Monthly Archives: November 2010

The BMO Financial Group Isaac Newton Chair in Theoretical Physics

Posted on November 29, 2010 by woit

I learned this morning from Matin Durrani’s blog that the Perimeter Institute has announced today the first of what they expect to be five very well-funded Perimeter Research Chairs in theoretical physics. The next four will be named after Maxwell, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Assorted News

Posted on November 18, 2010 by woit

HEPAP is meeting in Washington today, presentations available here. The idea of this regular meeting is for the US HEP community and the funding agencies to meet and plan for the future, something that’s not easily done in an environment … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Uncategorized | 28 Comments

A Geometric Theory of Everything

Posted on November 17, 2010 by woit

The December issue of Scientific American is out, and it has an article by Garrett Lisi and Jim Weatherall about geometry and unification entitled A Geometric Theory of Everything. Much of the article is about the geometry of Lie groups, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 110 Comments

The Anderson-Higgs Mechanism

Posted on November 13, 2010 by woit

One reason for this posting is that exchanges in the comment section of the previous one led me to look into some history, and I found some odd and possibly interesting facts I hadn’t previously known. So, part of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 31 Comments

Massive

Posted on November 10, 2010 by woit

There’s a wonderful new book about particle physics that has just come out, Massive:The Missing Particle that Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science, by Ian Sample, who is a science correspondent for the Guardian. The topic is the huge open … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 29 Comments

This and That

Posted on November 9, 2010 by woit

There’s a new preprint here explaining the scientific case for running the Tevatron past 2011. A couple weeks ago the P5 subpanel came out with its report on the subject, generating news stories “Momentum builds for Tevatron extension” and “Panel … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Langlands, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Once Before Time

Posted on November 8, 2010 by woit

There’s a new popular book out this week entitled Once Before Time: a whole story of the universe, by Martin Bojowald, promoting his ideas about “Loop Quantum Cosmology”. It’s a translation of the original German edition, Zuruck vor den Urknall, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 25 Comments

Simons Center Inaugural Conference

Posted on November 5, 2010 by woit

I was out in Stony Brook for the past couple days, to attend festivities surrounding the inauguration of the new building there which will house the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. The Center is funded by Jim Simons, whose … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Recent Hot Topics in Hep-th

Posted on November 4, 2010 by woit

SLAC’s SPIRES database has a link you can use to search for articles heavily cited during 2009 and 2010. Just looking at the hep-th papers, three are review articles of older work on applying AdS/CFT to condensed matter physics, three … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on November 3, 2010 by woit

Way back in 1997, string theorists were already getting rather touchy about people pointing out string theory’s testability problems. At that time, Gordon Kane published an article in Physics Today with the title String Theory is Testable, Even Supertestable in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 33 Comments