Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

Yesterday’s Hype

Posted on August 1, 2020 by woit

Every summer CERN runs a summer student programme, designed to bring in a group of students to participate in scientific activities at CERN and provide lectures for them about the basics and latest state of the field of high energy … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 28 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 25, 2020 by woit

Maybe it’s because people are at home with nothing else to do, but somehow the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be having the side-effect of generating new infections of “test of string theory” hype, a disease common many years back that … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 8 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 20, 2020 by woit

In this disturbing time of pandemic, it’s reassuring to see that some activities continue as usual. On the string theory hype front, yesterday NASA put out a press release announcing that Chandra Data Tests ‘Theory of Everything’, which starts by … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on February 28, 2020 by woit

Sabine Hossenfelder already has this covered, but I wanted to add a few comments about this week’s hype, a new article in Quanta magazine by Philip Ball entitled Wormholes Reveal a Way to Manipulate Black Hole Information in the Lab … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 32 Comments

Researchers Discover How to Conduct First Test of “Untestable” String Theory

Posted on September 1, 2010 by woit

A couple people this morning pointed me to today’s press release from Imperial College, headlined Researchers Discover How to Conduct First Test of “Untestable” String Theory and subtitled “New study suggests researchers can now test the ‘theory of everything’”. In … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 14 Comments

Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

Posted on December 11, 2019 by woit

The last couple days have seen various discussions online generated by a piece at Quanta Magazine with the dubious headline Why the Laws of Physics Are Inevitable and an even worse sub-headline claiming “physicists working on the ‘bootstrap’ have rederived … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 47 Comments

Today’s Hype

Posted on October 29, 2019 by woit

Hype about string theory and fundamental physics seemed to have been dying down recently, with only three editions here so far in 2019 of This Week’s Hype. Today however brings a bumper crop of the highest quality, with new examples … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 13 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 31, 2019 by woit

This week’s hype comes to us courtesy of Scientific American, which, based on this preprint, tells us: Found: A Quadrillion Ways for String Theory to Make Our Universe. As usual in these things, the only physicists quoted are the authors … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 8 Comments

Northeastern University Researchers Find Signs of Extra Dimensions

Posted on January 26, 2006 by woit

If you believe the headline of a press release issued today by Northeastern University, its researchers have found evidence of extra dimensions. The actual text of the press release tells a different story, that they haven’t found evidence of extra … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 58 Comments

The Hype Goes On

Posted on April 23, 2006 by woit

Yet another example of the seemingly infinite supply of bogus “evidence for string theory” is a recent Slashdot posting about a claim to have measured a change in time of the proton/electron mass ratio. It is based on a New … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 72 Comments