. Pretty much every physics textbook these days explains the way symmetry principles work as: Start with an action functional, invariant under a Lie … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 25 Comments

Nature is Fundamentally Conformally Invariant

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a third slogan I’ve chosen: Nature is fundamentally conformally invariant. Note the weasel-word “fundamentally”. We know that nature is not conformally invariant, but the kind of thing I have in mind is pure QCD, where the underlying classical theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 33 Comments

Grand Unification of Mathematics and Physics

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a second slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Quantum mechanics is evidence of a grand unification of mathematics and physics. I’m not sure whether this slogan is likely to annoy physicists or mathematicians more, but in any case Edward … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Quantum Theory is Representation Theory

Posted on August 16, 2014 by woit

For a first slogan (see here for slogan zero) I’ve chosen: Quantum theory is representation theory. One aspect of what I’m referring to is explained in detail in chapter 14 of these notes. Whenever you have a classical phase space … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 43 Comments

What’s Hard to Understand is Classical Mechanics, Not Quantum Mechanics

Posted on August 11, 2014 by woit

For a zeroth slogan about quantum mechanics, I’ve chosen What’s hard to understand is classical mechanics, not quantum mechanics. The slogan is labeled by zero because it’s preliminary to what I’ve been writing about here. It explains why I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics | 46 Comments

String Theory and Post-Empiricism

Posted on July 10, 2014 by woit

Note: This is being published simultaneously here and at Scientia Salon. Discussion will be at the Scientia Salon site. Last month’s Strings 2014 conference in Princeton included two remarkable talks by prominent physicists, both of whom invoked philosophy in a … Continue reading →

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Ten Years of Not Even Wrong

Posted on April 11, 2014 by woit

This blog was started a little bit over ten years ago, and I’ve been intending for a while to write something marking the occasion and commenting on what has changed over the past ten years. I’ve found this mostly a … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 62 Comments

Particle Fever

Posted on October 1, 2013 by woit

Yesterday I got a chance to see Particle Fever, the long-awaited film about particle physics. It’s at the New York Film Festival, where there will be another showing on Wednesday, although tickets are already sold out. Oliver Peters was also … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Film Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 20 Comments