Monthly Archives: October 2011

Templeton Frontiers Program

Posted on October 28, 2011 by woit

The Perimeter Institute announced yesterday a new partnership with the Templeton Foundation, in the form of something to be called the Templeton Frontiers Program. The research areas to be supported are “quantum foundations and information, foundational questions in cosmology, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 28 Comments

11/11/11, Portal to Another Universe?

Posted on October 25, 2011 by woit

According to World News Forecast, 11:11am on 11/11/11 could, if Uri Geller is right, be a portal to another universe. This is from Geller’s web-page on the subject: String theory is said to be the theory of everything. It is … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 42 Comments

Higgs Non-News

Posted on October 24, 2011 by woit

The two main LHC experiments have now recorded just about 5 inverse femtobarns each of data this year (CMS here, ATLAS here). This is the last week of the proton run, so that number will be near the total available … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 15 Comments

The Status of SUSY

Posted on October 22, 2011 by woit

You may have seen by now claims from various sources about evidence for SUSY coming from CMS, for instance Hints of New Physics Crop Up at LHC, A Lifeline for Supersymmetry?, and CMS sees SUSY-like trilepton excesses. This nonsense is … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, This Week's Hype | 45 Comments

Solvay Centenary

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

The first Solvay conference was in 1911 (at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, where I stayed one night of my recent trip to Belgium, without knowing the history), attended by the great men of the early days of quantum theory, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

A couple people have written to tell me about the new BBC Faster Than the Speed of Light? documentary on superluminal neutrinos which evidently featured trademark hype from string theorist Mike Duff about how string theory could explain this. For … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 13 Comments

String Theory Finds a Bench Mate

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

There’s a nice article this week in Nature about AdS/CMT, entitled String Theory Finds a Bench Mate. According to the article, the whole thing is (partly) my fault: But in 2006, string theory took a public battering in two popular … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Welcome to the Multiverse

Posted on October 19, 2011 by woit

The October issue of Discover magazine has a new feature, a column by Sean Carroll, whose inaugural effort is now on-line as Welcome to the Multiverse. Sean makes the argument that opposition to multiverse mania is due to people having … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 2 Comments

Weinberg on Symmetry

Posted on October 10, 2011 by woit

The latest New York Review of Books has an article by Steven Weinberg entitled Symmetry: A ‘Key to Nature’s Secrets’. It’s a bit unusual for the NYRB, since it is both scientifically more technical than usual for them (coming from … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

News From Europe

Posted on October 7, 2011 by woit

A few items with a European flavor: The news from Dublin is that Witten will be in town soon to give the Hamilton Lecture, with the Irish Times reporting that Witten’s Hamilton Lecture will abandon string theory, however, in favour … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News, Uncategorized | 22 Comments