Monthly Archives: April 2010

Oy vey

Posted on April 30, 2010 by woit

Last Friday City College held a symposium here in Manhattan celebrating physics at City College. I was able to attend just the morning session, which began with a quick rescheduling of Anton Zeilinger for David Gross, who had overslept. Gross … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 20 Comments

Bohmian Spat

Posted on April 29, 2010 by woit

Here’s a story from the boundaries of conventional physics of the sort I normally try to resist paying any attention to, but couldn’t quite help myself this time: Last week I noticed amongst the e-mail from Jack Sarfatti that clutters … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Dark Matters

Posted on April 28, 2010 by woit

Initial 2010 data from the Theoretical Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill indicates that the particle theory job market remains as trend-driven as ever. This year, it seems that if you want a tenure-track job in the US, you must be … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 28 Comments

Podcasts

Posted on April 26, 2010 by woit

In case you’re tired of reading me going on about the same topics and instead would like to listen to me going on about such topics, there are now two new options: A couple weeks ago I did a podcast … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Tevatron vs. LHC

Posted on April 20, 2010 by woit

The news from Fermilab is that the Tevatron has set a new luminosity record, with a store last Friday that had an initial luminosity of 4.04 x 1032cm-2s-1, or, equivalently, 404 inverse microbarns/sec. For more about this, see a new … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 27 Comments

Three Mysteries

Posted on April 13, 2010 by woit

There’s a well-known list of high-profile problems in fundamental theoretical physics that have gotten most of the attention of the field during the past few decades (examples would be the problems of quantizing gravity, solving QCD, explaining dark energy, finding … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 76 Comments

A Tear at the Edge of Creation

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

There’s a new book out this week by Marcelo Gleiser, entitled A Tear at the Edge of Creation. Gleiser blogs at the NPR site 13.7, and that site also has a review of the book from his fellow blogger Adam … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 36 Comments

$2 Million For The Nature of Time

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

FQXI has just announced that it will be awarding another series of large grants, of size \$50K-\$100K, totaling about \$2 million. These grants will be targeted at research into “The Nature of Time.” Initial proposals are due June 14, grants … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist

Posted on April 6, 2010 by woit

Fox News has decided that some recent experimental atomic physics work showing that quantum mechanics works as expected (for a sane discussion of the science, see here) proves that parallel universes exist and that time travel may be feasible. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 5 Comments

Solar

Posted on April 5, 2010 by woit

Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar is now out, with a plot featuring Michael Beard, an aging theoretical physicist. Beard won a Nobel prize early in his career for the “Beard-Einstein Conflation”, which supposedly involves some unexpected coherent behavior in QED, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 9 Comments