Monthly Archives: June 2011

Strings 2011

Posted on June 27, 2011 by woit

Strings 2011 started today in Uppsala, with attendance quite a bit lower than in the past (259 registered participants, versus 500 or so at some of the past such conferences). One reason for this may be the high conference cost … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 33 Comments

Bad Boys of Physics

Posted on June 22, 2011 by woit

Scientific American is running a Bad Boy of Physics story (also see here) in the July issue, about Lenny Susskind. Here’s the “nut graph”: Physicists seeking to understand the deepest levels of reality now work within a framework largely of … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 44 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on June 17, 2011 by woit

The House committee responsible for the DOE budget has passed a FY2012 appropriations bill, details here. Total funding for DOE Science is down .9% from FY2011 at $4.8 billion. HEP gets a .2 percent increase, Biological and Environmental Research is … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on June 15, 2011 by woit

Last month’s Quark Matter 2011 conference was a venue for discussion of new results from the first heavy-ion run at LHC energies last fall. I’ve looked a bit at the slides of the talks, but this is an area far … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 41 Comments

How the Hippies Saved Physics

Posted on June 13, 2011 by woit

A review that I wrote of David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics is now available at American Scientist. A quick summary is that I think it’s a marvelous book, telling in well-researched and entertaining fashion a story I’ve always … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 37 Comments

$6.5 Million for Entropic Gravity

Posted on June 12, 2011 by woit

One of this year’s Spinoza Prizes goes to Erik Verlinde. It comes with 2.5 million euros to fund the prize-winner’s research. Last fall Verlinde received a 2 million euro ERC Advanced Grant to fund his research program, so that’s a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Math and Physics, Summer 2011

Posted on June 9, 2011 by woit

This week in Philadelphia the String-Math 2011 conference is going on, planned as the first of a series, with String-Math 2012 next summer in Bonn. Slides of the talks are appearing here. There’s also supposed to be video, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 10 Comments

New Look

Posted on June 9, 2011 by woit

I’ve updated the blog a bit, to a newer, widgetized theme. Functionality should be the same as before. The only issue I’m aware of now is that the “Archives” widget adds an annoying character below its header which I can’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

This Week’s Rumor

Posted on June 8, 2011 by woit

A couple months ago CDF made the New York Times by releasing results claiming to see a resonance in the invariant mass spectrum of two jets produced together with a W. Last week they released a new analysis with twice … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 34 Comments

The Quantum Story

Posted on June 8, 2011 by woit

Jim Baggott’s The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments is now out here and I’ve been starting to see it in bookstores. I read most of it a year or two ago when he sent me a draft of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 3 Comments