Yearly Archives: 2009

First Principles

Posted on April 10, 2009 by woit

I learned recently from Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog that there’s a new book out by Howard Burton, entitled First Principles: The Crazy Business of Doing Serious Science (she has some comments on the book here). It’s a fascinating and entertaining book. … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 15 Comments

Various News

Posted on April 6, 2009 by woit

The CERN Bulletin has been providing weekly updates about the progress of LHC repairs, with the latest one here. One thing they don’t seem to have mentioned is that it looks like the schedule has recently slipped by nearly a … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Origin of the World

Posted on April 1, 2009 by woit

Arizona State University’s new Origins Initiative is starting off this year with some mind-expanding programs, including an Origins Symposium that will start tomorrow. The number and quality of speakers who will be making the trip to Tempe is remarkably high. … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 10 Comments

Anything Goes

Posted on March 26, 2009 by woit

Yesterday at the KITP Wati Taylor gave a talk entitled Freedom and Constraints in the Landscape of Intersecting/Magnetized Branes. During the talk he explained in detail the problem of lack of predictivity caused by the landscape. As far as anyone … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 26 Comments

The Expanding Universe (of Cosmology Centers)

Posted on March 26, 2009 by woit

The past couple months I’ve seen announcements of the founding of two new cosmology centers at US universities, and I realized that there has been quite a lot of this going on over the past few years here in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Latest Langlands

Posted on March 24, 2009 by woit

The site at UBC collecting the work of Robert Langlands is now no longer being maintained. There’s a new site now at the IAS. It includes some interesting recent short articles of various kinds that I hadn’t seen before, including … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 1 Comment

The Nature of Truth

Posted on March 24, 2009 by woit

Seed Magazine has a video and transcript up of a discussion between cosmologist Paul Steinhardt and philosopher of science Peter Galison advertised as The physicist and the historian discuss the nature of truth as theoretical models of the universe become … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 25 Comments

Collider Smackdowns

Posted on March 21, 2009 by woit

If you’re interested in particle physics and not regularly reading Tommaso Dorigo’s blog, you should be. His latest posting reports on incendiary claims by Michael Dittmar of the CMS collaboration that recent Tevatron Higgs mass limits are wrong and not … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Old Enough for Kindergarten

Posted on March 17, 2009 by woit

Today is the fifth anniversary of the start of this blog, something that has caused me to go back and take a look at some of the early postings, and meditate a bit on what has happened during the past … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 52 Comments

New Higgs Mass Limits

Posted on March 13, 2009 by woit

The new combined CDF/D0 Higgs mass limits are out, there’s a paper here. At a confidence level of 95%, a standard model Higgs is excluded for a mass range between 160 and 170 GeV. At a confidence level of 90%, … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 9 Comments