{"id":15833,"date":"2026-08-25T23:49:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15833"},"modified":"2026-08-25T23:49:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:49:05","slug":"this-weeks-hype-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15833","title":{"rendered":"This Week&#8217;s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist today reports that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/science-and-technology\/2026\/08\/25\/the-universe-is-peculiar-but-it-may-soon-become-less-so\">New theories and experiments should shine light on string theory<\/a>.  This is more of the promotional campaign for Cumrun Vafa&#8217;s &#8220;dark dimension&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re told that a torsion balance experiment in Austria will &#8220;according to Dr. Vafa&#8217;s calculations&#8221; possibly detect the &#8220;dark dimension&#8221;.  Vafa has convinced <em>The Economist<\/em> that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>in the dark dimension, string theory has made a testable prediction. And for a topic that has been stuck in the mud for half a century, that should be lauded. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is complete nonsense, a shame that <em>The Economist<\/em> has been taken in by it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist today reports that New theories and experiments should shine light on string theory. This is more of the promotional campaign for Cumrun Vafa&#8217;s &#8220;dark dimension&#8221;. We&#8217;re told that a torsion balance experiment in Austria will &#8220;according to Dr. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15833\">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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-hype"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15833","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=15833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15835,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15833\/revisions\/15835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}