Monthly Archives: June 2014

Physical Mathematics and the Future

Posted on June 27, 2014 by woit

The “vision” talk at Strings 2014 that I found most interesting was that of Greg Moore, whose topic was “Physical Mathematics and the Future”. He has a very extensive written version of the talk here, which includes both what he … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 15 Comments

String Theory Visions

Posted on June 27, 2014 by woit

Strings 2014 ended today, with five separate “vision” talks, giving a good picture of where the leaders of the string theory community see the subject going. I saw the talks on streaming video, presumably they should appear on the conference … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 18 Comments

Pierre van Baal 1955-2013

Posted on June 23, 2014 by woit

I only recently heard about the death late last year of Dutch particle theorist Pierre van Baal. Pierre was my office mate when we were both postdocs at Stony Brook during the mid-eighties, and he was one of the people … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 2 Comments

2015 Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics

Posted on June 23, 2014 by woit

The first set of winners of the $3 million Milner/Zuckerberg financed Breakthrough Prizes in mathematics was announced today: it’s Donaldson, Kontsevich, Lurie, Tao and Taylor. There’s a good New York Times story here. When these prizes were first announced last … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Smoking Gun No Longer Smoking

Posted on June 19, 2014 by woit

The BICEP2 paper is now out in Physical Review Letters, with major revisions to its conclusions from the preprint/press conference version of last March. For another sort of associated revision, compare this (from a March 17 Stanford press release): Linde, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 47 Comments

Strings 2014

Posted on June 15, 2014 by woit

This coming week and the next Princeton will host both the big yearly string theory conference Strings 2014, and Prospects in Theoretical Physics 2014, a program designed to train young physicists in string theory. Princeton is definitely the right place … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 44 Comments

Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference

Posted on June 9, 2014 by woit

While I was away last week Columbia was hosting the Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP) conference here on campus. Talks are available here. Matt Strassler posts about some of the new Higgs results, which basically see some of the inconsistencies … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Evidence in the Natural Sciences

Posted on June 9, 2014 by woit

I recently spent a day at the Simons Foundation in midtown, attending a symposium on Evidence in the Natural Sciences. Of the scientific program talks, I got the most out of the one by Thomas Hales on the question of … Continue reading →

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Past the End of Science

Posted on June 8, 2014 by woit

I haven’t yet seen a copy of Marcelo Gleiser’s new book, but this weekend the Wall Street Journal had a review by John Gribbin, author of the 2009 multiverse-promotional effort In Search of the Multiverse. I don’t know how Gleiser … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Big Bang Blunder Bursts the Multiverse Bubble

Posted on June 4, 2014 by woit

This week’s Nature has an article by Paul Steinhardt, with the title Big Bang blunder bursts the multiverse bubble. The subtitle of the piece describes the BICEP2 frenzy of last March as “premature hype”, and the description in the body … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 27 Comments