Yearly Archives: 2011

Obama Worse Than Bush

Posted on April 1, 2011 by woit

I voted for Obama in the Democratic primary, because I figured Hillary Clinton was more likely to expand the war in Afghanistan and otherwise engage in the sort of misguided military adventure favored by the shrub. Look what happened. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments

Change of Direction

Posted on April 1, 2011 by woit

It probably won’t surprise my regular readers to hear that recently I’ve been getting rather tired of the usual topics of this blog. String theory has been intellectually dead for a very long time now, and continuing to point this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Things That Deserve (but won’t get) Longer Blog Postings

Posted on March 23, 2011 by woit

Here’s a selection of news that deserves longer blog postings that, for one reason or another, I’m unable or unwilling to provide… This year’s Abel Prize goes to John Milnor. With an excellent blog posting about this from Fields Medalist … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Langlands, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

This Week’s Hype II

Posted on March 16, 2011 by woit

LHC-related hype is coming fast and furious this week during my vacation, with Vanderbilt University yesterday issuing a press release headlined Large Hadron Collider could be world’s first time machine. It’s based on this paper, and the Vanderbilt press release … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 49 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 14, 2011 by woit

The LHC is back in business, producing stable colliding beams for the first time this year, although still with a small number of bunches and thus a low luminosity. The number of bunches and luminosity will increase over the next … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, This Week's Hype | 22 Comments

Short Items

Posted on March 6, 2011 by woit

There’s a wonderful interview at the Notices with last year’s Abel Prize winner John Tate (video here). He blames the fact that his name is on so many mathematical results and concepts on Serge Lang. The 2011 Abel Prize winner … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Space-time, Quantum Mechanics and the Large Hardon Collider

Posted on February 28, 2011 by woit

The title of the posting is that of Nima Arkani-Hamed’s public lecture last week at the IAS, with the spelling that of the title at the beginning of the video (available here, lower resolution version here). The bulk of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 69 Comments

Implications of Initial LHC Searches for Supersymmetry

Posted on February 22, 2011 by woit

There’s a new paper out this evening from a large collaboration entitled Implications of Initial LHC Searches for Supersymmetry. Instead of just adding it to the bottom of my recent posting, I thought it would be a good idea to … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 64 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on February 21, 2011 by woit

A session on results from the LHC at last week’s AAAS meeting has generated some news reports about results from the heavy ion run, see here and here. Under the heading “String theory supported”, MSNBC reports: Previous experiments conducted at … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 23 Comments

First LHC Winter Conference Results

Posted on February 17, 2011 by woit

This week the Aspen Center for Physics is hosting one of the first of this year’s “Winter Conferences” where results from last year’s LHC run are being reported. Appropriately, the title of the conference is New Data from the Energy … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 23 Comments