{"id":14120,"date":"2024-09-08T18:09:28","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T22:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14120"},"modified":"2024-11-07T09:19:25","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T14:19:25","slug":"podcast-about-string-theory-other-items","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14120","title":{"rendered":"Podcast About String Theory, Other Items"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with Robinson Erhardt, which has now appeared as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0HfqRT29Gfs\">String Theory and the Crisis in Physics<\/a>.  We mainly talk about the current situation of string theory in physics and the history of how things have gotten to this point, topics familiar to readers of this blog.  <\/p>\n<p>Some other items:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Frequently Asked Question from students is for a good place to learn about the geometry used in gauge theory, i.e. the theory of connections and curvature for principal and vector bundles.  Applied to the case of the frame bundle, this also gives a way of understanding the geometry of general relativity.  One reference I&#8217;m aware of is <em>Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity<\/em>, by John Baez and Javier P. Muniain, but I&#8217;d love to hear other suggestions. These could be more mathematical, but in a form physicists have a fighting chance at reading, or more from the physics point of view.<\/li>\n<li>  For new material from mathematicians lecturing about quantum field theory, see <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2409.03117\">Pavel Etingof&#8217;s course notes<\/a>, and Graeme Segal&#8217;s four lectures at the ICMS (available in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLUbgZHsSoMEVKB1ePqcmZgoVavZqsAFBj\">this youtube playlist<\/a>).<\/li>\n<li>If you want to understand the mindset of the young string theory true believer these days, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/stringking42069\/with_replies\">stringking42069<\/a> is back.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s something called <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/plecticslab\">&#8220;Plectics Laboratories&#8221;<\/a> which has been hosting mainly historical talks from leading physicists and mathematicians. For past talks, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@PlecticsLaboratories\">their youtube channel<\/a>.  For a series upcoming September 23-27, see <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/view\/plectics-calendar\/events\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The IAS is hosting an ongoing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/sns\/program-details-quantum-info-2024\">Workshop on Quantum Information and Physics<\/a>. One topic is prospects for future wormhole publicity stunts based on quantum computer calculations, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/video\/discussion-possible-quantum-simulation-black-holes\">here<\/a>. At the end of the talk, Maldacena raises the publicity stunt question (he calls it a &#8220;philosophical question&#8221;) of whether you can get away with claiming that you have created a black hole when you do a quantum computer simulation of one of the models he discussed.<\/li>\n<li>Ananyo Bhattacharya at Nautilus has <a href=\"https:\/\/nautil.us\/why-physics-is-unreasonably-good-at-creating-new-math-797056\/\">an article on the role of physics in creating new math<\/a>. While there is a lot there to point to, recent years have not seen the same kind of breakthroughs Witten and Atiyah were involved in during the 1980s and 90s.  I&#8217;m hoping for some progress the other way, that new ideas from mathematics will somehow help fundamental theoretical physics out of its doldrums.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with Robinson Erhardt, which has now appeared as String Theory and the Crisis in Physics. We mainly talk about the current situation of string theory in physics and the history of how &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14120\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14120"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14131,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14120\/revisions\/14131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}