Category Archives: Uncategorized

Science writer John Horgan has just written a piece about the Templeton Foundation that is causing a bit of a ruckus. It first appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, and is also posted a the Edge web-site, where perhaps … Continue reading →

Had an amazing trip, which involved several days of travel through hundreds of miles of spectacular sand dunes in four-wheel drive vehicles operated by impressive Tuareg drivers (no camels). This put me and the group I was traveling with somewhere … Continue reading →

I’m leaving tomorrow night on a trip that will take me away from internet access for a week or more. During this time I won’t be posting anything, or able to manage the comment section, so I’ll be shutting off … Continue reading →

Bert Schroer has sent me a very long and interesting comment for posting here. I’ve put it into a separate web-page. It includes both a lot of history and many different ideas. Unfortunately I don’t have the time right now … Continue reading →

Via Tommaso Dorigo of the CDF collaboration, the news that the Tevatron Electroweak Working Group has released a new analysis of combined CDF and D0 data with the most accurate result so far for the top quark mass: 172.5 +/- … Continue reading →

The SLAC SPIRES yearly list of most frequently cited papers in 2005 is now available. I commented recently on what this was likely to show, quantifying the intellectual collapse of string theory since 1999. There are exactly three post-1999 particle … Continue reading →

The 2006 Templeton Prize of $1.4 million was awarded yesterday to cosmologist John Barrow. Barrow is the author of about 400 scientific articles and nearly 20 popular books. In recent years, one of his interests has been the possibility of … Continue reading →

Data from the second and third year of the WMAP satellite experiment has just been released a few minutes ago. There a press release and other general information page. The scientific paper explaining what this new data tells us about … Continue reading →

John Baez’s latest This Week’s Finds is out. As in other recent issues, he starts with some of the most fantastic astronomical pictures around. He also links to his recent non-technical talk Fundamental Physics: Where We Stand Today, which also … Continue reading →

This week is the second anniversary of this weblog, so perhaps a good moment for some reflections on what has been happening over the past two years. In many ways, the weblog has been successful far beyond my wildest dreams. … Continue reading →