Yearly Archives: 2006

Reviews and Errata

Posted on August 2, 2006 by woit

The August edition of Seed magazine is out on the newstands, and it contains a joint review entitled “No Strings Attached” by Charles Seife of my book and of Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics. The article and magazine issue … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 26 Comments

P. University Press

Posted on August 1, 2006 by woit

I really am trying to ignore Lubos, but there’s just too much material… Back in early 2004, after it became clear that Cambridge University Press was very unlikely to ever publish Not Even Wrong due to intense opposition from string … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 61 Comments

Susskind on KQED

Posted on July 31, 2006 by woit

Someone wrote in to tell me that KQED this morning had Leonard Susskind on to discuss string theory and his book The Cosmic Landscape. Most of the program consisted of him promoting his usual line about the string theory anthropic … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 58 Comments

Templeton Funding for Physics Research

Posted on July 31, 2006 by woit

The Templeton-funded FQXI organization has announced today the awarding of 30 grants totalling more than $2 million dollars for foundational research in physics. On the one hand I’ve always been dubious about this organization since it is funded by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 43 Comments

Conferences, etc.

Posted on July 27, 2006 by woit

Lattice 2006, the big yearly conference on lattice gauge theory, is going on the week in Tucson. The program is here, and both plenary and parallel session talks are being posted. Georg von Hippel is blogging from the conference, his … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Latest on Poincare

Posted on July 27, 2006 by woit

A new 473-page paper by Gang Tian and my colleague John Morgan that gives a complete proof of the Poincare conjecture based upon the argument outlined by Grigori Perelman (which carries out the program of my other Columbia colleague Richard … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 106 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on July 21, 2006 by woit

Since it’s summer, lots of conferences going on: The Institute in Princeton has its usual summer program designed to train graduate students and postdocs in string theory. The schedule and lecture notes are here. On the opposite coast, with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

The String Ideology

Posted on July 20, 2006 by woit

If you want to get an understanding of the ideology that many string theorists subscribe to, you should check out Lubos Motl’s latest posting. Besides the usual dismissal of non-believers as idiots, incompetents and crackpots (an attitude that unfortunately seems … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments

Equivariant Cohomology

Posted on July 18, 2006 by woit

The International Congress of Mathematicians will be taking place in Madrid relatively soon, in late August. One tradition at this conference is the announcement of the Fields Medals, and I’m getting embarassed that I’m not hearing any authoritative rumors about … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on July 13, 2006 by woit

This week’s string theory hype is embedded in a story by Michael Schirber about the possibility of variation of fundamental constants that has appeared on msnbc.com, foxnews.com, and Slashdot. According to Schirber: A popular alternative to relativity, which assumes that … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 62 Comments