Yearly Archives: 2006

Some Links

Posted on October 26, 2006 by woit

Earlier this month there was a workshop on twisted K-theory held at Oberwolfach. Here is a report, also slides from a talk there by Greg Landweber about the Freed-Hopkins-Teleman theorem. Freed is giving a course on the subject this fall, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Finite Generation of the Canonical Ring

Posted on October 26, 2006 by woit

The last few weeks have seen the appearance of two papers giving very different proofs of a quite important result in algebraic geometry, resolving a question that had been open for a very long time, and in the process helping … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Prospects For a String Theory Phenomenology

Posted on October 24, 2006 by woit

Yesterday at the KITP Michael Dine gave a very good survey talk on Prospects for a String Theory Phenomenology. It’s pretty much hype free, has a much more realistic point of view than most talks on string phenomenology that I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

The Hype Goes On

Posted on October 23, 2006 by woit

The Ottawa Citizen today has an Op-Ed by string cosmologist Jim Cline, headlined The Big Idea That Won’t Die, with a subtitle “The fact that string theory is suddenly under attack only underscores its success as a path to a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 40 Comments

King of Infinite Space

Posted on October 19, 2006 by woit

Back when I was a graduate student trying to figure out how to define and calculate topological charge in lattice gauge theory, at one point I went over to the math department to ask some people I knew if they … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 29 Comments

The String Wars

Posted on October 18, 2006 by woit

I noticed recently that George Johnson will be journalist in residence and giving a talk on Friday at the KITP in Santa Barbara about “The String Wars”. Somehow I don’t really think that it’s a good thing that this is … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 97 Comments

Links

Posted on October 12, 2006 by woit

This evening a very interesting paper appeared on the arXiv, entitled Instantons Beyond Topological Theory I by E. Frenkel, Losev and Nekrasov. The authors are studying theories with a topological sector (supersymmetric quantum mechanics and 2d sigma models on a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 70 Comments

Rube Goldberg’s Instruction Manual

Posted on October 11, 2006 by woit

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | 38 Comments

Corrections…

Posted on October 8, 2006 by woit

I’m well aware that there’s far too much these days on this blog about the controversy over string theory, but two things have appeared today in the press about this that aren’t accurate, and I can’t resist using this platform … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 65 Comments

Schroer’s “Samizdat”

Posted on October 6, 2006 by woit

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | 122 Comments