A few quick items:<\/p>\n
It makes one feel a little bit embarrassed for the multiverse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n
- Sticking to the sophomoric, I was searching through old boxes of stuff and turned up a paper I wrote, Quantum Theory and Reality<\/a>, about the interpretation of quantum mechanics for an expository writing class during my first year (1976) of college. While it was my first year, I did have sophomore standing. Rereading the thing, I’m glad to see that I’ve learned a few things since my sophomore year, but on the other hand, some of my views haven’t changed (I still don’t think “hidden variables” work…).<\/li>\n
- Ethan Siegel at Forbes has This is Why The Multiverse Must Exist<\/a>. By now, all I can do is refer to this FAQ<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Results using the full datasets of the LHC Run 2 are starting to appear, some of them in talks given at last week’s Moriond conference in La Thuile. There are summaries available from CMS<\/a>, ATLAS<\/a> and LHCb<\/a>. Referring to the absence of any significant evidence of new particles or anything inconsistent with the SM, in these results and in a new result from BELLE, Jester comments<\/a>:
\nLa Thuile: Where Hopes Melt Away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This week, there’s another ongoing “Winter” HEP conference (“Winter” I guess means you can go skiing…), at Aspen<\/a>.\n<\/li>\n
- I was sorry to hear of the recent death of Jean-Marc Fontaine<\/a>, at the age of 74. Frank Calegari has an appreciation of Fontaine and his work here<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- For more positive recent developments in arithmetic geometry, I recommend Peter Scholze’s lecture series at UCLA<\/a> on Prismatic Cohomology, discussed by Terry Tao here<\/a>. In related news, this week at MSRI there’s an interesting workshop on Derived Algebraic Geometry and its Applications<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- For an interview with Eric Weinstein, who, like Sabine Hossenfelder, is always thought-provoking on the great question of why fundamental physics has gone off the rails, see here<\/a>. I think he may have a point about Tom Lehrer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few quick items: This past weekend I went to see the new film Out of Blue, which sounded promising: a murder mystery based on a Martin Amis book, set in New Orleans, starring Patricia Clarkson, with a plot involving … Continue reading