Monthly Archives: March 2004

Various Hype

Posted on March 29, 2004 by woit

A recent new experimental result from Brookhaven has lead to some news stories like: Theory of matter in for a “sensational” revision which sounds pretty exciting. If you look into this more carefully, you’ll find that it’s based on a … Continue reading →

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Atiyah and Singer Share Abel Prize

Posted on March 26, 2004 by woit

The Abel prize is a new yearly prize in mathematics, intended to function somewhat like a Nobel Prize for mathematics. The first one was awarded last year to Jean-Pierre Serre and this year’s has gone to Sir Michael Atiyah and … Continue reading →

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My (Not So) Brilliant Career

Posted on March 26, 2004 by woit

One of the weirder things that happened yesterday was that I noticed there was a long thread in a discussion group about my academic qualifications. You can find this at Physics Forums My academic career has been a bit unusual, … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Various Stuff on the Web

Posted on March 23, 2004 by woit

One can keep track of what is going on in theoretical physics now by taking a look at conference websites. Often after the conference they put up speaker’s transparencies or even audio or video of the talk. Some very recent … Continue reading →

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Questions for Cosmologists

Posted on March 21, 2004 by woit

I was pleased to get a comment from cosmologist Sean Carroll frighteningly soon after starting this thing up. Here’s some questions about cosmology that have been on my mind recently, maybe he or someone else will be able to answer … Continue reading →

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The Holy Grail of Physics

Posted on March 21, 2004 by woit

It’s pretty common these days for people to refer to successfully quantizing general relativity as “the Holy Grail of Physics”, but it seems to me that there is a different problem that better deserves this name: “Why does the vacuum … Continue reading →

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Talk by David Gross

Posted on March 19, 2004 by woit

Last Friday I went to hear a talk by David Gross at the CUNY Graduate Center on “The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics”. This was more or less Gross’s standard advertisement for string theory that he has been giving for … Continue reading →

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Introduction

Posted on March 17, 2004 by woit

This is an experimental new weblog. Let’s see if I can find anything of interest to put on here, and how long it takes for someone else to find out it exists.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments