Monthly Archives: June 2009

Conferences

Posted on June 29, 2009 by woit

In a couple days I’ll be leaving for a week-long trip to Riga and St. Petersburg. I’ll be in St. Petersburg from July 5-8, and will give a talk on BRST and Dirac Cohomology at a conference there. I’m finishing … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Strings 2009 Out of Juice?

Posted on June 23, 2009 by woit

I had a suspicion that Strings 2009 wasn’t going to be scientifically very active, since not much has been going on in that field recently, but I still found it surprising how little news from the conference was making its … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 33 Comments

Gina Says

Posted on June 23, 2009 by woit

At the height of the string wars a couple years ago, one of the participants was a mysterious anonymous commenter going under the name “Gina”. Earlier this year Gil Kalai wrote to me to reveal that he was the person … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Templeton Foundation Strategy and Planning

Posted on June 22, 2009 by woit

Most physicists are rather dubious about whether “multiverse” research is deserving of any support since it’s not clear that it is even science. Because of this, such research has been finding financial support in recent years not from conventional sources … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 31 Comments

Manufacturing universes in a fractal multiverse

Posted on June 21, 2009 by woit

I gather that the World Science Festival here in New York a week or so ago was a great success, although I was out of town for most of it. The one part of the program I was dubious about … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 10 Comments

News from CERN, Witten Interview

Posted on June 18, 2009 by woit

The new CERN Bulletin is available, and it contains a link to a recent video interview of Witten, who has been visiting CERN during the past year. Some other things in this issue: Bill Gates recently visited the LHC, bringing … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 4 Comments

Summer Programming

Posted on June 18, 2009 by woit

As far as academics are concerned, summer has started, which means that there are lots and lots of conferences going on. The past couple weeks we’ve had two here in the Columbia math department, one in algebraic geometry, and another … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

La Tête dans les Étoiles

Posted on June 15, 2009 by woit

This past weekend the city of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne organized a science festival entitled La tête dans les étoiles; les pieds sur terre! It featured Lubos Motl speaking on “Physics at the Planck Scale”, and the Bogdanoff brothers on “The Beginning of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

String Universality Reloaded

Posted on June 12, 2009 by woit

I still haven’t figured out yet what the arXiv’s trackback policy is, since trackbacks to my blog entries sometimes appear there, sometimes not. One example in the “not” category is my recent posting about the Kumar-Taylor paper on “String Universality”, … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 17 Comments

Latest From the LHC

Posted on June 9, 2009 by woit

Last week was the annual Fermilab User’s Meeting, for all sorts of interesting talks see here. These included a talk by Sergio Bertolucci giving recent news about the LHC status. This week CERN is hosting a CERN-Fermilab Hadron Collider Physics … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 17 Comments